Directed by: Rupert Wyatt (maker of nothing you've seen)
Starring: Andy Serkis, James Franco, Freida Pinto
Other Actors of Note: John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tyler Labine, Tom Felton
Plot: An origin story set in present day San Francisco, where man's own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy.
Imagine the crazy world where we NEED another "Planet of the Apes" remake. People act like the original quintology wasn't flawless or easy to understand. I mean it's simple: an astronaut going to the ends of the universe gets sucked into a wormhole or something and gets spit out on another planet where humans are dumb mute cattle and three types of apes are some manner of ruling society. After the human proves that he's just as good as those damn dirty apes he rides off into the desert and sings "Oh my God I was wrong, it was Earth all along. Well you finally made a monkey, yes you finally made a monkey out of me!" Then chills out with some subteranean telekinetic mutants until the rescue ship (that literally must have been sent like a week after his; NASA does not trust Charlton Heston) shows up whereupon he blows up the whole planet, the maniac. Ah God damn him, damn him all to Hell.
Then the only two apes that weren't complete dickbags go back in time using his same "irreparable" rocket where the tables turned and it is the apes who are the minority, wherein they're killed but their super-spawn is adopted by Ricardo Montelban and is groomed to become che guevera to a majority population of intelligent apes that have become a staple of every home because they were the only natural progression after that crazy space flu killed off all the cats and dogs.
The apes lead a revolution, and then they decide not to, but then they decide to go ahead later anyway and greatly reduce the human population so that in 2000 years all humans are either inexplicably non-vocal sheep or super-powered psychic CHUDs that worship nuclear weapons. I mean really, what's so hard to understand about that?
Well apparently SOMEBODY decided that the answer was "most of it" because we have a reboot of the entire franchise that is a prequel to the original movie, a remake of "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes", and a sequel all at the same time.
So James Franco and Tyler Labine are scientists; I honestly think they intentionally cast the two actors most associated with simpletons and stoners on purpose. They're developing a gene therapy that causes the brain to grow new cells that cures Alzheimers which is what makes the apes smart to beging with, or in laymen's terms "SCIENCE MOTHERFUCKERS!"
But an ape goes completely nuts-shit in the building and for some reason they shut down the entire project in spite of promising results because a wild animal behaved like a wild animal. This makes total sense. So Labine is told to euthanize all the monkeys because the head of the project is a grade a dickhole, but he saves a newborn which he pawns off on James Franco to take home.
Franco takes the baby ape to his humble gigantic three story house with spiral staircases and he and his Alzheimers afflicted father John Lithgow grow attached to the baby Caeser. Unfortunately is getting worse, so bad that his at-home-nurse quits her job when he has a bad spell because she is apparently terrible at her job and just a horrible human being in general.
Caeser grows and gets smarter until Franco's fuckwad neighbor (who has, count em, 3 encounters with bad things in this movie and can't be arsed to act like anything other than a complete bag of dicks) gets him thrown into a primate habitat for protecting Lithgow from this monster of person who's going to call the police on a man obviously suffering from advanced Alzheimers because he tore up his fucking corvette that he inexplicably left unlocked with the keys in it on the street.
Caeser is in the most evil of primate habitats; we know this because it's run by Draco Malfoy and Hannibal Lektor (no I did not spell that wrong, watch Manhunter you uneducated bastard) but it's cool because he uses magic science gas to make all the other monkeys super smart and then runs amok around San Francisco wrecking shit up until they can make it to the redwood forest where I assume they'll make their way to the coast to rendezvous with the sharks from "Deep Blue Sea" to take over the world.
"I gave that bitch an ape hug. Bitches love ape hugs."This movie has plot inconsistencies, but as you'll see from my outline of the series at large, it's got a whole lot less plot-holes than the original one. It actually gives valid reasons for apes being smarter and magic science gas makes a lot more sense than "My distant descendants came back from the future and gave birth to me."
There's a reason given for how the apes could take over the world even though they're outnumbered, there's even a seed that could easily explain telekinetic morlocks in the future, and even the Mars mission that disappears mysteriously into thin air gets mentioned very briefly. Also somebody totally says "Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!"
And subtext! Oh this one throws out everything it can from commentaries on race relations, the feelings of putting a loved one with Alzheimer's in a home, animal testing, capitalism. This movie makes social commentaries all over the place and it never makes any one too prominent or heavy handed so they all mesh together and work.
"And we'd give the dog shifty eyes, that way you'd know it was evil."I'm sure some will complain about the shift to CG-apes over traditional make-up effects, but the simple fact is that traditional make-up would have looked ridiculous and the motion capture is quite impressive even if the CG is still apparent. But you can deal with those stiff faced monkey suits so you'll watch your dodgy CG and you'll damn well like it, dadgummet!
It's an admirable effort and the movie moves in nice little segments that transfer nicely from lighthearted to dark. My only complaint is that they really wuss out on the ending. Planet of the Apes movies are supposed to have bleak depressing endings and this one's all happy and hopeful. Andy Serkis' Caeser isn't near the bloodthirsty bastard that Roddy McDowell's Caeser was, fortunately there's a much scarier looking ape by the name of Koba who could easily cause the uprising we've all been hoping for in a sequel that hopefully will one day exist.
Me, I'm hoping the next one is a remake of the original except update everything to look all futurey. Let's get a younger man to play Taylor like, say, Mark Wahlberg. And we could use a lot of great character actors like Michael Clark Duncan, Paul Giamatti, and Helena Bonham Carter to play the apes. Shit, they could get Tim Roth to play the villain! And we'd need a good journeyman director to really capture the vision of "Planet of the Apes" somebody like Tim Burton! I'm picturing it in my head right now and I'm telling you there's no way it could fail!
"SLAAAAYER!!!"It really is a great movie and it may just be the breath of life this series needed to get it kick-started again.
I give "Rise of the Planet of the Dawn of the Day of the Night of the Apes" a 5 out of 5.
