That's not bad going...
...The premise is that in 3978, many hundreds of years after a nuclear war destroyed human civilisation, our near-relatives, the great apes, underwent the same evolutionary leap that had taken our bloodline from forest-dwelling apes like Ardipithecus ramidus...
A jump from Ardipithecus to Homo took around 2m years, and a jump from Homo Habilis to Sapiens took us another 2m. The Pan genus must have some pretty impressive mutagens to do a similar leap in 2k years....
...which picked up a handful of Oscars for makeup, costume and musical score...
It was up against 2001 - A Space Odyssey. 2001 had incomparably better make-up/costume, including an accurate (for the time) tribe of Ardipithecus, and I presume that I don't need to remind you of the 2001 musical score. With shots of Jupiter 'on location' from the probes. And Planet of the Apes won...
At the time Arthur Clarke said "Maybe they didn't give us the make-up prize because they thought we used real ape-men..."
Biting the hand that feeds IT
