It's A Madhouse!-A Review Of Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

Just like most hardcore movie fans, especially those of us who love classic films, I am not really a fan of re-makes of classic films, or reboots of classic film series. Not that all of them are bad films, but they generally never live up their predecessors. In most cases, no matter how true the filmmaker tries to stay to the original source material, they just can't capture the flavor of the original. My feeling on this is that they fail because these movies are basically snapshots of the time they were made in. As an example, look at The Day The Earth Stood Still and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Both films were made at the height of the Cold War, and reflect the fear and paranoia running through the United States at the time. While Invasion has had couple of decent remakes, they just don't have that same ability to tap into the fear that your neighbor might be a Red in hiding, waiting to tear down the United States. In 1956, when this film was made, people were building bomb shelters,  Joe McCarthy was on a rampage, and kids were being taught to "duck and cover" in case of a nuclear attack. By the time of the first remake in 1978, the fears were still there, but very tempered by the passage of time. The recent remake of Day was even more out of it's element and removed in time from the  original, and failed miserably on every level.

As a kid growing up in the 60s and 70s, one of my favorite film series of all time was The Planet Of The Apes series. I have so many memories of watching the movies, TV series, and cartoon series on TV from those days. After the disappointing remake of the first film by Tim Burton back in 2011, the announcement of a reboot of the franchise, called Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (2011), filled me with skepticism, and a little bit of dread. I skipped seeing it in the theaters, even though I was hearing nothing but good reviews from both the media and friends. I finally watched it today. I have never been so pleased by a reboot or remake in my life.

With the new reboot, rather than centering in the future and having some space explorer discovering a planet ruled by intelligent apes, we are given the back story of how the planet came to be that way. With the first series, we were not given this back story until 1972's Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes. In that film, the ape revolution against their human masters is led by Caesar, the offspring of Cornelius & Zira, from the original film, who had traveled back in time in the previous film, Escape From The Planet Of The Apes (1971). In Conquest, apes were used as slaves by a spoiled and lazy population of humans. Being intelligent, Caesar saw the injustice in this, and raised an uprising.

In the new film, Caesar is an ape who is born to a chimpanzee who has been used in experiments for an Alzheimer cure. The drugs in his mother's system while pregnant with Caesar, and give him enhanced intelligence. After his mother is killed on the day of his birth, the scientist who is trying to create the drug whisks him away, hiding in his home, to keep Caesar from being destroyed as well. Caesar turns out to be surprisingly intelligent, and has become a member of the family after 8 years have passed. Will has been using the drug that gave Caesar his intelligence on his own Alzheimer afflicted father, Charles Rodman, played beautifully by John Lithgow, but the disease has started to gain ground again. After seeing what he perceives to be an attack on Charles by a  neighbor after Charles wrecks the neighbors car during a period of instability, Caesar attacks the neighbor and is ordered to be confined to a primate shelter. The conditions are, of course, not what Caesar is used to, and he suffers abuse at the hands of a keeper, and at the hands of the alpha male leader in the facility. Caesar begins to feel betrayed by Will, his anger grows, and he begins to plot his uprising. Of course, there is a lot more to the story, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it.

As much as I love the original series of films, in looking at Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes objectively, this is easily the finest Apes film to date. The performances by everyone in the cast bring the script to life perfectly, and Andy Serkis (who gave us Gollum), gives a brilliant performance through motion capture as Caesar. The CGI is the most realistic I have ever seen, and adds a lot to the film, as well. You truly forget these are not real apes you are watching. The scenes in the primate sanctuary strongly bring to mind Taylor's imprisonment at the hands of the apes in the original 1968 film that started it all, and a couple of the lines from it only reinforces that. When the apes revolt, the scenes of the rampage through the strengths of San Francisco, culminating in a battle on the Golden Gate Bridge between the apes and police, are almost awe-inspiring. 

While, on the surface, Rise is a great sci fi film, there is much more depth to the story, as well.  Written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, there is a lot of subtext here dealing with the horrors and heartbreak of Alzheimers, the use of animals for medical experimentation, and the cruelty that some animals endure in zoos and shelters. All of this is part of the story, but it is not preachy or heavy-handed. Instead, it naturally flows through the story, staying with you after the film. Of course, the idea of whether there are some things we are not meant to experiment with or understand is brought up, but so briefly, it doesn't turn the film into a mad scientist cliche'. Between the script and the direction by Rupert Wyatt, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes actually avoids falling into the trap of being just another sci fi blockbuster,and becomes something much more cerebral, while still dishing out the action.

On the whole, I can't think of a single reason to not recommend this film, and I know it will be one I watch repeatedly over the years. As mentioned a couple of times here, this a reboot of the franchise, and I look forward to seeing the sequels. In a perfect world, the next film should be about an all out war between the humans and apes, and that is something I am barely going to be able to wait to see.