> I think he really did go back in time at the end. Thade survives being locked up in the Oberon, regathers his forces and figures out how to repair the ship or make a new one, and somehow travels back in time farther than Mark did. Mark just happens to go back to the same "timeline" that Thade did.
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> I think it's the same scenario that you see in the Back to the Future 2. Biff steals the book (in the future -- 2015, I think) detailing the results of sporting events, goes back in time to the past and gives the book to himself in 1955. When Marty goes back from 2015 to 1985, he finds himself 30 years along the same timeline that Biff warped in 1955.
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> The question is how far back Thade had to go to make it easy for the advanced ape race to take control. Not too far, because you see familiar human-made landmarks at the end of the movie. Or, perhaps they're having us believe that the apes went back further in time, but managed to recreate appearances to an astounding degree.

That seems plausible, too. The big problem with the ending, to me, was that there are so many plausible explantions, because they gave us NOTHING to work with to eliminate or prefer any of these possibilities. Yours does have some weight because of the whole chronometer thing, but for myself, I have to ask how the chronometer would have been designed to accurately portray such time travel, or how it would even know, when clearly, the traveller in the pod did not age and then get younger... Anyway, I am still frustrated with the whole thing. It was a neat gimmick, but poorly carried out.

Your comment in the other post about how you thought that the big battle was the bad part reminded me that I thought that was terrible as well, but in the end, the horrid confusion of the final scene overwhelmed to the point where I forgot about the implausible victory. Maybe that was what the producers had in mind...

Don "For the record, I loved the movie. I just hated that ending so much, and it is easier to complain than it is to praise. Plus, Jezzika already covered all the praise-worthy stuff" Monkey