Good origin story

Rating: 7/10 (22 September 2013)

Will Rodman (James Franco) is working on an experimental drug to cure Alzheimer's disease. The chimp on the drug goes berserk to protect her baby which nobody saw and is killed. Will would raise the baby as a human child naming him Caesar. When Caesar attacks a neighbor, he is locked away. There he suffers under the cruel attentions of the guard.
Special kudos for Andy Serkis who performed the motion capture for Caesar. It could have been so easy to have the CG chimps look like a video game. This is actually a much better origin story for the franchise than 'Escape from the Planet of the Apes' (1971). The logic holds intact. It just works well. If there is anything holding it back, it's that you have to empathize with Caesar for long stretches of time. For so many reasons, it is just hard to maintain. First, he's a CG creation. Second, we know what he would turn into. Third, he's a chimp that could probably rip your face off. It's an inherit difficulty that this movie couldn't escape.