Review Detail

9.6 21 10
FanFix November 19, 2012 9693
Overall rating
 
9.5
Audio Editing
 
10.0
Visual Editing
 
9.0
Narrative
 
9.0
Enjoyment
 
10.0
Great, great edit.

First of all, I would like to say that this edit is quite brilliant. No more so is this obvious than in the first volume. Telling the original '68 Apes film alongside '71's Escape is just a stroke of genius, to say the least. The two films parallel perfectly, and really accentuate the social commentary. That's not to say the second volume isn't well done either, because it is.

As a, practically, life long Apes fan, I've always been intrigued by the whole saga, and hope the storyline sort of loops and twists. I've always thought that there was some great potential for fan editing within the series, but could never think of a way to actually do it. I think BionicBob might have found that way. The structure here is outstanding - endlessly interesting, and altogether not hard to follow.

As I mentioned before, volume one is the real highlight. This is, mostly due to the source material. The two films just complement each other so well. Honestly, to echo a statement leeroy made, you could watch the first volume and be done. I'm quite glad that Bob split the parts in two because of this. I feel like I'll be revisiting vol. 1 more often than vol. 2, and it's good that I don't have to just stop half way through.

Again, that's not to say that volume two is bad. It's still quite awesome. The thing is, the two films within it, 70's Beneath and 72's Conquest, have very few parallels. So there's a lot less flow. Additionally, as much as I love both films, they feel a little inconsequential. A lot of the suspense is gone, especially in the Beneath portions. In fact, Beneath suffers a lot. It's shortcomings (lack of Heston, McDowall, a more original plot, etc.) are more greatly felt when placed against the other films. It's important to note that this isn't really something BionicBob could have fixed, or at least I can't think of a way. Though I must say that volume two was the only place I believe Bob made some choices that weren't the best. I think the focus needed to be on Caesar even more so than it was. In particular, I think more emphasis should have been placed on the scenes where he incites the other Apes to revolt.

Other than this stuff, I would say the edit is pretty much incredible. There are a lot of stuff that's great - a lot of highlights. But naming them all would take awhile because, like I said, this edit is exceptional.

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