RE: Rise of the Apes!

Reading your thoughts, Ryan and Katy, I've been trying to figure out my expectant followup comment. Obviously from my FB message, I liked Rise of the Apes. A lot. I would even go so far as to call it my "Movie of the Year" thus far (previously was Rango). As a Planet of the Apes series fan, thanks to many replays on 90’s TBS, my favorite one was always "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes". If not known, Rise of the Apes is a remake/reimagining of the 1972 movie that had Roddy McDowall as Caesar. I say this because the few reviews I’ve read reference the original Heston movie and liken Rise as a reboot/prequel to it.

Conquest hasn't aged very well. There's some things in the movie that are damn hokey (training apes to get accustomed to serving tables in a disco club setting completely with strobe lights and funky music), but the under/over-tones can save it for a patient viewer. Racism. Slavery. Torture. When the revolution comes, it is swift and violent (gore, if any, is understated). Many humans are beaten to death with blunt weapons. Many apes guned down. It all ends with Caesar giving a hated-filled speech in front of his fellow apes and their sole prisoner, the head of "Ape Management". Caesar declares a new world. A better world. "And that day is upon you NOW!" With that, the apes beat their prisoner to death with the butt of their rifles. I should note here there's an issue with that ending, but that's for another time.

Overall, Rise of the Apes gave me close to what I wanted from a remake of Conquest. More time was devoted to Caesar. We saw his "fall" as he realized he was not a man but an ape. Worse that he had the knowledge of such. Finally, we get a movie that, first, proves that a special effects character can be a proper lead in a live-action movie (as oppose to Bay's Transformers movies not actually being Transformers movies) and, second, that much can be done by actions with little or no words and still be effective, if not much more.

For both of your disappointments in Rise, I don't wish to go down the point/counter-point road. Though I really enjoyed the movie, I don't see you both as completely wrong, nor I completely right.

The thing that stuck out to me about the mom chimp wasn't that the science dudes were unaware of the pregnancy. As far as I know, chimps don’t physically show much if at all. Though that would leave blood testing up in the air and I would assume that would show a pregnancy, if their tests displayed the proper indicators. What I noticed afterwards was that the mom defended her child.....by leaving him. But the mother, no matter how smart she may have gotten, was still a wild chimp in an unfamiliar/human environment. The overprotective rage could have blinded her and pushed her further away from her cage/baby with every human she encountered.

Likewise, I took no notice of the riot police order for safeties off. It was my understanding that, in an organized armed unit, it is the commanding officer who gives the order to go “live”, even more so in a fragile situation like the one on the Golden Gate Bridge with a mix of friendlies and targets. As the apes took the bridge, the people were spilt between those who remained in their cars (city side) and those already out and running from the apes in towards the redwoods. With humans on the battlefield and heading towards armed police, I would think it mandatory for the unit to have safeties on till people were cleared and the “go live” order given.

I found the film to be very violent. The actions of the apes toward each other and, later, humans were realistic to what I’ve seen of primates on Animal Planet and youtube. The attacks were unsettling on a primal level. That in mind, it was obvious that there was a lack in realism as far as the consequences of these ape attacks. Caesar attacked the pilot and bit his finger. Tommy and I assumed he bit the finger clean off, as chimps are prone to do. Nope, the guy later had his finger in a splint. In the case of the mauling/beatings (the pilot, the not-Draco ape worker), both were stopped fairly quickly. The lack of consequence could be explained away by Caesar holding both himself and the other apes back. Caesar seems to understand the importance of life and the severity of taking it away. As much as he hated Draco, his death was accidental. Caesar wanted to repay Draco for the fire hose attack, but wasn’t aware of the electrocution hazard that Draco’s cattle prod. Of course that changed with the death of Buck the Gorilla (damn humans!) causing Caesar to purposely allow the death of Money-Hungry Corp Head.

I do strongly agree that I was expecting, and would have liked to see, more violent results, be it straight up gore or implied. These are apes. Apes are fucking insane. They tear off dicks and wear them as [white] hats. Same for the police, minus the dick hats (hopefully). But I can see and understand the possible reasons why the powers-that-be distanced the movie from this (PETA, lady disfigured by chimp, likely adapted sequel storyline from Battle for the Planet of the Apes, PG-13 =mo’money, yo!).

Turns out Super 8 is my annual “Movie I’ve been interested in seeing for a while but forgot to actually go watch it”. I’m getting better as last year had too many winners.

As for the characters, writing, and such, my guess is that we are approaching the film from different directions. We all like bad movies, but I assume you both are probably much more selective of movies watched overall while I am a bit more open (I don’t do anal, sorry). My point that maybe I’m a bit more…uhh…..aware (though there’s a better word out there) of just how low movies can go in the writing/characters department. Best recent example: Transformers 3. Tommy still enjoyed it, but admits its problems. Also, Sucker Punch. Not even Tommy can say shit for that movie other than the chicks were hot (which is true). As you can see, Tommy is my measurement of how bad a movie is. I can’t trust my own feelings. That would be biased, right? Anyway, that’s my guess. That I see it as above standard fare while you guys see it as below and made worse due to the rule of cool. I would agree that all human characters are simple, but I wouldn’t personally call them terrible (except for the cliché drunk teenagers looking for fun in a damn ape sanctuary!). Each one served their purpose in the story. I thought the James Franco/John Lithgow dynamic quite reflective of my own relationship with my Alzheimer’s-afflicted granddad.

The GF’s singular line about some things not meant to be changed was a bit shallow, I’ll agree, but, eh, I’ve had worse. “Kiss me, Neo”.

Sorry you guys didn’t like it, especially since I “highly recommended” it. But, hey, seeing as how the movie has already almost made back its budget, we’re likely for a sequel! You guys ready for Rise of the Apes 2: Rise Harder?

Oh and Katy, you know your awareness of ape balls, or lack thereof, is gonna be a thing, right?

Movie Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

As you know, Stirling, I was excited about this movie. I thought that a summer blockbuster about biotechnology would be a lot of fun. Katy was skeptical. And it turns out that she was right to be. Here's why:

It was sooo unrealistic, even allowing for the silliness of the premise. So I'm supposed to believe that at a laboratory in which they test gene therapies on chimpanzees, a laboratory that ostensibly employs experts on chimp physiology, nobody noticed that one of the new arrivals was pregnant? Sorry, no. I'm supposed to believe that a phalanx of riot police, with their rifles at the ready, has to be reminded by their superior to take the safeties off? Nope. I'm supposed to believe that an animal trainer who is beaten for a considerable period of time by a several mature chimpanzees is going to be in any condition to explain what happened the next morning? Again, no. He'd have been lucky to have survived that attack at all; at a minimum, his injuries would have been traumatic. But that brings us to the next problem.

I wanted it to be sort of gory and scary, but the violence never rose beyond the level of the cartoonish. This was a movie that just couldn't deal maturely with the violence at its core. There were several instances in this movie in which the victim of chimp-violence ought to have been, by all rights, a bloody mess. (If a chimp starts wailing on you like that, you ought to thank your lucky stars if your most notable injury derives from a bite to your finger). At least in part, the movie's squeamishness about treating this violence seriously has to be related to its depiction of the apes as unambiguous white-hats. If you start showing what really happens when people get attacked by chimpanzees, the audience might lose its warm, fuzzy feelings for our heroes. Me though, I like an ambiguous hero. I come to the cinema in hopes of experiencing complicated emotions. I prefer to be confronted by the ramifications of the real excesses of the side I'm rooting for. Rise of the Planet of the Apes lacks the moral backbone to even confront its own premise.

Another contributing factor to the film's squeamishness must have been its PG-13 rating. I need to learn not to go see PG-13 films, no matter how interesting they look like they might be. Rarely, something like Super 8 comes along, but most of the time, you just get action movies that privilege visual effects over versimilitude and emotional resonance.

Also related to my complaint of cartoonishess, Katy notes that in the course of the film, although we see many chimpanzees from many angles, standing, sitting, running, whatever, we never see any ape genitals. This, if you've ever seen a chimpanzee, is a LARGE omission. See right. This isn't really a complaint. But once you notice what the movie is NOT showing you, you kind of have to laugh about it.

The characters, the writing, and (maybe) the acting were all terrible. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is inhabited by the dullest, flattest characters that I've seen in a movie in a long time. Let's play a game where we try to sum up all of the main human characters in one word each. This is like shooting fish in a barrel:

• Will: self-absorbed
• Will's girlfriend: pretty
• Will's dad: old
• Will's boss: bastard
• Will's neighbor: jerk
• Lab chimp expert: bearded
• Chimp shelter owner: amoral
• Chimp shelter handler no. 1: sadist
• Chimp shelter handler no. 2: stutters

There. That's everything you need to know about the human characters in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and you didn't even have to spend $7.50 and waste two hours of your life. The writing is just as bad. I think that the acting was pretty lousy too, but it was hard to tell. I mean, what were they supposed to do with those lines? "Will, you have to learn that there are some things that aren't meant to be changed." Seriously, that's the line that's supposed to fire up the protagonist to to re-examine his life's work? It's the turning point of the film! The big moment when Will realizes something about himself upon finally, irrevocably losing his father. And that's the best the screenwriter could do? It's so derivative! It's like the mad scientist version of "You just don't get it, do you?" If you're writing a screenplay, and you see this line in it, write harder! Say something interesting—anything interesting—instead! Ugh, my head hurts. I have to go soon.

In light of all this, it's almost irritating how good a job the director and Andy Serkis do in bringing the character of Caesar to life in mostly wordless scenes. Caesar is a compelling character. If this was the best script they could come up with, they should have striven harder for wordlessness.