Politics & Power Quote by J. Lee Thompson

Thompson’s claim is doing two jobs at once: defending "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" as more than franchise entertainment, and quietly reminding you that the very thing that makes it durable is the thing critics often pretend not to want from genre movies - an argument. Calling it “very political” isn’t a throwaway descriptor; it’s a positioning statement. He’s framing the film’s value not in effects, lore, or fan-service, but in its willingness to smuggle ideology through spectacle.

The interesting move is his appeal to critics who “still consider it even the best.” That “still” matters. It implies the movie has outlived its moment, that the politics weren’t merely topical but structural. "Conquest" lands in the early 1970s, in the shadow of civil rights backlash, Vietnam-era distrust, and televised state violence. Its dystopia - policing, curfews, a managed underclass - reads less like science fiction than a refracted newsreel. Thompson’s subtext is that allegory is not an escape hatch; it’s a way to say the unsayable in a commercial system that flinches at direct accusation.

He also slips in a hedge: “a series of political viewpoints.” Not one thesis, but multiple angles - oppression and revolt, the ethics of violence, the seductions of power once the hierarchy flips. That pluralism is why the film still sparks argument. It doesn’t just reassure the audience that liberation is righteous; it forces them to sit with what liberation can become when rage finally gets the microphone.