A worthy prequel to the original 1968 movie

Rating: Null/10 (18 August 2011)

This is easily one of the better blockbusters of the summer of 2011. Of all of the mindless summer blockbusters, this one is the least mindless. There is a large cast of well-known and accomplished actors in this movie, but for the most part, you could say that they are doing cameo roles, as the focus is squarely on the apes.
We went and reviewed the original movie after seeing this movie. I say that this is a worthy prequel to the original 1968 movie, because throughout the movie they pay homage to and try to explain how events led up to the original movie. Obviously they explain how apes became intelligent. But there are other quick little touches too, such as explaining how the apes can ride horses. They showed the manned space mission that gets lost in space which is obviously the mission that Charlton Heston was on in the original movie, the ship even looks like the original. They paid homage to Heston by showing one of his western movies in a TV screen in the background briefly. They showed that an engineered virus was responsible for giving the apes intelligence, but was also the same virus that killed humans. They showed how this virus was spread throughout the world by a pilot who happened to be a neighbour of the doctor (James Franco) who developed the virus and was the owner of Caesar the chimp.
Throughout this movie there's a lot to like. Much better than the 2001 Tim Burton/Mark Wahlberg remake. There are some interesting connections between these three movies and Harry Potter, despite the 4 decades in between them. In the 1968 movie, the astronauts initially thought they've landed on a planet orbiting the star Bellatrix. Bellatrix was a character played by Helena Bonham Carter in the Harry Potter movies. Helena Bonham Carter was also in the Tim Burton 2001 Planet of the Apes remake. Tom Felton who plays Dodge Landon in this movie, also played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies.