animal makeups: Planet of the Apes
The Planet of the Apes movies & TV
Seven movies (plus another likely) and a television series: that’s quite a franchise. John Chambers won the very first Oscar awarded for achievement in makeup for the original Planet of the Apes movie(1968).
Kim Hunter played Zira in three movies and was followed by Natalie Trundy as Lisa in the final two movies of the original series released between 1968 and 1974.
A television series followed in 1974: Jacqueline Scott and a number of other actresses donned the prosthetics for guest roles.
In 2001 Tim Burton’s re-imagined Planet of the Apes featured both Helena Bonham Carter (his current partner) as Ari and Lisa Marie (his then partner) as Nova.
The reaction to the Tim Burton movie seemed to have killed off any chance of the franchise continuing, but then in 2011 along came Rise of the Planet of the Apes which briefly featured Devyn Dalton as Cornelia but the ape looks were created using motion capture technology, as in Avatar, rather than prosthetic makeup.
John Chambers was creative makeup designer for the original five movies: Dan Striepeke was makeup supervisor on three of the movies and Joe DiBella was makeup supervisor for Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Dan Striepeke also oversaw the makeup for the television series. Rick Baker and Cinovation Studios were responsible for the Tim Burton movie with Toni G and John Blake as makeup supervisors and Kazuhiro Tsuji as key makeup artist (and designer for Thade): Mitchell Stone was hair stylist for Ari and Nova.
I have very mixed feelings about the makeup in the Tim Burton movie. The quality of design and application is superb and the way the design allows emotions to show through is amazing: but – and for me at least it’s a big but – the requirement to make the female apes believably sexy and attractive to humans has compromised the design to the point where brother and sister do not appear to belong to the same (or even a closely related) species – Thade is brilliant but Ari is awful.