Planet of the Apes, directed by Franklin Schaffner and released in 1968, was almost singlehandedly responsible for elevating cinema's science fiction genre from traditional "B" movie budgets into the lavish and expensive blockbuster art form.

Schaffner's Planet of the Apes, based on Pierre Boulle's novel La Panete des Singes (1963), portrayed misanthropic George Taylor (Charlton Heston) and his fellow astronauts' deep-space mission to find other forms of life. These voyagers program the ship's computers to wake them from their hibernation some 2,000 years in the future, when they expect to be light-years from Earth but in the same physical state due to the effects of travelling at the speed of light. Upon awakening, the crew guides their spaceship to a remote planet, barren and seemingly devoid of life. Soon, though, the astronauts encounter a race of reasoning and talking apes that hold court over a...