Movie Review – Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes
Principal Cast : James Franco, Andy Serkis (as Caesar), Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, David Oyelowo, Tom Felton, Tyler Labine, David Hewlett, Karin Konoval, Terry Notary, Richard Ridings, Devyn Dalton, Christopher Gordon.
Synopsis: Born from a Chimpanzee undergoing radical brain testing, a young ape is raised by a human scientist trying to reverse degenerative brain disease – only to discover that humans rule their world with often cruel intensity. The young ape soon seizes control of the apes at a large containment facility, before his assault on our world begins.
*******
Before beginning this review, I feel I have a duty of honesty to admit that the Planet of The Apes films have never really been my thing – I have always appreciated the Charlton Heston original, of course, because it is indeed a classic, but the inferior sequels and the turgid Tim Burton remake all made me realize that it was a franchise I had very little interest in. The characters, the narrative, the world itself just slid past me with a deep sigh of “meh.” So I come to Rise Of The Planet of the Apes with very low expectations – low except for the rather high expectation for the quality of the special effects, of course. Each and every trailer for this film indicated that regardless of the story or the acting, at the very least the visual effects were as realistic as possible in bringing super-intelligent apes to life. I remember saying to a friend while watching Peter Jackson’s King Kong a few years back, that if they could do this with one ape, it wouldn’t be long before a reinvented Planet of The Apes franchise came along – and I was right. He owes me ten bucks. Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is most assuredly a product of the Hollywood Machine – it’s a join-the-dots human story interspersed with an infinitely more interesting Ape story; this fact alone – that the apes of the film are more interesting than the humans – would give a cynical critic pause, but the brushstrokes of director Rupert Wyatt’s sharply directed think-piece are broad enough to ensure this films’ legacy will remain an enduring one in the Apes franchise’s long, checkered history.
Will Rodman (James Franco) is a genetic scientist developing a virulent serum that has the potential to reverse degenerative brain functions in humans, potentially eradicating diseases such as Alzheimers – and bringing an enormous financial windfall to the company he works for. While testing the serum on chimpanzees, Will discovers that one of the serums actually works, but before he can prove it, one of his key ape subjects flies into a rage and creates chaos during a presentation to the company’s financial backers. In disgrace, Will’s studies are effectively shut down, and the chimps all put down – all save one, a young baby chimp whom Will takes home in secret. Will also decides to step up his studies with human testing – Wills father Charles (John Lithgow) has advanced Alzheimers, and the serum Will uses reverses the degradation of the elder man within days. The baby chimp, Caesar, spends the next few years growing in Wills house, his intelligence increasing rapidly. However, the serum fails to work, as the human immune system soon overpowers it, and Charles reverts back to his former mental capacity. Caesar (motion capture performed by Gollum himself, Andy Serkis – who also portrayed the titular King Kong in the aforementioned Jackson film), in a moment of anger, accidentally injures a man whilst trying to protect Charles from harm, and as a result, Caesar is locked away in a primate sanctuary (which is more like a prison) under the care of John Landon (Brian Cox) and his son Dodge (Tom Felton), the latter of whom is a vindictive, cruel asshole who treats the apes in custody with disdain and sadistic violence. Will, in desperation, develops a new, more powerful serum, which is usurped by Will’s greedy boss Jacobs (David Oyelowo) who’s seeking a more speedy result. But when Caesar escapes the sanctuary and steals samples of the serum to create his own army of intelligent apes, Will must try to stop the inevitable rise of Caesar’s retaliation.
It’s hard to imagine the leap Rupert Wyatt took to get here. His debut feature was the relatively low budget – and low key – The Escapist, a prison-break film starring Brian Cox and Joseph Feinnes; it’s hard to see how that film would have led 20th Century Fox to say “yeah, this is the guy to direct our reboot of the Apes franchise”, but by God I think they’ll be patting themselves on the back for going with him. Wyatt’s direction of this film is a perfect example of how to craft a major Hollywood blockbuster and play to the story’s strengths. Rise is problematic from a human point of view, but the astonishing visual effects, backed up by Andy Serkis’s wonderful portrayal of the central Ape, Caesar, and the large-scale action set-pieces, more than make up for the deficit this film has in its non-ape characters. Wyatt crafts this film with as many money-shots as he can manage, all the while ensuring the film doesn’t simply become a showreel for the effects companies who worked on it – this isn’t a Star Wars prequel, this is a bona fide sci-fi epic with a point to prove. For what he’s managed to achieve here, with the stunning reinvention of an entire franchise for the new millennium, and at the same time wiping out the memory of Tim Burton’s abominable attempt to do similar, I congratulate Wyatt in this, his sophomore effort.
First, the negative. Should be a short paragraph. The script, written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, brings a sense of awe and wonder to the plight of the apes of the title, with plenty of focus on the main star, Caesar, yet the script fails to really develop the human characters well enough. James Franco is a competent enough actor – he proved so in 127 Hours – as Will, the man who in trying to save humanity may inadvertently end up destroying it, but he’s a hollow individual we never really get to know. His feelings, his motives, seem contrived and less organic than they should be, with the oft-used science fiction convention of trying to save his own father (analogous to saving the entire human race) coming to the fore quite quickly here. Will’s girlfriend, a veterinarian he meets after Caesar is injured by Will’s neighbor, is Caroline, played by Freida Pinto, and never a more secondary character will you see – Caroline seems to exist simply for Will to bounce exposition off of, and there’s simply no chemistry between the two to draw emotional content from. In fact, none of the human characters are anything but cardboard props enabling Wyatt to hinge his story off Caesar, more a series of walking cliches than actual people. Tom Felton, fresh from cowardly fleeing the scene of battle in Harry Potter’s final opus, The Deathly Hallows Part 2, plays the cruel and vindictive Dodge, young keeper of the keys at the ape sanctuary Caesar is imprisoned after attacking a man in the street. Felton seems to have been typecast, and here’s he’s nothing more than Draco Malfoy with a taser. His father, played by Brian Cox, has very, very little to do, as do almost all the rest of the cast. John Lithgow draws the maximum sympathy for his portrayal of Will’s afflicted father, and although I got the sense the relationship between father and son might have been a strength of the film, the script (such as it is) doesn’t really develop this much at all. So if you’re looking for a criticism of the film, mine would be that the humans are the least believable of the entire bunch.
Andy Serkis, however, portraying Caesar in a mo-cap studio somewhere, and backed up by the digital artists who transformed his performance into a stunning recreating of an actual chimpanzee, is the true star of this film. Caesar is the latest CGI wunderkind, the kind of brilliantly realized and executed visual effect that brings the heart and soul of this film to dazzling, pixel-perfect life. Caesar’s performance is far and away more believable than any of the humans in this film, and it’s to Wyatt’s credit that he realizes this and hones the film’s story around him wholly and solely. Serkis, once more bringing the digital character to life, has made an art form of this technology, and while he can’t take sole credit, he’s certainly the part of the role on which everything else hangs. No animator in the world could bring Caesar to life more brilliantly if they didn’t have Serkis’s marvelous, nuanced and truly human emotional quality behind it. He’s backed up by a number of other digital mo-cap performers, namely Karin Konoval as Maurice, an elder Orangutan, and Richard Ridings as Buck, a massive Gorilla, as well as a plethora of others to numerous to mention here – all the apes are wonderfully realized on-screen, and while I watched this I kept thinking of each of their in-franchise parallel from previous films, to my enjoyment and appreciation.
Wyatt’s also realized that brevity is the brother of brilliance: Rise moves at a fast clip, there’s almost no fat on this film from a storytelling point of view. It’s a lean, mean monster of a film, skirting the more obvious cliche and keeping the narrative focus on that which moves the story along the fastest. This film could have been a love-letter to the franchise’s long history, and while there were a couple of nods to the previous films (watch for Tom Felton’s take on one of the Apes films’ most iconic lines), for the most part, this goes in an entirely new direction. It’s a slow build of tension, from the relatively grande opening sequence to the lengthy, post-escape “rise” of the apes; Wyatt’s grasp of camera technique and editing is fantastic, with a surprising skill in dealing with what is a gargantuan amount of non-existent live action material as well. The majority of the ape effects are superb, with only a few shots (several early jungle moments feel a bit fake) coming across as wobbly compared to the rest of the film. As the film progresses, you stop thinking of the apes as visual effects, and completely buy their existence within the film frame itself. However, instead of going the George Lucas “look at what I did” style of film-making, Wyatt opts for a realistic, hyper-kinetic rhythm behind the camera, unafraid to go hand-held or tight focus to draw an emotion from a shot. It’s digital porn without the porn, and by God it looks wonderful.
Another of the films’ most thrilling elements isn’t with what we see at all – the gorgeous score by Scottish-born composer Patrick Doyle. Doyle was also responsible for the broad-scale score of Thor, as well as taking the reins from John Williams with Harry Potter, doing music duty on The Goblet of Fire; Doyle was most recently tapped by Pixar to bring his heritage to bear on the upcoming film Brave. Rise’s score is anthemic, a true work of genius in bringing the iconic jungle rhythms into the cityscape of San Francisco, and elevating the story even higher with it’s revelatory effect. It’s haunting, lyrical and powerful, and a perfect score for an Apes film. I should also mention the wonderful lensing by DOP Andrew Lesnie, who also shot the Lord Of The Rings films for Peter Jackson, as well as the Will Smith starrer I Am Legend and Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender. Lesnie’s use of color and lighting in this film is excellent, really drawing the viewer in with either warmth or cold, cool blue; it’s a visual treat to watch, visual effects notwithstanding. Wyatt’s editing team, Conrad Buff and one of my favorite choppers, Mark Goldblatt, do a terrific job keeping this film on point – I’ve already mentioned the lack of fat in this film’s narrative, and these two are responsible for the majority of that happening. They keep the film moving along with startling speed, and it’s to their credit many of the sequences are as effective as they are. They aren’t afraid to cut into a key shot, not afraid to minimize any uncanny valley effects with judicious use of the editing bay: Rise flows and sprints with equal measure power and melancholy.
All this positive spin, however, wouldn’t amount to much if it wasn’t for a fact I think will lend itself to a continuous viewing audience down the years here – Rise Of The Planet of The Apes is an accessible film even to those who aren’t intimately familiar with the franchise’s history. You don’t need to have even seen Charlton Heston’s performance in the original to appreciate this film – and that, I think, is the mark of a truly great reboot; hell, it’s the mark of a truly awesome franchise film overall, of you can watch it as a stand-alone piece, free of the baggage franchise films often come with. It’s exciting, tense and well made, a solid escapist film with plenty to say about humanity and our treatment of animals. Yet, for all its thematic cruelty, the film isn’t overtly preachy, a fact I was relieved about. Rise is a top notch sci-fi film, solid in execution and, even if it stumbles with its human characters, a well written social fable with plenty of undertones of warning. Most definitely one of the better films of 2011.
Another rich and purposeful review, proves your talents for drilling…however I was far less entertained and look forward to commenting further here and when I post my review. Surkis (the man in the primate suit) is brilliant, amazing under appreciated abilities…but Franco continues his now trademark emotionally constipated cardboard emotions, and the plot felt heavy, clumsily obvious, hardly as exciting as it seems you took away. Its hard to like anything to do with our golden gate bridge these days as everyone is in such a hurry to blow it up for the sheer spectacle of it. I will return when I am off my phone..thanks as always Rod!
Thanks Rory…. Hollywood seems to enjoy blowing up or destroying all of America's great landmarks – and even some outside its borders – for the sake of some cheap thrills. Roland Emmerich's been doing it for decades! I really got into the story of this film, and found it had plenty of subtext to dig through – even if the film played out like a typical action blockbuster: I wouldn't have described it as "clumsily obvious", though; it did feel more hewn than carved, with a few rough egdes here and there, but it did the job required and kept the excitement up (for me, at least) throughout.
Franco has traded on his looks long enough. It's time for him to start getting roles that stretch him (127 Hours was a good start!).
Thanks for the linkage man. Nice review, good to see you like it. I had a little more problems with it on second viewing, though. It for example doesn't know the difference between intelligence and knowledge.
Vik, my friend! I assume by that you are talking of the old "I think, therefore I am" line? I always enjoyed the added bonus of "I am, therefore I think," which followed on from it…. That's the difference between intelligence and knowledge. But you're right – this film didn't really get that right, did it….
I really didn't know what to expect from Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I thought the trailer looked but had in the back of my mind Tim Burton's remake of Planet which tempered my expectation a bit. Thankfully, the film lived up to all the good reviews it got. I genuinely agree with a lot of the points you make Rodney. I'm not a fan of James Franco but he won me over in this film. But Andy Serkis is the man when it comes to CGI motion capture – he really puts plenty of character in these computer creations.
@ Dan o – Yeah, I wasn't expecting it to be any good either, and yet it came out and kicked ass! Who'da thunk it, right? I agree with you too – Serkis needs an Oscar at some point: even if it's an honorary one, or a special one like they gave John Lasseter for Toy Story that time….
@ Dan S – This is Franco's best role this year, at least in the dramatic sense. His funniest is alongside Natalie Portman in Your Highness, but that films pretty crappy overall. Perhaps a bit of groundswell of support for a technical Oscar or something for Serkis' work in these kinds of films might make something happen. Look what happened when we all complained that The Dark Knight didn't get an Oscar nomination – they opened up the nomination quantity to ten! Anything is possible, it seems.
I was not expecting much from this film and it ended up being one of my favorite films of the whole summer. Serkis deserves at least one Oscar nomination before he retires. Just one. Good review Rod.
Great review Rodney, I came w/ low expectations as well and was pleasantly surprised. Serkis' performance is one of the cinematic things I'm thankful for this past year. I actually 'met' him at Comic-con last Summer, he sat a couple of seats to my left during the Tintin panel! I wish I had been able to say something to him.
oh Ruth, that would have been awesome to speak to him! You shoulda! I bet you're kicking yourself now, right? I agree though – Serkis' amazing portrayal of Caesar is indeed this years best performances – of any actor or entity on screen. There has to be some recognition by Oscar for this man sometime soon – he's long overdue.
Very, very strong review here. Honestly, the trailer left me so bored I could not get interested in this, but everyone seems to like it, so I will probably catch it sometime in the near future!
Young Matty S! Thanks for popping in, and we're glad you liked the review. Rise isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but there's a kind of blockbuster-without-being-a-blockbuster vibe going on here that makes this one worth at least one look. Check it out – I'd be keen to get your thoughts on it when you do!
Hi Rodney.
WOW what a in depth and concise write up. I am very happy that you felt the same about the film and gave it a good score!
Thanks for dropping in, Scott. We always enjoy welcoming new visitors!
Thanks Al! Always glad to hook up a brother to get some more hits!
Hey Brother!
Thanks for the shout out and the link not only to the review but to the interview as well. Chelah was charming and it was a fun talk.
And i see you're living proof of what i had to say. 8 stars when you're looking back on it but when you're in the middle of it…