Planet of the Apes (2001)

Skippable, and it connects to nothing in either direction. A sequel was planned and never made, so it stands completely alone, which is a blessing given where it finishes.

The one unambiguous success is the makeup. Rick Baker built on what John Chambers had done and produced the best ape prosthetics ever filmed: the performers move like the animals, the faces register expression at close range, and the gorillas in particular are genuinely intimidating in a way nothing in the 1968 film managed. Tim Roth's Thade is a real performance underneath it.

Almost everything else is a misunderstanding of what the original was for. The social order is a straightforward aristocracy rather than a scientific establishment protecting a doctrine, so there is nothing to argue about, and the plot is a chase. Mark Wahlberg is miscast as a man with no interior life, and the film has no interest in why any of this is happening.

Then there is the ending, which is the thing everybody remembers. It reproduces the shape of the 1968 twist without any of the logic that made it work, arriving at a final image that the film never explains and that the director has declined to explain since. It is worth seeing once purely as a curiosity, and the restored 1968 ending is still waiting for you elsewhere.