Now, today's movie is Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I saw this with my lovely girlfriend on Sunday night. I like to go and see movies a little after they come out because I am guaranteed to see them. No one goes to see certain movies if they have been in the theatre for too long. That's when I like to go and see them.
Anyways, the synopsis of the movie: This film is set in present-day San Fransisco where a scientist named Will (played by James Franco) is working on a serum that could cure Alzheimer's disease. He must find it quickly because his father Charles (John Lithgow) is suffering from Alzheimers and is slipping quickly. His company tests his serum on an ape, who goes crazy on the day that they were presenting the drug to the board, because she was protecting her newborn babe. When they are forced to put her down, they find the baby all alone and swaddled in a blanket. To keep the baby from being put down, Will brings the baby home with him. Will's father names him Caesar because that was the play that he was reading . As the baby grows, Will notices that the serum was passed down from the mother to the baby, making him smart. As Caesar grows into a full-grown chimp, his intelligence grows tremendously. Also, as his intelligence grows, his awareness of where he came from also grows, along with his awareness of what he is. But Will started using serum on his father, and he improved tremendously, but after a couple years, his body started rejecting it. That's when things got worse. When Charles has a breakdown and wanders outside and crashes his neighbor's car, the neighbor started poking him. When Caesar sees this, he gets defensive of Charles and attacks the neighbor. Because of this, Caesar is forced to be put into a monkey "sanctuary." There, he is treated terribly with all of the other apes. Because of the clothes that he is wearing, Caesar causes hostility from the other apes. He realizes that his kind is being persecuted. Since he is intelligent, he realizes that if the apes join together, they cannot be stopped. So he devises a plan to bring the apes up to his level of intelligence, and they stage a breakout. From there, all hell breaks loose.
In my opinion, this was one of the best movies that I have seen this summer. I think that they definitely redeemed themselves from the first Apes remake, which was not well recieved by the public. I was really glad that they decided to use CGI to make the monkeys instead of using people dressed as apes, like they did in the original movie.
There were a few things that I was not happy with. I thought that James Franco was a little weak with his performance. His performance seemed rather distant. It didn't seem like he made a connection at all. You can't really blame him. He was working with a man in a green suit. The audience was more attached to a CGI monkey than they were to James.
I thought that the performance of Caesar was done incredibly well. Andy Serkis, who also played to role of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings series, was the body behind the computer for Caesar. You really grew attached to the ape, even though it was a computerized one. The only thing I didn't like about his character was that he didn't really redeem himself in the end. If he was supposedly brought to human levels of intelligence, then he would know the right and wrong way to do things, right? I understand that he was oppressed, but once he broke out of the monkey prison, he kind of turned into a douchebag. I think that it would have come across a lot stronger if they gave the monkey some human morality or compassion. I think that it would have been better if he showed that he was better than the humans in the end. Instead, he sunk down to their level.
I still believe that this movie is a definite must-see. It really brings the old series some justice and saved it from that first remake. As long as they don't let Tim Burton anywhere near the other movies that they plan on making, then they should be fine.
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