Five Reasons you Should See Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Of the two writers on this website, I am the elder.   I’ve got about 10 years on good old Paul which means I’m the more nostalgic “hoping for the good old days” type of a guy.  So it’s no surprise that I’m not a huge fan of the new age of technological, lacking in story quality and acting movies we see today.

So every time I go into a movie I must admit that I’m skeptical.  Hell if it weren’t for the fact that I was sponsored to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes I might not have seen it this weekend.   But I’m 100% glad I did.

To be honest, I was interested in seeing this film from the trailer alone.   First of all, I love Apes.   I mean who doesn’t?  Second of all I wanted to see if the movie could pull of an honest interpretation of how the Apes took over the planet.   Personally I think it did all of that in a cohesive and entertaining way.

As such, I’ve listed five reasons that I think all of you should go see it…..

1.  The Plot was Realistic and Made Sense


From the get go, the movie was interesting.  We see a bunch of Chimps get attacked in the jungle and we’re immediately seeing how they are treated poorly and we get a sense of where the mindset of the eventual belief of a takeover will be warranted.   James Franco’s character Will Rodman is a scientist who develops ALK 112, a gene mutation syrum of some kind that enables the brain to repair itself.  The applications are to be for treating Alzheimer’s disease but when tested in chimps is shown to improve cognitive ability and gives the primates increased intelligence.   When using the ALK 112 on his own father, Franco finds that it works.    The issue arose when his first test chimp freaked out when she was to be displayed to the board who would be funding the drug.   Turns out the test chimp had a baby and thought she was being threatened which is why she went wild.  Long story short the test chimps had to be put down but a baby ape had actually survived and Will too him into his care.  The baby ape received the genes from the test mother who had the ALK 112 in her.    The baby ape’s name was Caesar.   After years and year the ALK 112 did not work on Forman’s dad so an ALK 113 was developed.    Forman told his boss about the ALK 113 and how he used the 112 on his dad.   His boss suggested he try the new ALK 113 on new chimps.  P.S. The ALK 113 does NOT work on humans, in fact it kills them.    All the while Caesar is locked up and learning about how he’s treated as an animal and how he’s starting to grow weary of human kind.   I don’t want to give away everything as I think you guys should see it but I think you know how the plot somewhat turns out.   The point is that is moves well, is realistic and there aren’t too many holes that I’m aware of.

2.  There were No Dull Moments


Honestly I can’t recall any moments in the film where I was bored.   I think the fact that Apes were in nearly every single scene kept the audience interested.   Plus even scenes without apes made perfect sense as they involved John Lithgow who plays Forman’s father, a man suffering from Alzheimers.    The action scenes were awesome and honestly the whole time you’re kind of mesmerized by the apes.  Their motions, sounds, everything seemed so close to us that it was like watching the silverback gorillas in the zoo.

3.  Not too Flashy with CG – The Apes were Great


The nice thing about this movie is that Computer Graphics were used “When necessary” not just for the sake of it.  A lot of the Caesar scenes involved the real actor Andy Serkis in his costume.   It was really in the running scenes and group ape scenes where you knew CG was necessary.   Overall though it was a nice blend of computer and real life stuff.  Either that or the CG was off the charts.  Either way I didn’t feel I was being duped into a technological disaster.

4.  The Actors Let the Apes be the Focal Point of the Movie


Granted the star of the movie was an ape, he was still played by a human, Andy Serkis.   But my point here is that this movie is really about Apes and their rise, not humans.   And I think that actors like Brian Cox, James Franco, and Freida Pinto simply did their jobs.   They didn’t go crazy overacting.   It was clear the whole movie who the stars were, and the human actors did very well allowing that to happen.   Hell even Draco Malfoy was in the movie!  He of course played a mean ape keeper who gets killed.   But even he was pretty solid.

5.  We Don’t Need Another Movie even Though There May Be One


The nice thing about this movie is that I was completely satisfied when it ended and I was able to think of my own plot afterwards.   While they’ll probably make another movie because of money, you realize at the end of the film that there doesn’t need to be one.   And that’s tough to accomplish.  It means they did a great job with the plot and left very little holes.

Anyway, go see the movie if you haven’t already.

 

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17 Comments

  1. Seriously, I have one BIg trouble with this movie:
    You would never expect a group/army of say 20.000 humans, without equipment, infrastructure, military/IT/Economic knowledge to tear appart the most armed nation in the world. So why can we “accept the idea” if they are monkeys….

  2. Well, I’m not usually one to do this kind of thing, but I had to make an exception. I really enjoy the articles on Unreality, yours included Natty, but this one is really poorly written. The sentences are little more than fragmented thoughts, and there’s virtually no punctuation anywhere, making it feel like one long run on sentence. I agree with your points, and admit that while I haven’t seen the movie yet, I do want to.

    I think the article is good, but please Natty, re-read this and make some edits, especially to point number 1!

  3. Yeah basically, their explanation is: oh we created this virus which kills you faster than ebola and his transmitter only by contact and it kills all the humans in a few weeks… Apparently: quarantine do not exist in apes world…

  4. The apes were 100% CG as far as I am aware. Completely motion captured with Andy Serkis providing all the motions for, at least, Caesar. You could also here is Gollum voice a few times throughout the movie before he stats speaking.

  5. Couple of quick corrections, the drug is ALZ-112/113 and Franco’s characters name is Rodman, not Forman. You make some good points but there were some spoilers, I.e. draco getting killed, the new drug killing humans.

  6. To those concerned about the apes taking on humanity by force. This is addressed in the plot. That’s all i’ll say, and that it is actually a great movie. Sleeper hit of the summer.

  7. I was interested on reading your review since I enjoy this site so much….then I read all the incorrect information (drug name, character name, Andy Serkis in costume) and suddenly your credibility went down and I probably won’t reading anything you write anymore.

  8. Natty, you are one among many reviewers who do not agree with my very negative view of this movie. To my mind, there were so many violations of simple logic, both in plot and character behavior, that I found it impossible to shrug them off and tell myself, “it’s only a movie.” For me a premise can be outrageous and still work if the action makes sense within its own context. This is not the case with “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”

    In response to the points made in your review:

    (1): The Plot was Realistic and Made Sense: the primary story arc was fine, but there were catalyzing actions taken by numerous characters that would have never occurred in the real world — start with the lab safety protocols.

    (2) There were no dull moments: If two-dimensional characters executing the rancid cliches of their archetypes is not dull to you, I guess this statement is true.

    (3) Good CG: Eh, it was good but there were a couple of moments where I definitely was distracted by the notion I was watching a CG effect. I’m neutral on this point.

    (4) The Actors Let the Apes be the Focal Point of the Movie: Very true! They accomplished this by not distracting us with a lot of actual acting.

    (5) We Don’t Need Another [Apes] Movie: I agree. At least not until someone can get it right. I thought Tim Burton would be the guy. He sure had all the pieces to pull it off. I was wrong.

    There you have it. I’m not trying to be a jerk, I was just tremendously disappointed in this movie.

  9. Okay, I really liked this movie and I’m a massive PotA fan. However…

    “1. The Plot was Realistic”

    Errr… no.

    “4. The Actors Let the Apes be the Focal Point of the Movie”

    “Let” my arse. James Franco was massively out-acted by a non-speaking Andy Serkis, because Franco simply doesn’t have the acting chops for a lead role. (“127 hours”? Yeah, just proves my point.)

    Overall though, it’s an absolutely brilliant remake of Conquest and was far better than anyone had any right to hope for.

  10. Oh and this movie has nothing to do with Tim Burton’s reboot. (That’s a point in its favour right there.)

    Tim Burton’s movie did not take place on Earth (asides from the ending) and thankfully there’s no sign of General Thade in this new movie. *phew*

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