'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' - Movie Review

Since its release in 1968, "Planet of the Apes: has spawned four sequels, two TV shows and a remake. Despite all of the follow ups it's really only been the original film that has become engrained in the popular consciousness. Everybody knows the story, and the ending, even if they've never seen the film. Sadly none of the follow up projects have been able to match the originality and energy of that first film. Yet against all odds "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is able to stand proudly along the original, better than any of the other sequels or remakes have before.

Will Rodman, played by James Franco, is a brilliant scientist working desperately on a possible cure for Alzheimer's. With his father, portrayed by John Lithgow, deteriorating from ravages of the disease Will is eager to move from animal testing to human. However when his star test subject, a chimpanzee named Bright Eyes, appears to go berserk his superior, played by David Oyelowo, orders all the apes destroyed. Will discovers that Bright Eyes had just given birth and her aggression was in defense of her baby. Not able to see the infant chimp destroyed he takes it home, names it Caesar, and raises it. As Caesar, a computer generated character with motion capture performed by Andy Serkis, grows he also displays astounding levels of intelligence as the brain enhancing effects of Will's drug appear to have been passed to him genetically. Things become complicated when Caesar is forced into a poorly maintained ape sanctuary following his defense of Will's ailing father. Once there Caesar sees the world in a new way, he sees the world as cruel and the humans in it as the willful oppressors of his kind. Caesar begins to plot more than an escape, he plots a revolution.

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" is a very fresh take on the franchise. Rather than trying to tackle the concept from the angle that audiences know, an astronaut crash onto a planet ruled by apes, it takes us back to the beginning of everything. Since the twist of the first film, that the planet was Earth all along, is so well known it makes sense to just show the start of the transition of ownership of the planet. The film borrows its basic concept from the fourth film in the classic series, "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes," though it loses the complicated history that entry was forced to adopt. In that film Caesar was the offspring of intelligent apes from the future Earth who had traveled back in time following the Earth's destruction. By starting completely from scratch the new film is able to ditch all the time traveling and just start with a super intelligent ape and focused on Caesar's story.

Make no mistake; regardless of what actor is given top billing Caesar is the star of this movie. That's not to undermine the work done by the supporting cast, James Franco captures the obsessive nature of his character quite well, but this is all about the apes. Once Caesar is at the ape sanctuary the humans are only shown on occasion. It's a very gutsy move because the apes don't talk, except for a very limited amount of signing between Caesar and an orangutan named Maurice. So all of the emotions and changes that Caesar is going through has to be communicated through his actions and expressions alone. It's a gutsy move to allow a non-speaking, non-human character to be the center of the film. But that's exactly what happens here and it works amazingly.

Andy Serkis does amazing work as Caesar, and the character has quite an impressive emotional journey that is shown. The other apes are also extremely well realized. They all feel like full characters yet still feel like animals, they don't feel like they've been overly humanized. The apes are all given rudimentary personalities without betraying their animalistic nature. It's astounding how rewarding the journey of these animal characters is, and the makers were right to put the focus on them rather than the humans.

There are a few very minor weak points. As mentioned the human characters work well enough for the most part, however the girlfriend character played by Freida Pinto serves absolutely no purpose. It seems like she's meant to serve as a conscience for Will but he already has pretty clear moral boundaries as it is. She's not really bad; she just adds nothing to the film. There are also quite a few nods to the original film, most of which are integrated seamlessly. However there are a few that draw too much attention to themselves and stick out like sore thumbs, like Charleton Heston's "damn dirty ape" line being reused.

These very minor issues aside this is the surprise success of the summer. Given how badly the last remake of this series screwed things up nobody was really expecting very much of this film. For it to deliver the level of emotional complexity that it does while having the focus so much on the apes is a minor miracle, and one worth seeing. Be sure to stay during the credits for another clever bit of purely visual story telling that shows how the apes will gain greater power than they have at the end of the film.

Final Score: 4.5 out of 5