The Fretless Bass Reviews: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Real fans just call it Rise. As you can see by the poster on the left, This is the planet of the apes, Earth, and in a way, it always has been. Planet of the Apes has had five movies, a reboot, a live action TV series, a cartoon series, several comic book series, some novels, and now we have Rise. If I do say so myself, it is a worthy addition to a series that has defined sci-fi over the last forty years.

Rise depicts an alternate beginning to the rise of the apes and downfall of the humans. If you go on the first five movies, then the human society fell after an ape slave uprising. This movie comes at the rise and fall of the two species differently.

In a nutshell, the plot follows a scientist who is developing the cure to Alzheimer's disease, and tests his virus on a chimp he names Caesar. This chimp starts a revolution and enhances every ape in San Francisco and brings them to the redwood forrest. However, in their haste to make enough money to buy a fleet of private yachts, the corporate executives fail to realize that when humans are exposed to the virus, they die.

This is different from the fall of the humans as depicted in the original movies, in those, humanity wiped itself out via World War III, this movie would replace the latter with a deadly plague that makes humans die and apes as smart as humans.

This movie is not a remake, if anything, it's one big memorial to a series as ground-breaking as Planet of the Apes. The sheer amount of quotes and references to the original is staggering. They gave the big one to Tom Felton, (guess what it was in the comments, you get it right, you're a true fan) who appears to have been type cast, because many of his lines could have come right out of the mouth of his more famous persona. They also paid homage to the big man himself, Charlton Heston, by having clips from some of his other movies like, "The Agony and the Ecstasy."

The plot of the movie is very well laid out. Caesar lives with the humans for a while, then in a primate home and sees humanity's capacity for good and evil. He uses his smarts to break out and show the law enforcement what for, and has a cathartic moment with his human father figure. At the very end of the movie, we see a pilot who was infected with the virus that made Caesar smart deliver the disease to Great Britain, where it spreads to the rest of the world. At the end of the film, the camera is circling a globe that is not longer controlled by humanity, at the end of this film, all you can see is the Planet of the Apes.