Although Hollywood had delved into the genre before, resulting in such films as Forbidden Planet, The Day The Earth Stood Still and Fantastic Voyage, none of them had quite the same impact as director Franklin Schaffner’s Apes. A box-office success, it spawned a wealth of merchandise, from bubblegum cards to action figures, two television shows (one live-action, the other animated) and a string of sequels and prequels. The Apes franchise’s long history is explored in colourful and exhaustive detail in Planet Of The Apes: The Evolution Of The Legend, written by Joe Fordham and Jeff Bond. Bond and Fordham are two writers separated by the Atlantic – the former a resident of Ohio, the latter from the UK’s southeast – but they’re united by a mutual affection for the Apes series, and it certainly shows throughout the book’s 250-plus pages. We start, logically enough, with the Apes origin story; how Boulle was inspired to write his source novel after a trip to the zoo shortly after the Second World War, and how that book in turn stirred the imagination of an American movie producer named Arthur P Jacobs. It’s easy to forget, now that Hollywood pretty much specialises in selling larger-than-life images to the rest of the world, that science fiction was still a risky proposition in the 1960s. Sci-fi films rolled out of Hollywood from time to time, but the genre was generally regarded as the stuff of low-budget B-pictures and pulp magazines. Even then, Apes faced a tough path to the silver screen. Both Boulle’s book and early screenplay drafts described a technologically advanced city of apes – something that would have been nigh-on impossible to reproduce without the budget spiralling out of control. Then there was the difficult task of realising the story’s talking, gun-wielding apes. How could you realise them in a way that wouldn’t have audiences flopping into the aisles with laughter? Across 45-or-so of its 256 pages, the book plots the first Planet Of The Apes film’s circuitous course to the screen, each page profusely illustrated with concept art, behind the scenes photographs and production stills. There are interviews with numerous crew members, including production designer William Creber, who was responsible for so many of the movie’s memorable moments – including the arrow-shaped ship that takes Heston’s character to the titular ape planet. Even when we get to the point in 1973 where the Apes franchise has reached its temporary end, we’re barely halfway through the book. There’s a section devoted to John Chambers, the makeup designer who created all those unforgettable ape effects in the first five movies. There’s a chapter devoted to the series’ music, created by such legends as Jerry Goldsmith, Danny Elfman and Lalo Schifrin, the latter responsible for the live-action TV show’s theme. Another chapter deals with all the merchandise, action figures and spin-offs. After a brief pause to look over the Apes projects that never quite made it to the screen – including an aborted star vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger – we’re led into the Apes of the 21st century: Tim Burton’s disappointing 2001 reboot, and the franchise’s effective rebirth with Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and this year’s Dawn. The Evolution Of The Legend is an engrossing read, not just as an account of one Hollywood film franchise, but also as a snaphot of how the film industry has changed as a whole. We see not only the handover from prosthetic makeup effects to digital performance capture, but also a change in the very balance of the movies. The original Planet Of The Apes was led by a broad-chested American superstar, Charlton Heston. Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes didn’t need a star of that magnitude to sell it to audiences; its star was arguably Caesar, beautifully acted by Andy Serkis, clad in digital makeup. Hollywood’s attitude to high-concept effects movies and sequels has changed, too; where the budgets of the first run of films steadily dropped, the budget for 2014‘s Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes was more than $70m higher than its predecessor. If one thing’s remained unchanged, it’s our fascination with the apes’ stories, and the grim, quirky and sometimes sad insights they afford into our own society. As a tribute to an enduring and unusually intelligent series, Planet Of The Apes: The Evolution Of The Legend is a fittingly thoughtful, even essential volume. Planet Of The Apes: The Evolution Of The Legend is out now, published by Titan.
