Another Planet Wanted

Rating: Null/10 (23 August 2011)

Rise of the Planet of the Apes has been disregarded by some critics as being an imitation of the franchise whose title it bears. Let me be frank: they have a point. The movie intentionally eschews its forebear's racial metaphor. The Civil Rights movement has long since ended, after all. Still, I grant the filmmakers some merit for recognizing the datedness of the series and attempting to update it which they did with moderate success. The template established by this film, if it receives a sequel, could serve as the basis for an even better film à la Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.
The film (ironically) places the apes as its focal point even though it takes place in modern-day San Francisco. There are well-known actors in the film playing key human roles, though it doesn't matter. Anyone could have filled the parts of Will (James Franco) and Caroline (Freida Pinto), which excuses their workman performances. The real main character is their "son" Caesar, a genetically modified ape who Will saves from a defunded project. We see a lot of Caesar's maturity without spoken words (he has few lines in the entire running time), and it works somewhat as daddy hammers away the various developmental accomplishments of his child. A few lines of his dialog are campy exaggerations that I interpret as nods to the series' legacy of pulpy science.
Caesar grows up and is sent to an animal shelter for attacking someone who was berating a family member. The tone changes entirely from a coming-of-age story to a prison-escape scenario as he is forced to deal with mean employees and establish leadership over the other apes housed there. This is the best executed part of the film. The filmmakers take great care in organically introducing each new achievement Caesar makes in devising a way to escape as predicated on his observation of the surrounding environment. Yet, of all the leaps in conventional logic we must make, this segment presents us with the most difficult one. The movie firmly establishes the apes as possessing superhuman empathy; as if it naturally follows from their nascent intelligence (all but Caesar are given intelligence-enhancing chemicals). The film goes so far to establish this point that we actually see them lock up the not-so-nice employee before they somehow knowingly unintentionally execute the really mean employee.
In its final segment, the movie becomes an action-packed special effects summer film as the apes escape to the edge of San Francisco. We have further demonstrations of their similarity to humans in their capacity for intelligent warfare with an added dose of kindness. The film thus teeters on the edges of pretentiousness before actually getting there. By giving the studio its due for a summer film, the story arc doesn't have the chance to pander egregiously to audiences. I'd rather see the spectacle of this portion than endure the tedium of a "serious" conclusion. The ending conforms to the establishments of its two subgenres while presenting many opportunities for improvement in the sequel. It would be lovely if the next film would question this film's most controversial assumption I've already described. For now we have an intelligently constructed blockbuster that will hopefully lead to something even better.
Recommended