Just got back from Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I loved it. I think it’s the best summer movie of the year so far. It’s ostensibly a summer popcorn movie, but to a large degree, it’s really a smaller, involving study of the rise of a radical revolutionary hero (named Caesar). As weird as it sounds, a CGI ape ends up being a mesmerizing character. The CGI is not perfect. You can tell it’s CGI, but it doesn’t matter because it’s so well executed in terms of story and emotional resonance. Andy Serkis did the motion capture, and his work makes the strongest argument I’ve seen yet for making motion capture performances eligible for Oscars.
The movie does a good job of making you sympathetic to Caesar and wanting him to succeed. I had a good theater, the crowd was really into it, really rooting for the apes, and audibly cheering and applauding at certain parts. The best reaction was to a scene where an ape abusing human character (played by Draco Malfoy at his sneering best), utters the classic line from the original Charlton Heston film. The line itself got a mere chuckle, but Caesar’s response to it took the roof off the place.
Definitely worth checking out. It’s smart and absorbing, builds tension slowly and culminates in a terrific action packed last act that never bogs down or gets boring.
I will take your word for it. I felt so burned by Tim Burton’s dreadful remake some years back that I just can’t bring myself to pay to go see another.
Just saw it. Very enjoyable, though not the best film I saw today (that would be Attack The Block for the second time), but far, far better than the cheesy original. I thought the CGI was excellent, but chimps are so close to humans that it is in the “uncanny valley” and 99.9% perfect is still not good enough.
Just saw it. I thought it was fantastic. I found most of the CGI to be very well done. There were only a couple of scenes where it was obvious (baby chimp was done poorly), and I never got that uncanny valley feeling. Apparently there were some people who got the impression that the entire movie was going to be about the apes taking over, and were disappointed that it’s not. I didn’t go in with that preconception. The movie is mostly about the evolution of Caeser and the ‘rebelling apes’ bits are just toward the end. This movie is a lot like Splice but without the gore and horror. There’s nothing after the credits but there is a short scene partway through the credits.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about the “Mars Mission” and “virus” bits, since they were more like hints than developed plot lines, but I suppose they were necessary nods to the other films.
It’s getting really good reviews, and it has Andy Serkis (aka, Gollum) as the lead CGI character. Looking forward to seeing it. The SF location (although largely fake) is a nice draw for us Bay Area folks, too.
Best film we have seen this summer! (And we see a lot of films!)
We went in with low expectations, but from the beginning, the STORY was compelling and kept getting more interesting. Yes, special effects were great as well, but the big “trick” for this film is that they kept to a real story, and made you care about the characters.
If they had pre-sold tickets to the sequel on the way out, we would have bought them.
This was the summer blockbuster we have been waiting for - not great art, but fun, intelligent and well crafted. Worth seeing on the big screen.
I thought it was supposed to be a prequel. If it’s a prequel, why would Charlton Heston’s famous line from the first movie be in it? It’s not a prequel?
Call it an “insider” joke, to those who have seen that older film. It is a perfect line for that moment in the film, and you can see that if another ape ever hears a human say it in the future, they will not be happy either.
Some other fun inside jokes:“Lost in Space?” headline, a shout out to the astronauts in the original
Heston’s The Agony & the Ecstasy playing in the background
The orangutan is named Maurice, after actor Maurice Evans, also from the original film
I haven’t seen quite every major tent-pole picture this summer, but I’ve seen most of them and this was easily the best–not perfect, but a lot of fun, engaging, and propulsive in an era when these kinds of movies are too long.
Nitpick to the OP–CG performances are eligible for Oscars. The problem is that the acting branch shows resistance to the concept since (a) they’re usually used only for genre pictures, and (b) somehow, all that technology is seen by some old-schoolers as interfering with the “craft” (though they already do give Oscars to make-up artists).
Lots of fun, a monkey Spartacus–can’t say it’s quite as good as the original (which is still clever, powerful, and has that amazing Jerry Goldsmith score), but a very worthy “ancestor”.
No, that part isn’t reversed, it’s just the power differential. A sadistic human says it to a chimp in a brutal primate “preserve.” That line itself isn’t really the money part, though, it’s the chimp’s response: “No!”
I just came in here to refute the other thread in which most people said there’s no way it’s not going to suck. I didn’t like it as much as others in this thread did, but I really enjoyed it. By far the best Ape movie so far. I’d put it up there with Jurassic Park and The Matrix.
I disagree that we really cared about the characters. I thought that the human characters were pretty one-dimensional. Their complete personalities could be described as The Scientist, The Girlfriend, The Beaurocrat, The Jerk, etc. But some of the ape personalities were pretty well fleshed out.
I felt pretty let down by the ending. It left me as unsatisfied as Fellowship, and I don’t see how there could be a sequel.
I did like that there were characters named Bright Eyes and Cornelia. I also liked that the apes looked like apes, not humans in monkey costumes.
