Rise of The Planet of The Apes

Director: Rupert Wyatt
Writers: Amanda SIlver, Rick Jaffa
Starring: James Franco, Andy Serkis
Release Date: August 5, 2011
Length: 1 hour 45 minutes

        Second-time British director Rupert Wyatt takes on an untouched prequel of a beloved classic in Rise of The Planet of The Apes, starring the ubiquitous James Franco and for his third time acting as a creature, British actor Andy Serkis as the central ape of the story, Ceasar. Franco plays Will Rodman, a scientist working for a pharmaceutical company called Gen-Sys, trying hard to develop a cure for Alzheimer’s, in light of his father Charles (John Lithgow), who is suffering harshly from the disease. While presenting the cure in a meeting, his subject ape he’s been testing on, named Bright Eyes, dangerously breaks through the meeting and is killed before anyone can be seriously hurt. After Will’s boss, Steven Jacobs orders all chimps being tested to be put down, Will discovers that Bright Eyes was only being protective of her baby chimp, who they find in her cell. Chimp handler Robert Franklin cannot bring himself to kill the baby chimp and gives him to a reluctant Will instead. 

        As years go by, Will raises the chimp, he names Ceasar, as a son, documenting every second of his growth, as Caesar was born with the testing gene inside him. However once Caesar is fully-grown, he tries to protect Will’s father and ends up injuring a neighbour. He is taken custody by San Bruno Primary Sanctuary that is run by John Landon (Brian Cox) because of the threat he imposes on people. What seems like a spacious center to Will and his girlfriend Caroline (Freida Pinto) is really nothing more than an unwashed jail cell, where the rowdy apes are often tortured by Landon’s immature son Dodge (Tom Felton). Ceasar is quickly forced to adapt to these unfamiliar circumstances. Being born with the intelligent gene his mother was given, he slowly becomes the silent leader of the group while he gradually puts his human life with Will behind him. In this small facility in Northern San Francisco, an uprising much bigger than it seems is about to ensue. 

        About half way through the film, the protagonist becomes the ape Caesar and we are forced to follow the story through his powerful eyes. It takes an amazing combination of special effects and CGI acting to be able to have an entire audience’s attention and intrigue on non-speaking animals for that long in a film and Wyatt succeeded beautifully in doing so. The slow rise of Caesar within the sanctuary resembles any other strong rebellion movie but it is so much more intriguing without cliché lines of dialogue about the revolution from the confident leader. Instead, we see the leader’s thought and reasoning behind becoming this group’s leader and when he does so, it is all simply done through the intensity of his eyes, which are really Andy Serkis’. 

        He carries Rise of The Planet Of The Apes the same way he did in King Kong and The Lord of The Rings, showing us how much you can act without your words. Each time Serkis plays an animal, he takes your eyes away from the actual people on screen and displays that the technology of CGI allows actors to perform just as well animated as they can without blue dots on their faces. The other actors in the film like James Franco, Frieda Pinto and especially John Lithgow as Will’s ill father are great, but it is Serkis who carries the fun, creative story of revolution from Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. 

        They create a clever, fascinating and funny script that takes the crazy idea of the earth being taken over by apes in the original 1968 movie to a simple kernel that makes complete sense. He makes us continue to wonder and try to picture the route this uprising is going to take until the world is run by these creatures. The talented acting and impressive writing is brought to the level of thrill this film has by the extraordinary special effects. The huge special and visual effects team working on Rise combine their efforts to make an incredibly rewarding movie experience. It is quite clear before even seeing the film that there will most definitely be a sequel and then another and possibly another but right now this is by far, one of the best action films of 2011. All we can do is hope that Wyatt maintains the same caliber of entertainment that this film had with the next Rise films to come. Rise of The Planet of the Apes was a perfect cherry on top of a beautiful summer of some of the most fun action movies we have had in a while.