Over 60 years ago, author Pierre Boulle’s La Planete des singes debuted in France and the US. On these shores, it was renamed Planet of the Apes (which is much better than the UK’s hokey name for it: Monkey Planet). The novel was a massive hit even though Boulle thought it wasn’t his best. (In his defense, he did write The Bridge Over the River Kwai.)
The book was so popular that the owner of the movie rights for the US hired the legendary Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, to adapt it for the screen. Once star Charlton Heston was onboard, 20th Century Fox decided to make it. The studio did so for almost half the original budget. The screenplay was also rewritten to make the world more primitive (and thus less costly), but kept Serling’s amazing new twist ending.
It probably shouldn’t have worked.
But it did. The success of the original in 1968 led to four sequels up through 1973, a couple of TV series (including one for kids!), a remake almost 30 years later, and the latest four films, which rebooted everything with fantastic new motion-capture technology for the apes, replacing the (honorary) Oscar-winning makeup of the originals.
Do you want to watch every single scene of the Planet of the Apes (aka PotA) franchise on streaming services? Some of them require buying or renting digital copies. We’ll point them out as we examine the whole franchise and beyond.
The Original, Classic Films
Almost everyone who’s into Sci-Fi has seen the original movie. It is widely hailed as one of the true greats, winning accolades from the Academy, the American Film Institute (“Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!” is considered AFI’s 66th favorite movie quote of all time), and the National Film Registry. The sequels tend to diminish as they go. However, the makeup is always stellar, as are the performances of series star Roddy McDowall, first as Cornelius, later as his son Caesar.
All five are available to buy or rent on just about every streaming platform that supports purchases: Apple TV, Google Play, Prime Video, Microsoft, Fandango (Vudu), and YouTube. You can also purchase the Blu-ray 40th anniversary Planet of the Apes Legacy Collection with all five films.
The Forgotten Television Series
After the films ended, a PotA TV series was commissioned in 1974 and ran on CBS. It was canceled by the first season’s halfway point, running only 14 episodes. The plot was that two astronauts went through the same time warp as the guys in the first movie and landed on future Earth (apparently 900 years before Charlton Heston landed). They encounter the same monkey planet, and team up with a chimpanzee named Galen after he realizes the truth that humans were not always subservient to apes. The two humans and one chimp travel the countryside, helping out strangers at each stop while always on the run from the villainous gorilla General Urko. Yeah, just like on The Fugitive. Seventies TV didn’t care to reinvent the wheel.
The big selling point: PotA’s MVP film star, Roddy McDowall, returned for the show to play Galen. (Hey, he even wore the full works on The Carol Burnett Show that year.)
Urko is also sci-fi royalty. Under the mask is Mark Lenard, the famed character actor who played Spock’s dad on Star Trek.
Later, episodes of the series were reworked as “TV movies” for syndication in the 1980s by re-cutting select episodes. They were given terrible names (episode titles in parentheses):
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Back to the Planet of the Apes (“Escape from Tomorrow” and “The Trap”)
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Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes (“Gladiators” and “Legacy”)
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Treachery and Greed on the Planet of the Apes (“Horse Race” and “The Tyrant”)
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Life, Liberty, and Pursuit on the Planet of the Apes (“The Surgeon” and “The Interrogation”)
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Farewell to the Planet of the Apes (“Tomorrow’s Tide” and “Up Above The World So High”)
You can’t officially stream these or even buy or rent them, but you can buy the complete series on DVD. There are also many illegal uploads of episodes on YouTube.
PotA: The Animated Series
Produced by DePatie–Freleng Enterprises and run by the co-creator of Johnny Quest, the animated Return to the Planet of the Apes took the franchise in new (or old) directions, making the ape society much more high-tech and advanced, which is more in keeping with the original novel. Yet somehow, this was targeted at kids.
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Like the live-action show, it only lasted a handful of episodes (13), which NBC burned off in three months on Saturday mornings at 11 a.m., never even finishing the story (which essentially just retells the first movie, but with fewer scantily clad humans).
You can stream it on YouTube, but it’s not exactly official, so don’t expect it to withstand a copyright cease-and-desist. However, it did get a DVD collection release in 2006, if you can still find it.
Spoof Time in South America
The franchise is far from bulletproof when it comes to satire, as proven first by a 1976 film called Brazilian Planet of the Apes in English, but originally O Trapalhão no Planalto dos Macacos. The plot’s essentially the same but involves aeronauts in a balloon instead of astronauts who land on an island, not a future planet. It was created by a famed Brazilian comedy troupe of the time. You can stream it on YouTube in several parts.
The Simpsons: From Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z
Even among the stellar seventh season of The Simpsons, episode 19 from 1996 is legendary. It’s called “A Fish Called Selma,” and it features (among many other jokes) a stage musical adaptation of PotA starring Troy McClure (Phil Hartman). If you haven’t seen apes breakdancing to “Help Me, Dr. Zaius,” then you’re not really a fan. Like all episodes of The Simpsons, you can find it on Disney+.
The Documentary 30 Years in the Making
Behind the Planet of the Apes (1998) is a behind-the-scenes documentary made for American Movie Classics (AMC) to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first film. Can you stream it? Of course not officially, but you can buy the DVD or check on YouTube.
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Tim Burton’s Remake
In the 1980s and ’90s, there were many attempts to restart the franchise. Directors like Peter Jackson, Oliver Stone, Chris Columbus, and James Cameron all took a whack at it, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was attached for a while. None of these efforts took off.
In 2000, 20th Century Fox finally went full-steam into remaking the films with hopes for future installments. Director Tim Burton got the job to direct, with plans for a “re-imagining.” Everything about it was rushed, but the make-up effects by the legendary Rick Baker were good to go since he’d been working on all the previous attempts for years. Released in 2001, the film had a great opening weekend and broke some records, but ultimately, it is considered a dud. The twist ending tried to deliver the same thrills as the 1968 original, but it just came off as weird despite hewing closer to the book.
Anyway, can you stream it? Yes, you can.
But do you want to? It is, after all, a winner of the Golden Raspberry for Worst Remake.
Reboot for the Apocalyptic Win
These films are spoken of with (almost) the same hallowed tones used for the 1968 original. Fox got this franchise right when it rebooted things in director Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of. It paid to go in a direction that didn’t retell the original, nor did it care at all about the established lore. Instead, the films have a somewhat plausible “uplift” premise, depicting what would happen if man handed over increased intelligence to simians.
With Dawn and War, Matt Reeves ably directed the films; he has since moved on to The Batman. The latest, Kingdom of, was helmed by Wes Ball, who directed the Maze Runner trilogy.
The true MVP, however, is Andy “Gollum” Serkis, who plays Caesar in the first three films. The master of motion-capture characters, he fully makes every move of the CGI chimp come to life.
You can buy the first three in a Blu-ray or 4K box set.
About Eric Griffith
Senior Editor, Features
