Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

I've no idea how I managed to miss RISE . It came out three years ago and I recall it going on my watch it when it comes out on DVD list but never got round to it for some reason . Now that the sequel DAWN has opened to almost universal praise it's very timely that Channel 4 decided to give it its British TV network broadcast . I saw the trailers on channel 4 last week and made sure I wasn't going to miss it and if I enjoyed this film I might just go out of my way and spend money watching the sequel in the cinema . Hmmmm . After seeing RISE it looks like I've just saved myself the price of a bus ride and a cinema ticket

To be fair the producers deserve some credit on not going for a reworking of the original Pierre Boulle novel . A rocket travels to another planet where Apes at the top of the evolutionary ladder and there's a shock twist at the end . It's been done before and very well in the 1968 film and abysmally in the Tim Burton version so congratulations for trying a different spin this time with a reworking of CONQUEST

The unfortunate thing is the storyline is very predictable and lacking in any imagination . Okay in CONQUEST apes are used as slaves and it's up to Ceaser a self aware chimpanzee from the future who is a fugitive leading a revolution by apes to overthrow their cruel masters . There's not a lot of realism to that plot but the great strength of the original franchise was that it was made with so much imagination plausibility didn't matter " The good bomb made us all " indeed and for that we should be grateful . Here however everything is so recognisable that it ends up becoming , insipid , vapid and very mundane

This most especially extends to the humans who are one note clichés . Good scientists , trying to benefit mankind , sick relative , sadistic guard type character and worst of all rabidly greedy corporate company boss . It says something that the best performance comes from Andy Serkis and he plays the film in a CGI suit swinging through trees and rattling bars but to be fair again Daniel Day Lewis would be incapable of bringing much to the roles of humans in this screenplay

There's a saying that " If you give enough chimpanzees enough typewriters they will eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare " Apparently this is an untrue truism and according to the likes of Richard Dawkins and other scientists involved in biology there's neither enough chimpanzees or typewriters for this to remotely come close to happening . That said if you give a typewriter to someone like Paul Dehn and sit him in a committee of Hollywood film producers he can string out a highly entertaining and imaginative series of movies based upon a film adaptation of Pierre Boulle;s original novel. There's nothing like that here and you feel you're watching something not all that far removed from the Syfy channel

Fmovies: ...but it didn't do it for me. I'm a huge fan of the series (excluding the Tim Burton disaster, of course) but this didn't have nearly the depth nor the intelligence I was expecting. Like most I was initially skeptical at the idea of attempting to reboot the franchise -- but as positive reviews kept flowing in regarding this "smart" script and Avatar-like CGI, I began to get excited again. With the surprisingly high box office numbers and positive feedback from most who saw it, I got more excited.

I finally ponied up last night to check it out.

The good news: The CGI apes stuff works pretty well. Serkis does his usual great job (although I thought his King Kong was better). Action sequences and set pieces are all good.

The bad news: There's no Rod Serling-style, Twilight Zone-ish, philosophical themes or moral messages here. It isn't "smart" compared to the original films. This one is more like POTA for Dummies. It relies on a trite storyline that's been beaten to death (Don't play God; Don't mess with Nature -- yada, yada, yada) with nothing more interesting or thought-provoking. The original series was not afraid to hit you in the gut and make you think. Those movies were much heavier in every way; while this plays much more like a straight action film. Entertaining from that aspect -- along with Caesar himself, but not much else. So, I don't know where all this "smart" talk came from. If this passes for smart then our standards have dropped.

Next is the acting. I don't blame the actors b/c it didn't seem that they had much to work with. Franco, Pinto, Felton, Cox and the rest are all one-note characters with little depth. All the humans are cardboard clichés in this film. I know Caesar is the protagonist -- but to have the other actors be so uninteresting is a real drawback. And this -- along with the trite story -- reminds me a bit of Avatar. A by-the-numbers retelling of Pocahontas or Dances with Wolves -- where all the characters are one-dimensional. Visually stunning, yes -- but with shallow characterizations. In Avatar, military guy = bad, corporate exec = bad; in ROTPOTA, drug company exec = bad, neighbor = bad, chimp worker = bad. There's not much else to say about them since we're not presented with their context.

No one wanted to like this more than me. I was hoping the flavor of the original series had been brought back -- but I'm afraid if we can't resurrect Rod Serling or enlist a writer of his caliber, we'll never see it again.

Of all the movies that can possibly be re-booted......why reboot another movie that's already been re-booted? And of all the projects that the Weta team can possibly tackle, why this one? Well it must be the script, because everyone that's come across it has wanted to be somewhat involved. Hopefully it lives up to the expectations that are already in place, because i don't think i could handle another stink bomb like Burton's version.

Finally......a summer movie that's actually WORTH your summer dollar. Almost every element of this film is pitch perfect. Just what makes this 'oh so' great? Allow me to explain....

Judging from the preview, i thought the movie to be a little too relative to the concept from "Deep Blue Sea". But this movie takes a much more different route with their Alzheimer's approach. Needless to say, they did a much better job than that movie.....obviously.

I know most people may be scratching their heads to this comment, but in my opinion, this is easily the most well written script of the year thus far. It's intelligent, thought provoking, emotional, and damn well entertaining. What makes this so good is the progression of the main ape 'Ceaser' (heh, ironic name), and his journey from a curious and smart ape, into an upset ape that realizes the harsh realities of being treated like an animal. It's now easy to see just why everyone jumped on board when they read this. I kid you not, i actually got goosebumps from this movie, and that rarely happens.

And once again, the Weta team did a phenomenal job with their brilliant special effects. Andy Serkis who has already done work like this before in 'Lord of Rings' and 'King Kong', out preformed most actors in Hollywood without barely saying a word. Is it wrong to say that a man in a blue suit with dots all over him, imitating an ape is so far the best actor i've seen this year? Uh.....not at all. Trust me, see the movie, and you'll understand why.

Bottom Line.......not only is this easily the best movie of the summer, i will go as far as saying it's the best movie i have seen so far this year. Yes, it is THAT good. Like i said earlier, almost every element of this movie is pitch perfect. The writing, the acting, the special effects.....all done to near perfection. It some people's eyes, this is called a reboot. However, it feels more like a prequel. But judging from what i just saw, i hope to god that they make more of these, because it literally just blew my mind.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes fmovies. Summer 2011 will go down in history as one of the more disappointing seasons in many years when it comes to movies. This is the time of year that people rush out in masses to see the latest action extravaganza, and to be fair, some films have delivered on that promise -- "Harry Potter," "Captain America" (though I have yet to see either of them and am simply relying on general reactions) -- but there's been a whole lot of disappointments, too, and the worst part is that people still seem to be flocking to them, almost out of necessity than wont ("Transformers 3" and "Pirates 4" both made over $1 bil worldwide, which is amazing, because they both sucked).

I think the last film anyone expected to reverse the trend this summer was a prequel to a franchise that has been consistently poor over the years since its original incarnation in 1968. Indeed, the first trailer for "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" focused on ape carnage and mayhem, and although a subsequent one highlighted the dramatic underpinning of the film, it seemed like Fox was just trying to turn around its marketing and fool people into thinking there was more than meets the eye.

Alas, the second trailer turned out to be a far more accurate reflection of the movie than anyone would have expected. "Rise of the Apes" is most likely the best film of the blockbuster season, full of heart, carefully crafted and professionally delivered on every level.

Sure, the story has its fair share of clichés -- the "evil caretakers" played by Brian Cox and Tom Felton seem bad just because the film requires them to be, and Felton's performance in particular is so over-the-top that it's almost a caricature -- but because of how the film is packaged, and because it spends so much time focusing on the character of Caesar (played magnificently by Andy Serkis), you are willing to overlook many of the flaws. You care about the characters and the story, even when you kinda know where it's headed and feel like it's a variation of a prison break-out movie with apes in place of humans.

The human cast, as has been noted by many critics, is nothing to write home about. James Franco doesn't exactly phone in his performance but it's not the sort of role that is going to be lining him up for any awards. Toby Maguire was originally lined up for the project before he was dropped (he reportedly came to Fox with script notes, and they promptly cut off discussions with him), but Franco does seem a more natural fit, and does well enough in a role destined to be sidelined by the apes.

And the apes are awesome. No, we haven't quite mastered fully realistic CGI yet -- especially when it's mixed with live actors. (WETA claims that the technology here is superior to "Avatar," but it's not as convincing, perhaps because the CGI so rarely interacted with human actors in "Avatar," and thus we were able to accept the fantasy world more willingly.) However, this is some of the best seen to date. Serkis (who previously played King Kong in Peter Jackson's remake) translates a brilliant performance, for which the film owes a great deal; Caesar is really the crux of the whole thing, and a poor or less realistic performance would have undermined the whole thing. It's the subtle stuff here that makes a difference -- the emotions captured in Caesar's facial expressions, or the glint of sympathy in his eyes when John Lithgow's character begin

To begin on a tangent before evaluating the film, before summer 2011, I had not seen a decent prequel film. Prequels to films are often made when there is either a rich back story behind the originals or the producers are wanting a little more money from a particular franchise (see the Star Wars prequels). The problem they present is that film- makers have to construct their work, with the knowledge that the audience knows how it ends. One of the greatest things about seeing a film for the first time is the surprise and anticipation, to removing that can detract a lot from the overall impact of the film. But this summer I have had the pleasure of seeing X-men First Class, and now Rise of the Planet of the Apes - two excellent prequels to series that I didn't care for previously.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (RPA from now on, I can't bear typing it) is not only a triumph in CG animation, but as a stellar science fiction film, that remembers that films are infinitely more engaging when the audience actually cares for the characters on screen. Too often do I see films with a high premise that forget to flesh out their characters, leaving us to run around in mindless, weightless explosions with nobodies who we know less than 3 things about (cough, Transformers 3). Yes, RPA is about super intelligent apes that ransack cities and take on armed forces with little more than what surrounds them, but before we get to that there is an enormous amount of development from the main protagonist; Caesar. Although the advertisement trumpets James Franco, John Lithgow etc, the real star here is Andy Serkis, along with millions of dollars worth of CG animation to create the most expressive animated creatures on film. Even with Avatar, using real humans, pales in comparison to the amount of detail going into every single one of these apes; there is not one second in the film where you cannot understand one of the primates intentions - you could practically vocalise them yourself with the refined eye movement, body language that clearly separates Caesar from his more primitive relatives. Needless to say, Caesar's performance is flawless; after all this is the man who brought Gollum to life, but he captures the screen with an entirely wordless performance, which to me is the greatest part of the film. I felt for Caesar more than any other character in this film, and he did it without saying a word. Eat that Michael Bay. I was almost in tears at one point during one of Caesar's more emotional scenes for Christ Sake - although a chimp, the heightened intelligence really gives him just enough human characteristic to be above the uncanny valley while still behaving like an animal.

The humans in the film were what I considered weakest in this film; not any of the performances were bad, but a little more development in some minor characters and some tweak in the writing here and there would have made this a perfect 10. Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) felt a bit off to me; he was cruel but almost in a cartoon way, though I suspect that's more to do with ill writing than any personal issues. The main cast are good, though at it's current length, I think more development with James Franco's character wouldn't have gone amiss, but then again, this might have thrown off the pacing.

Another thing I love about this film is that while taking a sharp diversion from its roots in terms of gradual characterisation, it does a superb job of delivering what everyone inevitably came for. A massive Chimpocalypse. A simian up

I had extremely low expectations for Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011). I loved the original 1968 classic, but every sequel/remake after it sucked. I was surprised they were going to make a prequel of the classic and I thought it was a good idea. But still after so many bad sequels and remakes, I still had my big doubts. Also I didn't like how the monkeys were made by CGI/Special Effects, why not use a robotic monkey or a real one, it would look more real.

After my viewing of the film, I was pleasantly surprised and I liked it overall. But there were definitely flaws in the movie, no doubt about it. The characters were a bit uninteresting at times, there were subplots that went pretty much nowhere and indicated that there could sequels in the works, but it all depends on how much money it makes. The movie, at some points turned to an average summer blockbuster with all the action scenes and explosions, but it redeems itself later on.

However there are plenty of positive qualities, the movie has. Andy Serkis delivers a great performance as the lead ape in the film and is pretty much the star of the film. James Franco and Freida Pinto, both did a good job portraying their characters. The movie also poses ethical/moral questions, which I found very interesting. The movie is easily on of the most thrilling films we've had this summer. Finally a movie that pays respect to the 1968 original science fiction classic!