Rise of the Planet of the Apes

There has been many an incarnation / reboot of the franchise that is, Planet of the Apes. In recent times, the most modern reboot was from Tim Burton some 10 years ago, aside from that you have to look back into the 70′s and before with TV Shows and films.

Now, it’s 2011 and here we go again. Rupert Wyatt has taken the helm, little known with probably his biggest credit to the film industry been with The Escapist from 2008, where he was the writer / director. Rise of the Planet of the Apes sets a new origin for the franchise based on the original 1963 novel Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle.

Will Rodman (James Franco) is a successful genetics scientist working for a company called GEN-SYS, based in San Fransisco. His team are working on a cure for Alzheimer’s via using a virus there implanting into chimpanzees. At first, the virus is a success, not only doing it’s purpose but it also works via repairing damaged cells in the brain while in turn also making the host more intelligent.

The main test subject ‘Bright Eyes’, the name derived from a green pigmentation in the chimps eyes – is to be presented to the board as the first successful host, but due to an incident she is evenually killed and the whole project scrapped, leading to Rodmans team being disbanded and given the order to put all the other test subjects down, little do they then find out a baby chimpanzee (Ceaser) has now been left motherless due to the death of it’s mother, not been able to carry out the orders of the board Rodman is forced to bring up the chimp in his own house realizing it’s got his mothers passed down genes from the virus, and so begins the foundation for the film.

Now, the film is pretty powerful in the way it shows you the progression of Ceaser (Andy Serkis) and it pretty much keeps you interested throughout, unlike all the other ‘Apes’ films whereas the apes are actually motioned via actors, Rise of uses production studio Weta Digital who have done a fantastic job in bringing to life the chimps on the big screen, the acting throughout the film cant really be faulted either with strong performances from Franco,  John Lithgow as Charles Rodman, the scientist’s father. Theres is also the addition of Tom Felton as Dodge Landon who looks after the chimps at the holding center, allthough not brilliant he does have an impact on the story and development of Ceaser – i’ll still remember him though as the little bastard from the Harry Potter films.

Anyway, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a welcome addition to the franchise, it’s an origin film introducing you to hopefully whats more films in the pipleine, it’s a bit like Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship in ways of an introduction to that trilogy. Rise of keeps you interested throughout but due to it’s short runtime of only 105 mins not much really happens towards the end apart from the inevitable ‘Freedom’ scenes, lets hope they can build onto the film with a sequel.