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.

While I wasn't a fan of the multi cam the way Bob pared up the movies was inspiring! Movies that I didn't enjoy before I was able to get a new appreciation for them here.

I now have a way to watch the original series in a way that I can digest because he also kept the run times low for these without feeling like we were missing anything. That is quite a feat.

This was the first movie from this editor that I have watched and I'm sure it will not be the last.

The movies are in SD format but I didn't knock any points off here for that.

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!

Pure and simple, if this edit doesn't become at least a strong contender for the next FEOTY contest, I'll eat my Sideshow Dr. Zaius 12 inch figure. It's just that amazing.

Volume 1 is about perfection. Apes I and III complement each other so much that it's almost too easy to mix them. Volume 2 was trickier, Apes II and IV being so different to each other, but the results are impressive. Bob found a lot of parallels between them. A scene from Beneath about leaving things just the way they are is combined with the apes revolt starting in Conquest. Taylor and Brent fight in the dungeon, while we see apes riots in 1991. Brent and Caesar are tortured simultaneously. Brilliant. And the multiple screen style fits these movies like a glove. They could have played in theaters like this back in the 70s, as did films like The Boston Strangler and Wicked, Wicked.

Video and audio quality is very good. If anything, the interlacing is apparent in some of the reduced screens (never when the shots fill the whole screen, though), and in a couple of moments the added music eats up the dialog a bit. Very minor things, though. The two deleted scenes provided were fun to watch, but Bob did the right thing not including them.

Thanks, Bob, for yet another wonderful edit, your best so far. Two paws way up!

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.