Saga Of The Apes

Bionic Bob has taken the two best sequels, which had great ideas executed poorly, and has made them a meaningful expansion of the original.


For this review, I'm going to break down each Volume SEPARATELY , since they're essentially separate films.
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VOL. 1 is framed around Escape from the Planet of the Apes, the best sequel. So it's no wonder it's the better Volume. The greatest strength of Escape was ironically also its greatest weakness, in that it was an ironic reversal of the first film narratively...
which is great... if you've seen the first film. A sequel must stand on its own weight, and the fact you can't watch it without the original as context means the ironic reversal would fly over a viewer's head. By basically taking Escape and cutting it together with the original film, you can now compare and contrast the two narratives as they play out together! You can see the similarities! Now you don't miss that ironic reversal. The only major problem with it is fixed, elevating it from an average film to a great one.
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VOL. 2 is framed around Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Essentially it is a suspense thriller, because we know what the lead characters are doing will cause the future destruction of the second film... but they don't know that...
which is great... if you've seen the second film. But if you haven't then the suspense would completely fly over your head, and you'd have no reason to be worried! So he simply cross-cuts between the second film and this one. It heightens the suspense! We see the future they're trying to prevent! We're afraid when we see them causing it!


The Planet of the Apes saga was always one I enjoyed the idea of, but it was always too poor in execution to enjoy. Having each Volume cut together two movies also gives him the ability to cut out the worst parts of both AND STILL have a feature length runtime. So you ADD missing exposition and LOSE bad scenes.
I now like to think this forms a nice little trilogy (Planet of the Apes, Saga of the Apes: Vol. 1, Saga of the Apes: Vol. 2)
Which serves as a companion to the prequel trilogy (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, War for the Planet of the Apes).

Bravo, Bionic Bob.
~Silver Screen Samurai~
(PS some have said you need to see the original versions to understand this... not really, you only need to have seen the first one)

This was long, but held my interest throughout.
BBob's editing choices were always inventive, often uncanny.
Excellent pacing, and the sprawling narrative was generally clean.

Saga Of The Apes presupposes the viewer has a working familiarity with the chimp flicks.
(FE stipulates viewers possess the originals.)
Fair enough. Were you going into this cold - you would be going out confused.
Third act seemed helter skelter - that could have been me.

Not a fan of split screen. Often confusing.
The screens themselves seemed smallish.

Audio fine. No jarring cuts or volume spikes.
Video was nice. No editing errors to my eyes.
(Note: I love The Carpenters. The shopping and the song? No no no.)

Highly recommended.
Great job, BBob

I've watched ~20 fanedits without leaving any reviews, but this edit has motivated me to finally say something. I loved it that much. I probably never would have watched the apes movies again. I liked the first one fine and watch a few minutes of it when I channel surf and come across it. But I'll probably never be in the mood to actually pop in the dvds and watch them all again. This edit though - I will watch it again.

There were a few things that bugged me. The end of part 1 and beginning of part 2 used some repeat footage. The scenes belonged in both places, but when watching the two parts back to back, it was a bit confusing. Also, though the split screen generally worked great, there were a few spots that it didn't. Generally, it worked well when scenes from different movies were shown on the different screens. It didn't work well a few times when you just used the split screen to show a single movie and just turn it into slo mo. But, the pros far outweigh the cons in this edit, my notes here are just nitpicks.

Enjoyment: 10
Original: 8 (Planet of the Apes), 4-6 for the other three movies.
Combining, trimming, and playing the events out side by side was an extremely creative way to provide a new viewing experience, one that for me is remarkably improved over the original sequels.

What an excellent edit! What a labor of love! This is my new favorite way to revisit one of my favorite movie franchises of all the time. I get the complexity of your narrative, particularly on the first half. You made the much inferior "Beneath the Planet... " so much better and deeper on the second half.

The use of multiple screens is powerful and effective. The only constructive criticism I am going to share is in the audio editing department. There were some missed opportunities during the multiple screens sequences where overlapping soundtracks could have made the experience more powerful...but that's about it.

Overall for me this rates 10 out of 10.

I can't believe I've never seen this before. I'm not that good at actually watching fanedits (guess that's something that has to be changed...)

Man was this entertaining, loved the multi-screens, a really good and original fanedit. Everything started off with multi-screens then when it went to full screen I was blown away. It felt really epic. This is a fanedit that would be perfect to experience in a theater, then have intermission between the two parts.

It was a long time ago when I last saw the apes movies and that mean I've forgotten a lot, but I think the faneditor did a very good job at started out the ?
and he also made part2 less awful, at least as I remember it.

I was really impressed with the dvd menus, looks like a bought dvd. Can't remember I've ever seen fanmade menus looking this good.

Yeah I don't know what else to say, if you haven't seen it and like the apes movies, watch this now! It's a keep, that's for sure!