The Planet of the Apes Chronicles traces the narrative of one of popular culture's most enduring sagas, featuring selected articles placing the original novel Planet of the Apes, the classic film and its sequels in the tradition of apocalyptic cinema and science fiction. The original films convincingly created a world where evolution is inverted, where wise orangutans and fierce gorillas keep Man the savage beast in check - becoming a metaphor for their times that represented the fear of war and nuclear destruction, racial intolerance, civil unrest and ecological disaster. The Apes series, as detailed in this book, also tells the ingenious story of how space travel via a timewarp leads to the end of (human) civilisation as we know it - and, ultimately, to the destruction of the earth itself.
Illustrated throughout, The Planet of the Apes Chronicles describes the impact of the Apes upon mainstream popular culture, spawning TV and cartoon animation series, several comics books and various ephemera including toys and collectibles, and is the first book to examine the history of how the films' early fans, now grown up to be Hollywood players, revised and subverted the series' themes throughout the 1990s. Early draft screenplays by different authors are analysed as to their influence on the final finished project, Planet of the Apes 2001, which promises to controversially re-imagine and re-visualise the original concept while retaining its humanistic vision. In the summer of 2001, 21st century audiences will return to the time of the apes in Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes - the most eagerly anticipated Hollywood blockbuster in years.