My expectations were high when I went to see Rise of The Planet of the Apes: The Remake. I’m from the generation who was dragged to the movies to see the entire Planet of The Apes movie series in a single day. It was a special at the local movie theater that my Dad couldn’t afford to miss, and he intended to hand down the need for great sci-fi movies (even if it meant being force-fed) to his kids. So as a connoisseur of the original Planet of The Apes movies, I was ready for some real ape action.
Andy Sirkis was in great form as he dialed up every ape and human-like emotion for Caesar’s face. He seemed to know when to bring out an emotion, and when to hold off, even being cold and calculating. The evolution of Caesar’s brain capacity was perfectly echoed in Sirkis’s painstakingly digitally mapped face. Some moments made me say, “Awwww…” while other moments provoked an “Oh, Sh…!” He was spectacular.
That’s where we got when the plot started falling apart. The typical “big corporation”, doing genetic testing. That bad boss, the downtrodden scientist, it’s all been done before. Why the change from the original movie? We all knew Caesar was gifted to begin with. Why did we skip this, almost as if it will never happen? He was born of Cornelius and Zera, who escaped the ape planet to come to Earth. It’s even in the book. So why change that to settle for some random virus that seems to work on Alzheimer’s patients? It all conspired to create a much weaker movie than the original.
What ever happened to the race card? In the original movie the pivotal moments came when the ape-handler (who was African-American) spoke to the apes about his peoples’ trials in the course of winning civil rights. It’s completely absent in this remake. What, did we think that the children of today couldn’t deal with racial problems? Is it too rough for them? A lot of the original movie was obviously a comment on the times. How much of that did we get that in this film? We didn’t.
Rise of The Planet of The Apes delivered some poignant moments, some amazing digital animation, and some breathtaking scenery. What it didn’t deliver was the raw, forceful riot that we saw in the original movie. It was superfluous. There was no need to remake it in this colorless form except to entertain the Hollywood execs.