Disney’s 4-Part Sci-Fi Epic Is One of the Best on Any Streaming Platform
The article makes the case that Disney's rebooted Planet of the Apes trilogy (plus the recent follow-up, framed here as a four-part epic), now streaming on Hulu and Prime Video, ranks among the best science-fiction sagas available to stream. Unlike franchises such as Star Wars, which draws divisive reactions to new instalments, or Blade Runner and Tron, which suffered long gaps between sequels, the Apes reboot is praised for successfully reinventing the series while giving its world room to evolve gradually across films, a quality the piece argues sets it apart from other genre franchises.
The piece traces the reboot back to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which reworked the mythology's origin story: rather than the original 1968 film's nuclear apocalypse, this version has scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) create a drug, ALZ-112, intended to cure Alzheimer's, which instead triggers ape evolution. It notes this was not the first attempted revival, referencing Tim Burton's 2001 version and an abandoned James Cameron take, and credits a prominent Hollywood director with elevating the new series' scale and quality.
- Disney's Planet of the Apes reboot saga is praised as top-tier sci-fi streaming.
- Available on Hulu and Prime Video, starting with Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
- Reboot swaps original's nuclear cause for a viral Alzheimer's-drug origin story.
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Disney's Planet of the Apes franchise was relaunched in 2011 after several earlier attempts to revive the series had stalled or fallen flat, including a 2001 Tim Burton film and a version once developed by James Cameron that never made it to screen. The new take, beginning with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, tells a different origin story to the 1968 original: instead of a nuclear war wiping out civilisation, a scientist's experimental Alzheimer's drug accidentally makes apes highly intelligent, setting off a slow-building conflict between apes and humans across several films.
The reboot now spans four films, released over more than a decade, and is available to stream on Hulu and Prime Video. It is often discussed alongside other long-running science-fiction franchises, such as Star Wars, Blade Runner and Tron, which have faced criticism over divisive new instalments or large gaps between films.
The wider point of interest is how the series has been received compared with those franchises, particularly its approach of letting its story and world develop gradually from one film to the next, rather than in one large jump.