A fitting prequel. All of the in-between knockoffs are irrelevant

Rating: 7/10 (21 December 2011)

If you were alive and a teen or adult in 1968 you will remember the groundbreaking movie Planet of the Apes. It was the movie that everyone was talking about. People were stunned. Those days were full of turmoil. The day after it was released, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Viet Nam was still a monster on the horizon.
Charlton Heston descended from his mount and beat the wet sand on the beach as he screamed at his descendants who had blown it all to hell. He had battled the damn dirty apes only to realize that it was his own kind that had destroyed the world.
Zoom forward through the decades to the present day and see the world around you. Medical breakthroughs and technology that surpasses other movies of that time such as 2001: A Space Odyssey. See the advancements and see what was sacrificed. There are now medical advancements that extend human life at the expense of hundreds of thousands of sentient creatures who happen to have been born without opposable thumbs and the developed brain lobes that give them dominance over every other lesser creature. The lab animals suffer for the humans and they don't know why they're being tortured.
When I first heard the plot of Rise, the first thing that came to mind was; how can a handful of intelligent apes take over the world? There just aren't that many. A small town police force could take them all out within an hour.
After seeing the movie I have had all questions answered. This is another breakthrough movie. Its state of the art CGI that will astound and it should be taken as a tribute to the state of the art. Because movies are just that, art.
The first part of the movie is human tragedy, the son desperately seeking a cure for Alzheimer's as his father slips away. There is sadness that will tug at everybody's heart as Caesar is separated from the only human home he has ever known. Man's inhumanity to the man-like creatures is brutal. Many scenes pay homage to the original and give comedic relief, such as one scene that flashes by where Caesar is building a model of the Statue of Liberty.
Then when the apes rise up, the audience is rooting for them. It's the exact opposite of the original Planet of the Apes where the apes were the oppressors.
The questions are answered at the very end in the credits. That is when it all fits together and it becomes apparent that Rise of the Planet of the Apes is an appropriate prequel bookend to the original Planet of the Apes. All of the other in-between knockoffs are irrelevant.