Saga Of The Apes

You know, I used to love my Planet of the Apes boxed set. Any time I wanted to get my Apes fix, I could crack open Caesar's bust, slide out any one of the classic movies, throw it in the DVD player and immerse myself in Apeland. Then bionicbob had to come along with this stupidly awesome fanedit and rendered my boxed set completely and utterly useless. Now Caesar's bust gathers dust: Alone, untouched, unwanted. What was once the proud centrepiece of my DVD shelf, Caesar now sits there, staring at me with dead eyes, wondering what happened to our relationship. I try to explain to him: Bionicbob happened.

I'm sure bionicbob will swear up and down that that this fanedit is meant to be an alternative viewing experience of the Apes universe and in no way intended to improve on the original version. Don't believe a word of it. In the span of 3 hours bionicbob has taken the essence of the Apes universe and created something remarkable. It's that rare moment in the fanediting world when creativity melds with technical prowess to create something truly special. Saga of the Apes is now the definitive entry in the POTA universe and one of the best fanedits I've had the pleasure of watching.

There's not much else to say except you really have to see for yourself the way the time lines are presented, the dots are connected, the parallels are revealed, and how the whole massive Saga is brought together as one coherent piece.

This is an instant classic of the fanediting world and everyone reading this should do themselves a favour and watch it. Now.

What an experience this one was! The multi-cam / picture worked very well indeed and radically alters the viewing experience of watching these films. Love the synergy between the struggles of man and apes told simultaneously from different perspectives. Notably the torture sequence of Caesar and Brent. It was very impactful! The captioning of the chapters is another great touch. Over all this if such a cleaver edit, It must have taken Bob an age to put this one together. Excellent work, thank you for creating something very unique and very enjoyable to watch.

I scored the narrative as a 9 because I tended to focus on one of the sequences when the multi-cam was in play and there was an action scene in progress.. Especially the riot sequences. I felt I missed some important imagery from the story being played out on the cam I wasn’t focusing on.

“Glory be to the bomb and the holy fallout!”

Overdue review from moi, but necessary.

This is quite an achievement both technically and narrative-wise. It elevate my enjoyment of these films to a new level, especially with the removal of poor material and adding the new. The use of split screens is great, and it is a form of storytelling that seems to have fallen by the wayside, so thank for shining a light on that too.

Overall, Highly recommended and a breath of fresh air frankly!

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

Finally got around to watching this edit and it is just a super cool way to watch the whole darn Planet of the Apes saga in one sitting. (except Battle for the POTA, which is a fairly irrelevant and pointless sequel anyways) BionicBob is rapidly becoming one of my favorite editors. He has a real instinct for storytelling and maintaining the flow. The use of multiple scenes on the screen was remarkably effective in telling the dual stories simultaneously.

I still haven't been able to answer the question I raised in the forum, which was whether the story as it is cut could be made sense of by a novice to the POTA. I tried to get my 15 year old son to sit and watch it, but to no avail. He has only seen this 21st century versions and I wanted to see if he could follow it. If I get this done, I will report back.

This is a short review because I really don't have any nitpicks with the edit. Any nitpicks would be with the source material, outside the control of the editor.

Great job Bob and congratulations. Your creativity and technical acumen are outstanding.

Another keeper!