Movie Review - Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

[Hondo]

It's been a while between posts like this but I genuinely lost track of my DVD hiring for a while there.

Anyway, prequels are becoming popular as a way of cashing in on a successful franchise without re-making the original. That sounds cynical which it isn't meant to be because often prequels are very good despite the audience knowing what ultimately happens in the end.

The Planet of the Apes is a famouse sci-fi movie from 20th Century Fox (made before Star Wars) made in about 1970 starring Charlton Heston as a US astronaut who ends up on what seems to be an alien planet ruled by apes but it turns out in the famous last scene that the planet is in fact the Earth many thousands of years into the future. The movie was remade in the last 10 years by Tim Burton who created an alternate twist ending which also had the Earth ruled by the Apes. So this new prequel movie fits both versions of the original film.

I only saw the original Planet of the Apes, missing the many sequels. So I can't be sure if the cause of the Apes taking over the Earth was ever spelled out. I recall the implication in the original was that us humans nuked ourselves out of existence but I could be wrong.

So to the movie itself. While I liked the nuclear destruction theory this movie didn't use that but still laid the blame at the feet of humans. Testing of a new drug to cure brain diseases creates a new race of super-intelligent apes that decide their current lot in life is no longer acceptable. Combined with that story line is an "Outbreak" or "Contagian" style story line that is only hinted at. I am not sure if there will be a sequel to the prequel.

The special effects were amazing in terms of depicting the apes. The technology I think was the same they used for Gollum in LOTR but it seems vastly improved. The apes were amazingly life like. The acting was reasonable without being special but the tension, the action and the depiction of how the apes develop I thought was excellent. 8/10.

[JK]

Good write up Hondo and glad to see you continue with them.

This is EASILY the best of the Apes movies that Ive seen.

[Hondo]

Thanks JK

I was blown away by the closing scenes with the apes climbing over the Golden Gate Bridge. Amazingly realistic.

And they finally seem to have perfected realistic CGI eyeballs! Again, amazingly detailed.