J. Lee Thompson, who had maintained an interest in
the franchise ever since producer
Arthur P. Jacobs invited him for the original
Planet of the Apes, was hired to direct
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Thompson had worked with Jacobs on two earlier films,
What a Way to Go! and
The Chairman, as well as during the initial stages of
Planet, but scheduling conflicts had made him unavailable during its long development process. Thompson staged every scene with attention to detail, such as highlighting the conflicts with color: the humans wear black and other muted colors, while the apes' suits are colorful.
Don Murray suggested to Thompson his wardrobe with a black turtleneck sweater, and rehearsed his scenes after translating his dialogue into German "to get this kind of severe feeling of the
Nazis". Screenwriter
Paul Dehn wrote the film incorporating references to the
racial conflicts in North America during the early 1970s, and Thompson further highlighted by shooting some scenes in a manner similar to a news broadcast. The primary location was
Century City, Los Angeles, that had previously been part of the
20th Century-Fox backlot and translated well the bleak future with monochromatic buildings in a sterile
ultramodern style. Also used as a shooting location was the
University of California, Irvine, in Orange County. In addition, TV producer
Irwin Allen contributed
props and clothes to the film: he let the makers of 'Conquest' borrow his
Seaview jumpsuits from
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, brown clothes and computers and cabinets for Ape Management that were used first on
The Time Tunnel and other sets and props from other Allen productions. Of the five original films,
Conquest is the only entry filmed in
Todd-AO 35 using Arriflex ARRI 35IIC cameras with lenses provided by the
Carl Zeiss Group; the other
Apes pictures were filmed in
Panavision.
Original opening and ending The original cut of
Conquest ended with the apes' execution of Governor Breck. After a preview screening in Phoenix on June 1, 1972, the impact of the graphic content caused the producers to rework the film, even though they did not have the budget to do so.
Roddy McDowall recorded a complement to Caesar's final speech, which was portrayed through editing tricks - Caesar being mostly shown through close-ups of his eyes, the gorillas hitting Breck with the butt ends of rifles played backwards to imply they were acquiescing to Caesar's directive of non-violence - and assured a lower rating. The film's Blu-ray version adds an unrated version, restoring the original ending and many other graphic scenes.
Conquest is the only Apes film without a
pre-title sequence. The film's script and novelization describes a nighttime pre-title scene where police on night patrol shoot an escaping ape and discover that his body is covered with welts and bruises as evidence of severe
abuse (in a later scene Governor Breck refers to the "ape that physically assaulted his master," thereby prompting MacDonald to report that the escape must have been the result of severe mistreatment). The scene appears in the first chapter of
John Jakes's novelization of the film, and in the
Marvel Comics adaption of the film in the early 1970s, both of which were probably based directly on the screenplay and not on the final edit of the actual film. An article in the Summer 1972 issue of
Cinefantastique (volume 2, issue 2) by Dale Winogura shows and describes the scene being shot, but it is unknown why it was cut. The Blu-ray extended cut does not contain the pre-credit opening.
Continuity Screenplay writer Paul Dehn, who wrote and co-wrote the sequels, said in interviews with
Cinefantastique (quoted in
The Planet of the Apes Chronicles, by Paul Woods) that the story he was writing had a circular timeline: ==Reception==