At Flashbak: The Five Most Historically-Significant Apes in the Planet of the Apes Saga

My newest article at Flashbak ties in with the Go Ape theme of the blog this week.  In particular, I enumerate the five most historically significant simians in Ape history!

Here's a snippet (and here's the url: http://flashbak.com/fonts-of-simian-kindness-the-5-most-historically-significant-apes-in-the-planet-of-the-apes-saga-17111/)

"The Planet of the Apes franchise consists of five original feature films made from 1968 to 1973, a short-lived CBS TV series in 1974, a Saturday morning animated revival, Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975), Tim Burton’s 2001 widely-disliked re-boot, plus a second re-boot, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), and its follow-up, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), due in theaters this week.

All heads of this multi-platform media hydra revolve around one central topic: future history, particularly the fall of man, and the rise of intelligent apes as Earth’s dominant species.

Uniquely – and completely in keeping with the time-travel aspect of the franchise -- each branch of the Apes legacy, whether TV series, cartoon, or re-boot -- seems to exist in a similar but slightly different alternate reality.  One might view this as evidence that the future can indeed be altered, but the final destiny of the planet -- the fall of mankind to intelligent apes -- is immutable.

With that notion in mind, enumerated below are the five most historically important simians in Planet of the Apes history.  Some of these five characters described below, you will note, play roles of extreme significance in more than one parallel reality, a fact which cements their status as focal points in the franchise and in the fate of Earth."