The Season's Most Impactful Characters Are A Bunch Of "Damn, Dirty Apes"
If Serkis manages to earn the statuesque love, however, we can’t imagine there’d be any haters who’ve seen Rise he’s that damn good, and, significantly because of him, the year’s biggest primate movie is also one of the 2011 calendar’s strongest works thus far. To be more specific, one that’s manhandled by Serkis’ remarkable work as Caesar it’s a tech-heavy performance that’d be in contention for every major Supporting Actor award come year’s end, but will most likely go overlooked by voting committees that view motion-capture turns as disconnected playtime. When Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes erupts into a dark, violent, and boisterous apes-on-the-attack finale, it’s an inevitable conclusion set up incredibly well by what’s previously a poignant character study, albeit one about a human-minded chimp.
But with such an emphasis on the film’s aspects that most parallel other loud summer blockbusters, those early clips undermined Wyatt’s strikingly emotional and restrained picture. Its rather clunky title aside, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes didn’t exactly help its own cause, either initial previews centered on the film’s heightened action, which, in reality, is saved for the climax. It was a mere ten years ago that Tim Burton remade the original Planet Of The Apes with minimal flair and laughable results. Of all the summer’s high-profile movies, this one arguably had the lowest expectations cast upon it, and understandably so. And that’s where Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes-a franchise reboot that owes much to 1972’s Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes-truly soars, abandoning a minor cluster of bland flesh-and-blood actors, led by a foolishly disinterested James Franco. At one point, Wyatt and screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (who previously collaborated together for the 1997 creature feature The Relic) forget about all of their human characters and predominantly focus on the primates, animals rendered through a seamless mixture of mo-cap performances and real-life apes. Treated like small-scale dramatic leads, the apes, orangutans, and gorillas in Wyatt’s film are, collectively, a magnificent achievement. Director Rupert Wyatt first primetime feature can also boast about having the most well-developed and sympathetic character of the summer: Caesar, a brainy ape raised by humans from his infantile time through age eight, and amazingly embodied through motion-capture technology by the actor Andy Serkis (Gollum in the Lord Of The Rings flicks and the title beast in Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong remake).įor a CGI showstopper, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is surprisingly intimate, and, throughout its second act and well into the third, largely dialogue-free. That’s right- Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, the seemingly unnecessary seventh entry into the sci-fi franchise started way back in 1968, is superior to the season’s previous big-studio tentpoles.
With August in full gear, Hollywood’s window to unveil effects-riddled blockbusters is rapidly shutting, yet, without the deserved fanfare, the June-through-August run’s best popcorn movie has been saved for nearly last. In the comic book world alone, we’ve met a mythical God who’s charismatic, brooding, and stricken with daddy issues ( Thor), an arrogant playboy forced to become an intergalactic savior ( Green Lantern), an eventual supervillain in his tormented, borderline hero stage ( Michael Fassbender’s pre-Magneto in X-Men: First Class), and a puny Brooklyn kid turned patriotic demigod ( Captain America: The First Avenger). Summer 2011 hasn’t been lacking in colorful, interesting movie characters, even if far too many of them were more compelling in trailers and other pre-releases than they actually were in the finished, theatrical products.