Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Directed by: Rupert Wyatt
Written by: Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver

Plot:
An origin story set in present day San Francisco, where man's own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy.

Review:
Today I geeked out pretty hard. It's hard to admit but I woke up at 9 and watched the original Planet of the Apes series which consists of 5 awesome movies. Than directly after that I started watching Tim Burton's version and 20 minutes in I remembered that it sucked. That left only one more movie to see, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I now declare today......Ape Day!

Well Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which may be the worst movie title of all time, was the best summer blockbuster this year. It was a movie that respected the originals but distinguished itself from all the others. This movie was not a prequel to all the others. It is in fact its own vision to how the Planet of the Apes started. They did add parts of the past movies into the script though including Icarus, the name bright eyes, the most famous line from the original Planet of the Apes movie and much more that I don't want to give away. It took the best of all the movies, using the fourth movie, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, as its biggest inspiration and combined it into one. They did their best to not leave any plot holes from the original series but obviously they couldn't cover everything. But that is me just nitpicking it since I just watched it all.

James Franco brought as much effort to the table as he did at the Oscars. OKay, maybe he brought just a little more than that, but not much, he was  veyr lackluster. I mean his role does not command to much, this isn't 127 Hours but it would have been nice to see a little more emotion. Tom Felton will always be Draco to me. I feel bad for all those actors because they will all be typecasted forever. The first time on screen the theater actual laughed at him.

The two people who really stole the show were John Lithgow and Andy Serkis. Lithgow plays James Franco's father who has Alzheimers disease. He was very convincing and brought the must emotion into the film. So I am starting to think Andy Serkis isn't acting but that he actually walks around on all fours. Between his performance as Gollum in Lord of the Rings and now as Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes I would believe it. Well he does it again and as much as we should appreciate his part in making Caesar come to life we can't forget about the work of WETA. There CGI work is incredible, no doubt award worthy, making so many unique looking monkeys that look realistic. 


This movie was made so that you don't have to see the original Planet of the Apes series. They are starting from scratch and laid an excellent foundation.This is a promising franchise and I am extremely excited to see what they do with the next film.

Rating: 8/10