Doctor Omega
Member: Rank 10
Zanuck wanted to end the franchise with Beneath, so Heston came up with an idea: Taylor would not die at the beginning of the movie but disappear, only to resurface at the end as a prisoner of the mutants. As war between the apes and mutants reaches its peak, a disgusted, mortally wounded Taylor would hit the button on the mutants’ bomb -- rechristened the Alpha-Omega bomb and capable of destroying the entire planet -- and blow everyone and everything, including the series, to hell. That was quite different from Dehn’s original, more optimistic ending, in which Taylor, Nova, Brent and the chimpanzees survive the war and we flash forward 50 years later, when both species are living together in peace (a test makeup for a half-human/half-ape child was even developed, but dropped due to the bestiality aspect).
