Year after year since the 1968 classic, Fox was determined to milk the franchise dry. So they did. Return to the Planet of the Apes is one of the laziest, most contrived productions I've ever seen, yet at the same time I was wildly entertained. I'm not gonna lie: this show had me in stitches.
To me, this show is the embodiment of the "so bad it's good" effect. Across the board, almost unequivocally, it's apparent that ZERO effort went into making this. Fox wanted money from kids, so they made a series of cheap advertisements. It's that simple.
As far as direction goes, they clearly tried to model the introduction off of Schaffner's direction from the 1968 film. However, revealing Ape City at the very beginning defeats the point of the long, drawn-out opening sequence, and effectively undermines any tension they would have had in its reveal. Further into the show, we are constantly bombarded with repetitive sequences of certain frames/animations, re-used in succession to create a kind of pseudo-tension, and above all to fill that runtime in the most cost-effective way possible. Besides that, you'll also get a good dose of still frames and bizarre zooms that get all snug-and-intimate with any given character's gawking, featureless face.
First thing you'll notice in regards to the writing is that continuity flies straight out the window into the blistering inferno that is the vague assembly of a plot--which is a bizarre amalgamation of non-sequiturs and fever dreams--most likely developed via the spinning thingy from a Twister ® game box. The episodes aired out of order, though even then the series is evidently trying to build off of the events of the first two films, bringing in Zira, Cornelius, Zaius, Nova, Brent, and even mentioning Taylor. They just seem to ignore that Nova died, and that the earth exploded, and how technologically advanced their society was, etc. . . . It's painful, really. Even when you watch the episodes in order (effectively establishing a bare-minimum level of continuity), the most bizarre nonsense comes into play, including: giant spiders, sea monsters, prehistoric dragon-birds, King Kong rip-offs, unicorn-bison (wait, really?), pimped-out airplanes, and the obligatory race of subterranean mutants. To think that this is somehow related to an allegorically-dense, sci-fi masterpiece is bound to disorient some from any sense of reality.
The conflicts within the show are comprised of petty squabbles and schemes of randomly determined significance. Unlike the 1974 series, there isn't enough competency to get by with its episodic nature as mere harmless fun, and it just feels contrived. The wealth of allegories formerly in the franchise are but a distant memory here, and any commentary that does attempt to surface is so devoid of intelligence or even bare-minimum subtlety. This series also mindlessly copies plot points from former entries, such as the "astronauts crash-landing on an upside-down world" trope for the fifth time, and where it doesn't copy, it supplements the plot with a mixture of generic and outlandish conflicts. Imagine something as generic as going out to get fuel, contrasted with fighting a dragon with a hot-air balloon.
The characters are also pretty weak. None of them have much personality with exceptions for characters who appeared in the movies or TV shows, and even then it's misconceived or inconsistent. In former entries for example, Zira is intelligent and headstrong, but in here she's anywhere in between that and worrisome and compliant. Cornelius went from quirky, curious, and reserved to sometimes commanding and authoritative. The astronauts aren't even two-dimensional in character, and the one human female character we do get is gone about as soon as we see her, and then shows up for the second half. The dialogue is even weaker than the characters, with multiple moments in which lines aren't so much as grammatically correct. For example, I'll quote Bill, and maybe you'll notice a basic grammatical error that's unlikely to be made by an educated astronaut: "The truth is, none of us is safe, Zira".
The voice acting is always somewhere between flat, awkward, and outright bad. The line delivery is so misconceived that it often had me erupting in laughter.
Listen. . . . I know animation is hard--even bad animation is tedious, but the animation in Return to the Planet of the Apes is astronomically lazy. I think the animators realized that they weren't getting paid for effort either way though, so they went easy on themselves. Throughout the show you'll find re-used animations and frames, and lead characters with either no character model, or character models directly plagiarized from other character models, and even the animation techniques themselves are inconsistent. I'll go ahead and quote a brief conversation about it.
Sister: "They paid their animators." (Sarcastically). Me: "Did they?" (Unsarcastically).
I do like the background illustrations and colors. There's some nice artsy-styled frames every so often, and some borderline-breathtaking backdrops. Those were nice to look at. But that's about all this show has going for it--that and its music, which is somehow the best part. Composed by Dean Elliott, the score is a generally well- produced knock-off of Jerry Goldsmith's original 1968 Planet of the Apes score, complete with no small amount of 70's cheese. It actually has some catchy moments, and utilizes leitmotifs and themes, which makes it leaps and bounds above the quality of the show overall. Even if badly spotted, there wasn't an opportunity for good spotting anyway. The opening theme is pretty decent too, so I'll take it!
This series isn't offensive enough to get a 1, and though its objective quality is more geared towards a 2 I'm gonna go ahead and bump it up for entertainment value. In my book, that alone puts it at a higher regard than 2001's Planet of the Apes. So I don't know about you, but I had a blast!
Score: 3/10
To me, this show is the embodiment of the "so bad it's good" effect. Across the board, almost unequivocally, it's apparent that ZERO effort went into making this. Fox wanted money from kids, so they made a series of cheap advertisements. It's that simple.
As far as direction goes, they clearly tried to model the introduction off of Schaffner's direction from the 1968 film. However, revealing Ape City at the very beginning defeats the point of the long, drawn-out opening sequence, and effectively undermines any tension they would have had in its reveal. Further into the show, we are constantly bombarded with repetitive sequences of certain frames/animations, re-used in succession to create a kind of pseudo-tension, and above all to fill that runtime in the most cost-effective way possible. Besides that, you'll also get a good dose of still frames and bizarre zooms that get all snug-and-intimate with any given character's gawking, featureless face.
First thing you'll notice in regards to the writing is that continuity flies straight out the window into the blistering inferno that is the vague assembly of a plot--which is a bizarre amalgamation of non-sequiturs and fever dreams--most likely developed via the spinning thingy from a Twister ® game box. The episodes aired out of order, though even then the series is evidently trying to build off of the events of the first two films, bringing in Zira, Cornelius, Zaius, Nova, Brent, and even mentioning Taylor. They just seem to ignore that Nova died, and that the earth exploded, and how technologically advanced their society was, etc. . . . It's painful, really. Even when you watch the episodes in order (effectively establishing a bare-minimum level of continuity), the most bizarre nonsense comes into play, including: giant spiders, sea monsters, prehistoric dragon-birds, King Kong rip-offs, unicorn-bison (wait, really?), pimped-out airplanes, and the obligatory race of subterranean mutants. To think that this is somehow related to an allegorically-dense, sci-fi masterpiece is bound to disorient some from any sense of reality.
The conflicts within the show are comprised of petty squabbles and schemes of randomly determined significance. Unlike the 1974 series, there isn't enough competency to get by with its episodic nature as mere harmless fun, and it just feels contrived. The wealth of allegories formerly in the franchise are but a distant memory here, and any commentary that does attempt to surface is so devoid of intelligence or even bare-minimum subtlety. This series also mindlessly copies plot points from former entries, such as the "astronauts crash-landing on an upside-down world" trope for the fifth time, and where it doesn't copy, it supplements the plot with a mixture of generic and outlandish conflicts. Imagine something as generic as going out to get fuel, contrasted with fighting a dragon with a hot-air balloon.
The characters are also pretty weak. None of them have much personality with exceptions for characters who appeared in the movies or TV shows, and even then it's misconceived or inconsistent. In former entries for example, Zira is intelligent and headstrong, but in here she's anywhere in between that and worrisome and compliant. Cornelius went from quirky, curious, and reserved to sometimes commanding and authoritative. The astronauts aren't even two-dimensional in character, and the one human female character we do get is gone about as soon as we see her, and then shows up for the second half. The dialogue is even weaker than the characters, with multiple moments in which lines aren't so much as grammatically correct. For example, I'll quote Bill, and maybe you'll notice a basic grammatical error that's unlikely to be made by an educated astronaut: "The truth is, none of us is safe, Zira".
The voice acting is always somewhere between flat, awkward, and outright bad. The line delivery is so misconceived that it often had me erupting in laughter.
Listen. . . . I know animation is hard--even bad animation is tedious, but the animation in Return to the Planet of the Apes is astronomically lazy. I think the animators realized that they weren't getting paid for effort either way though, so they went easy on themselves. Throughout the show you'll find re-used animations and frames, and lead characters with either no character model, or character models directly plagiarized from other character models, and even the animation techniques themselves are inconsistent. I'll go ahead and quote a brief conversation about it.
Sister: "They paid their animators." (Sarcastically). Me: "Did they?" (Unsarcastically).
I do like the background illustrations and colors. There's some nice artsy-styled frames every so often, and some borderline-breathtaking backdrops. Those were nice to look at. But that's about all this show has going for it--that and its music, which is somehow the best part. Composed by Dean Elliott, the score is a generally well- produced knock-off of Jerry Goldsmith's original 1968 Planet of the Apes score, complete with no small amount of 70's cheese. It actually has some catchy moments, and utilizes leitmotifs and themes, which makes it leaps and bounds above the quality of the show overall. Even if badly spotted, there wasn't an opportunity for good spotting anyway. The opening theme is pretty decent too, so I'll take it!
This series isn't offensive enough to get a 1, and though its objective quality is more geared towards a 2 I'm gonna go ahead and bump it up for entertainment value. In my book, that alone puts it at a higher regard than 2001's Planet of the Apes. So I don't know about you, but I had a blast!
Score: 3/10