| “ | The class is ended. The schoolroom is closed! Now we go back to riding horses! | „ |
| ~ Aldo |
| “ | No prisoners! No prisoners! | „ |
| ~ General Aldo to his troops. |
General Aldo is a major antagonist in the Planet of the Apes franchise, first appearing as the main antagonist of Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the final installment in the original movie series.
He was played by the late Claude Akins who also portrayed Joe Burdette in Rio Bravo, Mack in The Defiant Ones, Earl Sylvester in The Killers, and Vance Morgan in Bitter Creek..
Personality[]
Aldo is a complicated character. He is barely likable at all, prone to aggression and disobedience. Aldo prefers learning practical skills such as riding horses to any sort of book learning, and, as such, appears to be poorly educated (stated at one point because he does not wish to learn). Despite his lack of education, (shown by his short, broken sentences), Aldo is very arrogant, who overestimates his strength and leadership skills. Aldo's motives appear benevolent in nature, as he thinks that Caesar cannot protect the apes from the humans or other threats, so unless he takes power, all of them could die. However, it can be argued that he was merely using this excuse to get to power. Despite his seemingly rational motives, Aldo still kills a child to keep his secret, betrays Caesar by staging a coup and later attempts to kill all the humans in cold blood, and then Caesar himself. Aldo is significant as he is the first intelligent ape in the series shown to kill another ape (something even the ruthless General Ursus would never do). The NECA General Aldo action figure box describes him as having an inferiority complex.
Biography[]
Escape from the Planet of the Apes[]
| “ | On an historic day, which is commemorated by my species and fully documented in the Sacred Scrolls, there came Aldo. He did not grunt. He articulated. He spoke a word which had been spoken to him time without number by humans. He said, 'No'. | „ |
| ~ Cornelius |
When interviewed on their arrival in 1970's USA, Cornelius and Zira maintained that the ape takeover would be led by "Aldo", the first ape to say the word "No". This was to occur about 500 years later. Based on subsequent events, they either changed history by time-travelling, they were mistaken, or they lied to protect their child.
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes[]
Early in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, their son Caesar briefly saw a rebellious (mute) chimp called "Aldo". He was a chimp messenger for Governor Breck who struggled to break free but was beaten up by guards - prompting Caesar's outburst. A later scene showed Caesar being taken to work in the Command Post by Mr. MacDonald, where he passed Aldo and they seemed to communicate silently with each other. The adaptation of Conquest that appeared in Marvel Comics was based on these earlier scripts - the writers hadn't actually seen the finished movie. Here, Aldo was a gorilla messenger for the governor who met Caesar and as they sized each other up silently they seemed to recognize something in each other.
Battle for the Planet of the Apes[]
| “ | You will call me by my proper rank... General!! | „ |
| ~ General Aldo |
Aldo is shown as a member of the new Ape City and the leader of the gorilla militia, who mostly guard the outskirts of Ape City, and practice with mock weapons. Aldo styled himself "General", insisting on being addressed as such and did not enjoy the presence of humans in the ape community. He has a violent lust for power and is both envious of Caesar (and his son, Cornelius, who bests him in the school all apes must attend) and would like to take his place as leader, and of his human advisors. Humans live alongside apes in the city, but as second class citizens.
Aldo particularly disliked Abe the Teacher for overstepping his importance, humiliating the general in his school and for speaking the forbidden word no to him. Enraged by being spoken to like a slave, Aldo led an angry chase on Abe before he was stopped by Caesar and Virgil and was put in his place after being told to put the demolished school back together. Riding off in frustration and nearly running Caesar over, Aldo plotted to get rid of him later.
Discovering a large number of (irradiated) humans still live underground in the bomb-destroyed city they escaped, as he is discovered during a trip to the ruins, Caesar implores the apes to prepare themselves, in case those humans emerge to attack. On the night Aldo made his usurping plans with other gorilla soldiers, Cornelius overheard his secret plot, forcing Aldo to draw his machete and cut the branch Cornelius was standing on to protect his plan, which all but killed the chimp prince. MacDonald and Virgil discovered that the branch Cornelius fell from has not been broken at all, but was cut.
Caesar doesn't want to leave his son's side, and Aldo uses the opportunity to to corral all the humans of Ape City, break into the armory to seize guns and other weapons, and declare martial law, with himself as de facto leader. Caesar remembers his duty toward the other apes, when an attack from the mutants indeed comes. Aldo fought powerfully to defend the ape settlement from the mutant invasion, but in the aftermath of the battle, Aldo's secret murder of Cornelius was then exposed before the apes, to which they then gathered while chanting at him in disgust "Ape has killed Ape", forcing Aldo into fleeing up a tree in shame which placed him in the same predicament as Cornelius. Caesar then chased Aldo over the edge of the branch, killing him in revenge for the death of his son.
After coming down from the tree, the battle finally over and his son's murder avenged, Caesar is given an ultimatum by the humans: to be treated equally. Caesar is upset and declares that "the human way is violence and death". However, Caesar's most trusted advisor, the orangutan Virgil, points out that Aldo was an ape, not a human. Realizing that he was wrong, Caesar declares Virgil "a good and wise ape". Caesar then resolves to have all humans and apes live together in unity. Unfortunately, this dream would prove impossible, as after Caesar's death apes would ultimately subjugate the humans completely.
In the comics[]
Aldo's story was expanded in MR Comics' Revolution on the Planet of the Apes. When the ape revolution broke out, Aldo was a cleaner at "Hasslein Air Force Base". He was to be taken for reconditioning, when he struggled free and shouted "No". He led the other apes in rebellion and had acquired the power of speech ahead of other apes. His forces took over Washington and the White House before flying jets to join Caesar's revolt in the west. A character that more closely resembled the Aldo we would later see in Battle for the Planet of the Apes, and perhaps the inspiration for the Aldo shown in Revolution, was a gorilla cleaner who was inspired by Caesar to upturn his bin as an act of rebellion in Conquest.
More of Aldo's story was told in the Marvel's own-created Quest for the Planet of the Apes, in which Aldo (a gorilla, as in Marvel's previous adaptation) challenged Caesar to a quest to determine leadership of the apes: he and Caesar had to journey to the human city and each bring something back; whoever found the "best thing" would rule. Caesar brought back the knowledge and vision of what strife can cause, and what peace can avoid. Aldo found a stocked armory and filled a cart with rifles. Aldo then challenged Caesar to a fight. Aldo was stronger, but Caesar was far smarter and lured Aldo into a tree, snaring him in a rope-trap.
Again, Marvel adapted the Battle movie in comic form, while "Power Records" adaptation of the fifth movie was a fairly faithful re-telling, except no mention was made of Caesar having a son, let alone of Aldo murdering him. Instead, Aldo was killed for challenging Caesar's authority. "Malibu Graphics" Planet of the Apes comics suggested that Aldo survived the fall from the tree shown in the movie, and that he and his followers were then exiled from the ape settlement. General Ollo was a descendant of these exiled followers of Aldo.
Trivia[]
- Koba of the 2010 film series is based off of General Aldo and having a similar relation to their versions of Caesar and like General Aldo both are apes who betray their "Caesars" for leadership of the apes, both desire the use of guns, both plan to exterminate humans, both killed an ape to establish how far they'd go for their purposes and eventually both battled their "Caesars" until they fell to their deaths by the hands of their "Caesars".
- The name 'Aldo' comes from the Latin word 'altus', meaning "the tall one", and is a very popular name in Italy. Perhaps coincidentally, it was the name of a main character of the film Hornets' Nest, released just as Escape was being scripted in the early 1970s. In this World War II story, Aldo is the leader of a group of orphaned Italian boys who join the resistance movement against German occupation, but he becomes mentally unstable and obsessive about killing Germans, eventually killing one of his own gang in his rage.
- Aside from Breck, Aldo is the most evil villain in the original Planet of the Apes franchise, as he was willing to kill a child for power. Aldo is definitely the most evil ape seen in the franchise, as he is the only intelligent Ape to kill another intelligent ape.
- Claude Akins was doubled by Orwin Harvey as Aldo in his fatal tree-top fight with Caesar (doubled by Robert Prohaska) at the end of Battle for the Planet of the Apes.
- In the first story outline for Battle..., Caesar is shot dead by Aldo at the movie's climax, but for entirely different reasons than their conflict in the finished film.
- Aldo dies the same way Cornelius II does. He too falls from a tree but unlike Cornelius, who is fatally wounded before dying, Aldo apparently falls to his death due to the height of the tree he was on.
- Aldo was mentioned in Escape from the Planet of the Apes to be the one who led the apes' revolution before Zira and Cornelius apparently changed history by going back in time, assuming this wasn't a bunch of lies from Zira and time has always been a stable loop, this would make him the overarching antagonist of the original movie series as it is his cruelty towards humans what caused ape society to become bigoted against the surviving humans and enslave them as if they were mere animals and even become corrupt thanks to its focus on violence and oppression which indirectly led to Taylor's decision to destroy Earth and all the fallout of it. It also makes his rivalry with Caesar more trascendental than it seemed, as Caesar effectively "cheated" him out of his destiny.
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 Villains
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