Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Rated:  PG-13

Running Time: 2 hours

Trailer: 

Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site

For a long time, I had absolutely no desire to see this movie.  I mean, watch the trailer.  But as time went by and positive reviews started streaming in, my curiosity rose.  Read more to find out if the critics were right, or if Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the absolute mess the trailer almost guarantees.

I have a really hard time accepting this recent slew of reboots and remakes.  As a rule, I think the concept of a remake shows a complete lack of creativity and disrespects the original in so many ways.  Even if the creators say in interviews they "like" the new spin on their creation, I imagine them sitting at home wondering why in the fuck these morons couldn't come up with their own damn ideas. Although this trend has stuck mostly in horror so far, it's starting to bleed into other genres, like the horrifyingly bad Karate Kid remake and upcoming Spider-Man reboot.  With Spider-Man, the movie they're re-making isn't even a decade old.  I mean, how insulting is that to Sam Raimi they feel the need to tell the same exact story we got 9 years ago.  

There have been a few exceptions to the trend.  Although risky, there are a handful of foreign films remade for American audiences I think have been successful.  We recently rented Let Me In and I thought it was brilliant.  Same with The Ring, The Departed, a couple of others. The Star Trek reboot took a successful franchise, gave it a new story to tell to a new generation with amazingly improved CGI.  It respected its roots while trying to do something a little different.

I believe Rise of the Planet of the Apes succeeds in the same way Star Trek did. 

Although it totally blows my mind, the vast majority of moviegoers today either don't even know Planet of the Apes ever came out, or know nothing about it besides it's some old movie with that one old guy and he's really mad at apes.  So the time was right to re-introduce audiences to the franchise. It's a cool concept, and CGI has made some pretty big improvements in the 43 years since the original Apes was released.  

The sad part is they tried to remake it 10 years ago with Marky Mark.  To many people, that is the original, which makes me vomit.  Worse, it just wasn't a good movie.  So right out of the gate, Rise gets points for completely ignoring the Marky Mark version and basically starting from scratch.  

Instead, we get an origin story with James Franco.  We go before the remake, before the original, and get a new story that lays the groundwork for the entire franchise.  There was an Apes movie called Conquest of the Planet of the Apes that came out in 1972 and had a similar concept, but if you knew that you are either a super film nerd or got really bored link-hopping on Wikipedia.  No one really saw that movie.  Rise ignores that movie anyway, and tells a much better story.

The story revolves around Franco, a scientist searching for the cure to Alzheimer's.  He tests on apes.  The tests (as you could figure out by the trailer) go horribly wrong.  That's basically all you need to know.  I will resist the urge to hop up on my soapbox and talk about the politics of animal testing/cruelty, and the movie does a nice job not ramming that down your throat either.  

Worth talking about are the two stars of the movie, Franco and Andy Serkis.  

The one big mistake I think this movie made was casting James Franco as the dramatic lead in a movie that wants to be taken seriously.  I wanted to look at him and not see Daniel Desario/Pineapple Express.  Even in the Spider-Man movies he's a melodramatic gonad.  Now I'm supposed to believe he's a super genius that discovers the cure to Alzheimer's?  No, sorry.  He constantly looked bored, I think I counted his facial expressions at a total of 3 (Concerned James Franco, Angry James Franco, Horny James Franco), and I really never believed he developed any sort of bond with his ape, Caesar.  I read sort of ironically that Tobey Maguire was originally slated to play his role, and have to say he probably would have been much better.  

Fortunately, the star of the movie ends up being Andy Serkis.  Andy Serkis is really becoming sort of a legend in how he helps bring to life some of the most memorable CGI characters of the last 10 years.  Gollum, King Kong, now Caesar the ape.  I won't claim to know how they really pull off all the motion capture and make it work, but  the end result is really impressive. 

The CGI looked incredibly real... the facial expressions, the movements, the interactions with other characters.  Like with the Star Trek reboot, everything was really pretty to look at.  

"Don't worry, Concerned James Franco... I got this."

To put it mildly, Rise of the Planet of the Apes surprised me.  I think it told a good story, and rebooted a franchise the right way.  Hopefully the upcoming Conan does the same, but optimism is LOW.

Rating:  B+