Saga Of The Apes

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

A bold, bold fanediting idea pulled off with tremendous skill - both narratively and technically.

I thought the multi-screen idea was going to be a bit of a headache to be honest, but once I started watching I understood it almost straight away. And the technique, while used often, wasn't overused.

I've seen 3 of 4 original films - many, many years ago - but I'm no Apes purist. This was very entertaining a very different fanedit experience.

Technically, the editing is clean, the video/audio quality good considering the sources, and the audio is generally well mixed. I did notice interlacing in some footage but it wasn't too distracting.

I watched the DVD version. One suggestion: the editor might offer viewers an MP4/MKV option - a slow 2-pass x264 encode at around 2000kbps to give his fanedit the best possible video quality. Work like this deserves it.

Congrats Bob.

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!

In his "About This Edit" segment, BionicBob wonders if he has made an edit that can please both Ape fanboys and Ape novices. Well, from what I've read of the other reviews, Ape fanboys are overjoyed with this. I hadn't seen any of the Apes movies (originals) besides the first one. Never saw a second of any of the sequels. (But I own the boxset, I'll take a picture for you if you want.)

So, can the non-Ape-initiated follow the plot? Can they get excited for these movies because of this edit? Does it make one want to watch all the Planet of the Apes films?

YES. YES. YES.

It's no secret that I do enjoy a BionicBob edit. I love the enthusiasm he puts into the projects - heck, you can even sense the enthusiasm and fun within the edits themselves and I've yet to be disappointed with anything he's released. Therefore, when he announced he was working on a two part edit on the Planet of The Apes movies, I was very eager to see what he'd pull out the bag this time for what was surely his most ambitious edit to date.

Now, I was fortunate enough to be granted a viewing of the workprint for Volume 1 which encompasses the original Planet of The Apes with the third film in the series, Escape From the Planet of The Apes, and as soon as I saw the "multi-screen" format (ala The Boston Strangler) being utilised I knew that this was going to have to be a very skillfully crafted piece of work, if the edit was to be successful. After all, having seen a few multi-screen movies over the years, it's quite easy to fall into the trap of trying to bombard the audience with too much information - Mike Figgis' ambitious, intriguing but flawed Timecode is one such example. For a faneditor therefore, the balance between too much and just enough is perhaps even more difficult to execute.

Volume 1, as stated previously, certainly lends itself to this style of storytelling more than the subsequent coming together of Beneath and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. What's quickly apparent is how well Planet and Escape compliment each other. Hence, Bob's nicely judged uses of the multi-screen format works like a dream and I'm not joking when I say if you didn't know any better, you'd be forgiven for thinking this is the way the films have always been presented. The extra polishing and tweaks here and there in the finished version as opposed to the workprint, push the quality that little bit further too, particularly in the excellent way the films end - perfect really. The use of quotes from the movies to split various sections works better than I initially thought they would. I was fearful that they would interrupt the flow of the edit, but in practice this is not the case at all; if anything it makes the story more thought provoking, especially as the quotes are so well chosen by Bob, who obviously knows the Apes saga inside out.

As for Volume 2? Well, I have to give huge kudos to Bob here, as Beneath and Conquest are nowhere near as natural a fit as the films used in volume 1, yet by the end of the edit he has completely drawn me into the two stories having a successfully linking narrative running through them. Whether this is in part due to the fact that I am very familiar with the films anyway, I'm not sure, but whilst the challenges such an edit as this must have presented would have been daunting to any faneditor, I can wholeheartedly say that in this case they were met head on and conquered in a way which I thought if not impossible, then certainly improbable. By the time the two films come to an awe inspiring climax worthy of Volume 1, I just turned to my girlfriend and said "amazing".

Technically, this is all but perfect both visually and sonically. Very occasionally the audio levels would fluctuate a little, but we really are talking "splitting hairs" kind of stuff here. Only on the DVD menu did I notice the sound being way too loud in the levels department. Talking of the DVD, there's a an interesting "About the edit" section and a few deleted scenes which are more than worth watching.

It's the editing which is what really makes Saga of The Apes so impressive though. I see a lot of fanedits, and enjoy the majority which I see. However, there are very few occasions which really make me stand back in awe and literally leave me speechless as to the achievement I've just witnessed. Well, BionicBob you're now on that very small list. A joy to watch for any Apes fan, this is quite seriously a big contender for fanedit of 2012, and if it isn't on the shortlist I will dress up as a gorilla and come looking for the people within the Academy who decided not to vote for it ;) A tremendous fanediting achievement.