Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is neither a sequel to Tim Burton’s awful 2001 remake of the sci-fi classic, nor it is a true prequel to the venerated 1970s string of pictures.  It stands on its own as an original film, and perhaps as a relaunch of the series.  Much has been made of the motion-capture breakthroughs used in creating the ape Caesar (played by Andy Serkis, who has become the go-to guy for this type of performance). Serkis is quite good, and the computer-generated ape interacts credibly with the real world, but the movie’s script, at least in the first act, is hackneyed, overwritten, and obvious, and James Franco is unconvincing as a brilliant scientist.

The film improves in its second act, when the ape is taken away from Fanco and placed in ape jail, but the scenes get weak here too, with guards who are cruel in clichéd ways and whose motivations for taunting the apes are never made clear.  Still, the relationships between Ceasar and his fellow primates are interesting, and there are some effective sequences.

But what really surprised me about this film was the strength of the final act.  Most Hollywood action movies made in the post-digital age eventually devolve into badly-staged fights, excessive explosions, and stunts that bear no relationship to the laws of physics. Many films drop all their human actors all together at the end and leave the audience to watch computer-generated characters fight each other--something that has never interested me until this film.  The apes who “rise' at the end of this movie are the first computer-generated characters I’ve ever cared about watching as they fight, jump, die, and blow shit up.  The climatic battle on the Golden Gate Bridge is excellent; that bridge, in its first major appearance in a big action sequence since 1985’s A View To a Kill, is wonderful both as a setting for a fight and as a clever spin on the American iconography that ended the original Planet Of The Apes.  More than that, this final act utilizes the city of San Francisco in an original and cinematic way.  Like Vertigo, Bullet and Dirty Harry, this is a film that could only take place in this specific city.  When all is said and done, it is more important for a film like this to end well than to start well, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes finishes strong.