Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 4/17/11 at 3:55pm

Is this going to be good, bad or camp?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8D2NIGEJW8

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/17/11 at 7:07pm

I vote camp. Or just plain bad.

I also think the initial premise is weak, and weakens the original novel and film(s) which go so far as to fly in the face of our world's religions and scientific theories and say the ape evolved from man. The exact opposite of what we presume as the "superior race" created in God's image on this planet.

It's a much stronger and controversial scenario. Now this movie comes along and says man induced that evolution himself by coming up with some stupid device called "the Cure."

Whatever. Lame. Gotta keep the Holy Bible and modern science preserved, right? We are still the "evolved" race, even if we accidentally screw it up in the future.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Updated On: 4/17/11 at 07:07 PM

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 4/17/11 at 7:41pm

But with Escape from the Planet of the Apes they set the rise of the ape society as a time loop/paradox. Cornelius and Zira come back in time, have their baby, and end up getting killed but leaving the baby to survive raised by a modern day ape, thus, I assume, setting into motion the events that would allow the intelligent apes to evolve and become the dominant species. No evolution from man, just a cheap time paradox.

Now, I admit that I have not seen the other two movies in the original series, so maybe they altered it further from there, but that's certainly where they left it at the end of the third movie.

[rosscoe(au)]

Posted: 4/17/11 at 7:49pm

Camp

[SNAFU]

Posted: 4/17/11 at 7:52pm

But if you go back to the source material, the novel, it is not the Time travel Paradox but evolution. Man raised apes to be servants. Taught them, lived wit them. Then at one point Apes revolted and overthrew their human owners.
When Taylor returns to Earth (The planet in the novel was NOT Earth but a parallel world) he discovers that the same evolutionary cycle has happened here in his absence. Burton tried this in his version but screwed it up horribly!

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/17/11 at 9:59pm

Yes, AEA, I realize that by the third movie they "chickened out" on the original (controversial) concept. So this would not be the first time an "Ape" movie did that.

I actually loved the first three "Planet of the Apes" movies, including "Escape" which offered this time-travel explanation of how the apes evolved. I found the ending to be so sad and horrifying for Cornelius and Zera, and at the time (I was a kid), I actually liked those final scenes with Ricardo Montalban at the circus. I was glad things worked out the way they did.

And it wasn't until later that I realized they had screwed up the whole clever and volatile idea of "reverse evolution."

The fourth Ape movie is pretty good, too, but again, they compromised the ending and actually reshot a lot of it, taking out much the violence and Caesar's final ruthless speech where he murder's the governor in front of the crowd. On the Blu-ray Disc, you can watch both versions, and it makes me mad now that they backed away from it. At the time, it was considered too much of a "terrorist"-type attitude, and the studio made them take it out. Makes the movie even darker than it already is.

And the fifth Ape movie REALLY sanitized everything at the end. That wimpy "can't we all get along?" coda was so horribly conceived. It felt like a sitcom ending to what had started out as a brilliant idea (with the first film and its source book).

The Burton reboot was awful, and this new movie looks like, once again, they're missing what is so special about the idea. It's not "humanesque" apes who challenge man's authority. It's the fact that they came from us, not that we came from them in the evolution chain. That's what really rocks the boat.

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 4/17/11 at 10:20pm

Thanks for the background, best12. I've been meaning to go and read the original novel for years now, but have always put it off for some reason or another. Maybe I've just found my reading project for my next two weeks of unemployment.

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/18/11 at 8:08am

The book is very different and kinda crazy. I wonder what it would be like to read in the original French. (Not that I can do that.)

Updated On: 4/18/11 at 08:08 AM