It must be getting good word of mouth.
I saw it over the weekend and was pleasantly surprised…I have trouble with CGI-heavy films, but the effects on this were extremely well done.
I wonder if (speculation about a possible sequel)
the ALZ-113 has the effect of making any humans who survive an infection stupid. That would explain the sub-literate people that the astronauts came across when they landed back on the planet (in the 1968 film). And in that original film, the ape civilization was really primitive, and it took a long time before the Charlton Heston character Taylor recognized that it was Earth. That would require the destruction of a vast amount of buildings and infrastructure and so I doubt that’s the direction they’ll go with the next one. The Wikipedia article on the 1968 movie said that they presented a primitive civilization simply because it was cheaper to film.
More sequel speculation…
[SPOILER]I would think that the 3rd movie of this trilogy would be an all out war between humans and apes. It could really work well, because it’s not like humans could just nuke 'em. Human survivors would be caged up, which would surely result in decreased intelligence over generations.
As I said before, I think the 2nd movie will show some conflict within the apes. Some will want to stay secluded from humans and some will want to destroy humans.[/SPOILER]
Alternatively, and depending on how much time elapses between the events of this movie and the next, the apes could breed humans for stupidity.I just saw this over the weekend, and it was really, really good. I thought the CGI effects were good - I had no problem staying involved in the story. I had thought , from the commercials and trailers, that the CGi was poorly done, but I didn’t get the same impression from the movie itself.
There was so much attention to details and development which made the story that much more engrossing. The one false note, in my opinion, was [spoiler]the stuff around the corporation and the development of the drug. It would seem to me that they would never, never, never plan on bringing a live animal before the board in order to support funding. There was nothing to be gained - all the convincing and relevant data would have come from the tests and from the videos of her performances in the lab. However, even with that, there would not be a strong argument to make in jumping from positive results from one animal to human trials. Wouldn’t you want to check for the absence of harmful side effects across a number of animals first?
On a lesser note, I didn’t get why Draco was such a douche. It was a area of character development that was left undone. One throwaway line suggested that he was the son of the head guy at the primate place, but other than that, he’s apparently just a cruel bastard who got a job working with animals he hates.[/spoiler]
It seemed clear to me that the 113 virus will heavily factor into surviving humans being mute/stupid. It’s easy to wag that the virus won’t have 100% lethality but the cost of survival is brain damage.
Though in a much different tone than in the 1968 film, Draco says, “It’s a madhouse. It’s a madhouse.”
wow, i disagree, i thought it was a bad movie. the caesar growing up plotline was silly and could have been shortened to 10 minutes instead of dragging it out to the inevitable conclusion. the cgi apes did not look real, from the color of caesars face when they zoomed in on him as a baby, to the ridiculous acrobatic jumping around. it was just to perrfect. also, many others mentioned the holes in the plot regarding sudden increase in numbers of the apes and thir sudden skills at things they never did before. silly…
also,
to feed all the apes that appeared outside the lab area, the bag of cookies would have to hold a couple hundo easy, and we know thats a farce
the reason the originals were so good was the cast, and in this movie the cast was meh
But it made up for the so-so cast with a good story.
Anyone else mention the nod to 2001: A Space Oddyssey when Caeser lifts the tazer in the air and the camera shot looks identical to the ape-men at the beginning of 2001 holding the bone up as a weapon.
Did any other nerds think “But Madagascar will live!” at little “disease-plosion graph” of the world at the end of the movie?
I saw this yesterday and thought it pretty good, despite the overly perfect fluid CG movement of the apes. Three bits which rankled me though:
[SPOILER] The first therapeutic virus had been completely discredited by the ‘chimp-shot-dead-in-the-boardroom’ debacle, yet when the main human (Charles?) goes back to the lab to steal some virus for his ailing dad, they are manufacturing stacks of the stuff in high-tech ampoules.
He waited five years to tell his girlfriend the truth about Caesar’s origin? Nice relationship.
As well as increasing the apes’ cognitive powers, the virus seemed to give them the strength and weight/momentum (not to say the desire) to through themselves through every available window. At the labs you see chimps jumping through 2nd/3rd storey plate glass windows onto the paving below and carry on running. [/SPOILER]
“Madagascar closes its ports” did flash through my mind …
I totally turned to the spouse and whispered: “Shut. Down. EVERYTHING!” when they were doing the vector map. (Of course, I did the same thing during the trailer for “Contagion”…) I think it would be highly amusing if the sequel included something about the humans of Madagascar surviving the plague.
As far as the movie goes, I liked it a lot. This is a big deal for me, because I hate chimps. Seriously. I can’t stand them. The only reason I went to the movie was that I read all the good reviews and we were looking for something decent to watch.
It wasn’t long before I started liking Caesar and feeling sympathetic to him. Maybe I just hate funny chimps. Smart ones are okay. But I couldn’t help but think a couple of times about that poor real-life woman who had her face ripped off. I could easily believe some of the feats of strength the apes in the movie were doing.
Just saw it today. This movie has, bar none, the best CGI of any film I’ve seen to date. The chimps looked amazing. Maybe baby Ceaser didn’t look perfect as a baby but they all looked amazingly believable throughout the rest of the movie. Couple random comments:
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JAmes Franco is a horrible actor. He was the second worst thing about this movie (second to the ape cage attendant dude). I haven’t seen 127 hours so I can’t say for sure but I can’t see how he got a best actor nom. He is horrid. Not believable at all in the movie at any point. Every minute he was on the screen I was waiting for him to leave.
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The girl from Slumdog Millionaire is super gorgeous.
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Andy Serkis should get an Oscar nom for his acting in this movie.
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Ape cage attendant guy was completely unnecessary and really detracted from the movie.
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I had a really hard time with James Franco trying to stop the cops from shooting the apes while they were actively trying to attack them. Seriously. The apes are going, well, ape shit. Let the cops fuckem up.
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I was really happy that Ceaser didn’t start full on speaking English during this movie. He spoke just enough.
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Ceaser growing up went on a bit too long. I was ready for the apes to go nuts for a long time.
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Great movie that would have been an instant classic if they hadn’t cast James Franco.
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CGI was amazing.
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i thought the caesar growing up bit wasn’t dragged out. it builds the relationship between franco and caesar (making the bridge scene more believable) and shows why caesar didn’t return with franco at the end. plus, i’d be surprised if the growing up footage was much longer than 15 minutes. much of the movie takes place post-caging up.
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the CGI wasn’t perfect but it was damn good. i’d prefer the CGI to this than monkey suits or even no movie at all. i didn’t like any of the transformers movies because i thought the robots were terribly done and could have done without those movies but this movie did it right.
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the original was good? i thought the original was laughably bad - especially heston.
one last thing. why do they have to have these high tech injection devices in all these movies? i mean, they were doing that in star trek in the 60’s and here we are still getting shots with a conventional syringe. why not a little reality?
Finally saw it tonight – what a terrifically fun movie! Well worth suspending all disbelief for. Great, great storytelling. I didn’t notice the CGI one way or the other, which is good enough for me.
Re: Who got killed:
The apes, collectively, only directly killed three people, and all of them deserved to die – Draco, the black guy, and the cop in the helicopter. Caesar only killed the first, and as someone pointed out, it might have been inadvertent.
Random moment I loved – when Caesar first goes into the big enclosure when the other apes are there. Heartbreaking.
Yay! I’ll definitely go see the next one.
So they go pitch the drug for human trials like 30 seconds after it works once? WTF is that?
Really liked it though.
Watched it yesterday and loved it, but something small really bothered me.
Franco never tells Caesar that his father died. The movie made it seem like that Caesar and the dad are really close. I mean, the dad was the whole reason Caesar got locked up. Why was this important bit of information never relayed? Maybe we are to assume it was done off-screen, but still, it bugged me.