"Planet of the Apes 2: History Rewritten"
The following is a plot summary for an imaginary sequel to the 2001 version of Planet of the Apes directed by Tim Burton. This story explains how General Thade altered Earth's history, and then shows how Leo changes it back.
This film picks up right where the first film leaves off – with Leo arriving back on Earth only to discover that all humans (past and present) have been replaced by apes. The closing scene of the first movie is now reused as the opening pre-credit sequence of this sequel.
In the first scene after the opening credits, two ape police officers are giving a report to their chief on the "alien" human they just arrested. According to their report, the human claimed to have arrived on Earth by travelling through an electromagnetic storm. Upon hearing this, the police chief contacts a colony of ape-o-nauts living on a huge spaceship in orbit and asks them to investigate this. When the colony does so, they are pulled into the storm which dissipates shortly thereafter, and Earth loses contact with them.
The next day, a group of ape scientists on Earth begin receiving a signal that appears to be from the missing spaceship's computer. However, this signal is not coming from space, but from inside a mountain in a remote area of the planet. When the apes arrive at the mountain, they find the remnants of the missing ship which apparently has been hiding there for several hundred years and has been programmed to reveal itself only at this particular time. The ship's computer then produces a hologram of Leo's lady-ape friend Ari who is now looks much older. The holographic Ari then explains what happened after the ape-o-naut colony vanished into the storm:
According to the hologram's story, the colony was transported to the Ape Planet from the first movie and arrived shortly after the time of Leo's departure. There, they met General Thade who, along with some other apes that did not wish to co-exist peacefully with humans, volunteered to return with the colony to Earth. Thade also apparently kidnapped the young Ari and forced her to come with him. When the colony attempted to return to Earth through the storm, they were all transported further back through time and arrived in Earth's past when humans alone ruled and when apes were dumb and speechless. (The year they arrived in was 1860 AD).
After they arrived in this past time period, the storm quickly dissipated and the colony was stranded. As a result, Thade assumed military command over the colony and began a campaign to exterminate Earth's human race. The first stage of this campaign was to track down and eliminate the human leaders. Thade's first target was none other than the newly elected United States President, Abraham Lincoln. After personally assassinating him, Thade began wearing Lincoln's presidential outfit as means of showing that he was now "Caesar." Once the entire human race was annihilated, the colony's intelligent apes began mating with Earth's "dumb" ones so that all future-born apes would be intelligent.
Later, before Thade passed away, he decreed that the future generations should never be told the truth of how the Earth's ape society was started by apes from the future. His logic was that someone in the future may try to prevent the colony from entering the electromagnetic storm in the first place. Hence, history was written to say that apes always ruled the earth and that the humans were invading aliens whom General Thade defeated, thus saving the world.
However, some apes, including Ari, felt that the truth should be made known to society after the colony vanishes into the storm. Hence, before the ship was buried in the mountain, Ari's holographic message was recorded into the ship's computer and was programmed to only reveal itself at this proper time...
Upon learning the truth about their origins, the modern day apes realise that Leo is not an alien invader and is probably not dangerous. However, just to be safe, they place him in the protective custody of a scientific community with military security where he spends the next twelve years.
During his time there, most apes act mistrustful and hostile toward him, with the exception of one benevolent scientist named Dr. Milo who eventually makes Leo his personal assistant. (This character is named after the chimpanzee scientist in Escape from the Planet of the Apes who came back in time with Zira and Cornelius). In their conversations, they discuss the notions of alternate realities and consider the very real possibility that Leo may have come from one. For how else can he still exist in this current Ape-world if all his human ancestors were killed by Thane in the past?
Sometime later, Dr. Milo is assigned to work on a new space station that's recent been placed in orbit, and he's granted permission to bring Leo with him. Shortly thereafter, the electromagnetic storm returns, and Leo naturally recognizes this as an opportunity to escape and possibly return to his own reality. However, when he attempts to commandeer a shuttle pod, he is caught by the security chief who then plans to take Leo back to Earth instead. At the last minute, though, Milo shows up and stabs the chief with a needle that knocks him out, thus allowing Leo to fly the pod into the storm after all. But just before Leo can take off, the rest of the ship's security force is alerted to the escape plot, thus forcing Milo to flee with Leo in the shuttle pod as well or face being arrested. The two friends then retreat into the storm just as it's vanishing again, thus preventing the other ape-ships from pursuing.
The pod then ends up back on the original Ape Planet, where Leo meets up with the young Ari again. This means that he and Milo have arrived shortly after the time Leo originally left but before Ari was kidnapped by Thade. Leo and Milo also learn that the original ape-o-naut colony has already landed and that Thade is currently making plans to return to Earth with the crew. This means that Thade will be coming to kidnap Ari at any moment. When Leo and Milo explain to Ari what Thade has done (or rather what he's going to do) to her and to Earth, the trio quickly goes on the run and barely escape from Thade's clutches. Shortly thereafter, they meet up with Limbo the Orangutan and Attar the Gorilla who help them hide.
That evening, while talking with Limbo and Attar, Leo realizes that he and his friends have just altered history by preventing Ari's kidnapping. This means that if they can prevent the colony from returning through the storm, Thade will not end up falling back in time and Earth's past should be restored to normal.
The next morning, Ari and Milo, who had quickly taken a liking to each other and spent the previous evening together, agree to help Leo, Limbo, and Attar sneak onboard the colony's ship and initiate the self-destruct sequence once they are in space. After the sequence is initiated, the group has ten minutes to get to the hanger bay and escape in another shuttle pod. Naturally, the ship's security is once again alerted to their presence by this time, and General Thade himself is waiting at the hanger bay with reinforcements.
After a fierce and horrific battle, Leo and his friends eventually defeat Thade and his thugs, but not before Milo is mortally wounded. After escaping in a shuttle pod mere moments before the spaceship explodes, Leo originally plans to return his three surviving friends to the Ape Planet before flying himself back through the storm. But when he notices that the storm is already starting to dissipate again, he realises there's no time to return to the Planet first and thus must take the three apes back with him.
After returning through the storm, the shuttle carrying the heroic group arrives back on Earth in the year 2030 (twelve years after Leo left the Oberon Space Station at the beginning of the first film). The shuttle then crashes into the ocean, and is picked up by a naval vessel. Leo is the first to emerge from the shuttle and is relieved to discover that all the crew members are human. When the three apes emerge afterwards, the human navel officers are speechless at the sight, and Leo states that he's got an incredible story to tell the world.
In a post-credit sequence, a barrage of newspaper headlines about the talking Gorilla, Orangutan, and Chimpanzee reveal that the three have become celebrities on the restored human-Earth. Among the various headlines stories are ones where Limbo and Attar visit a few zoos and pose for pictures with several of the speechless apes, most of them female. Shortly therefore, Ari is forced to announce that she's pregnant with the late Milo's child, and it's then that scientists and politicians truly begin to worry.