The campy “Planet of the Apes” franchise that once helped solidify Charlton Heston as a Hollywood star has never quite gone away. The original movie, a sci-fi classic, was followed by four sequels and two television shows.

Then came actor Mark Wahlberg and director Tim Burton in 2001 — with a remake that received a mixed response from fans and critics. Now, the franchise has been rebooted. It’s won back the box-office dollars of fans and the praise of critics with “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.” The third installment, “War for the Planet of the Apes,” has just released its new trailer, and it’s hard to believe a concept about apes taking over the world has earned such serious and expensive treatment.

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Whatever one’s opinion of the franchise, Hollywood’s attention on the concept has paid off big-time. The latest has a plush summer-release date and will likely keep the recent winning streak of the franchise going.

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In honor of this longstanding series, which started all the way back in 1968, here’s a look at the best and most memorable moments from the franchise that pits man against ape.

Caesar talks. It’s hard to believe the campy “Planet of the Apes” franchise ever turned into what it is now — a highly praised series of films that takes the man vs. apes concept deathly seriously.

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” wisely rebooted the franchise by setting its events before apes ever learn to walk and talk and hate humans. It helped the movie stand on its own, but it also gave the filmmakers a difficult task. They needed to pull off the transformation and evolution of the apes without being laughed out of theaters.

Mostly due to the impressive work of actor Andy Serkis, who portrays Caesar the ape through digital technology, the moment in “Rise” in which Caesar says his first words is genuinely creepy and ends up being one of the best moments of the franchise. If this moment hadn’t worked, we wouldn’t be able to watch the latest trailer for “War” and listen to Caesar pontificate and argue with humans without chuckling and rolling our eyes.

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“Get your paws off me!” Another smart decision by the freshly rebooted “Apes” movies was to resist any attempts to replace Charlton Heston. Who could replace Heston’s prowess, his machismo, his commanding voice? He was the major reason the original “Apes” worked at all.

The new movies instead switch out human characters and primarily focus on the apes as their protagonists.

Heston’s finest line from “Apes” is one of the best in film history — and one that the new franchise repeated in “Rise.”

A confused and tortured Heston screams at his ape captors, “Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” It comes as quite a surprise, of course, to listeners in this new world, where no human would dare speak to an ape in such fashion.

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The Statue of Liberty. Does one need to give a spoiler warning for a movie that came out in 1968? Let’s just assume not. If there’s just one shot in the creepy “Planet of the Apes” that has haunted viewers, it was the last frame of the movie.

Heston’s George Taylor assumes for the majority of the film — as does the audience — that he’s on another planet ruled by apes.

However, in the final moments of the film, he comes across a crumbling Statue of Liberty, nearly buried on a beach. It was something the character and the audience could not have imagined — that he had been on the Earth the whole time. He’d travelled through time, not space. Earth had become the planet of the apes, and there was no escape.

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The kiss. When one considers how truly memorable the original “Planet of the Apes” was, it becomes more and more disappointing to realize that four sequels and two TV shows couldn’t come close to matching one great moment in Heston’s classic.

One of the most memorable moments, and definitely the most daring, from “Planet of the Apes” was the interspecies kiss.

Having your leading man share a kiss with a talking ape is not exactly something many producers would get excited about, but “Apes” did it anyway. It was so wild and crazy, it shockingly worked.

There’s likely not another actor in the world who could have kissed an ape onscreen and still looked as cool as Heston.

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The Golden Gate Bridge takeover. After the lackluster Tim Burton-directed “Planet of the Apes” remake in 2001, the producers of the new franchise needed a big moment to sell their reboot.

Fans had lost faith that the films could pull off anything worthwhile, but the “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” creators luckily had technology on their side.

Skirting practical effects in favor of digital wizardry, “Rise” created images and moments of which the previous films could not have dreamed. One was arguably the moment that sold audiences in the initial trailer. It’s a frightening scene where escaped apes take over San Francisco — and then the Golden Gate Bridge.

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