Great lesson in storytelling conventions

Rating: 9/10 (21 April 2019)

This week I watched the action-drama-sci-fi Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011). The logline reads "A substance designed to help the brain repair itself gives advanced intelligence to a chimpanzee who leads an ape uprising." This movie is a really good lesson in storytelling elements. It is also a healthy model of proper intercutting as well as shot composition and show don't tell. I enjoyed watching how the story unfolded and how much could be picked up without dialogue. I also found it interesting how quickly our standards of CGI can change. In 2011 the CGI in this film was state-of-the-art. Watching it now I noticed how primitive the CGI came across. The storytelling followed conventional method flawlessly. I did, however, pick up on one major loophole and that was that the scientists never ran pregnancy tests on their female chimps prior to experimentation, thus, Cesar was a complete surprise. However, this loophole kind of made the story, so we have to accept it. And of course, we can't write a review on this movie and not give props to Andy Serkis, who really made the character of Cesar what it was. Without him, we would not have nearly the element of humanity that really drove Cesar's character. This is the second time I have seen this movie and I have to say that I definitely enjoyed it more the second time around.