Rise of the Planet of the Apes (4 out of 5 stars)
Fox/ December 13, 2011
Remember the Mark Walberg version of Planet of the Apes? Man, that sucked. So I was a little apprehensive about watching this new incarnation of the franchise. Helena Bonham Carter with that stupid monkey face still haunts my nightmares.
Surprisingly, this new movie is quite awesome. I was able to get past my hate-on for James Franco and
get into the story. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is all about Caesar, a chimpanzee that inherits the intelligence-boosting effects of Alzheimer's drug ALZ-112 from his mother, who is killed while protecting Caesar from lab technicians. Scientist Will Rodman (Franco) is forced to start drug trials over from scratch after the mishap upsets the board of his biotech company. Will adopts Caesar and takes him to the home he shares with his aging father, Charles (John Lithgow), who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. Caesar continues to grow smarter, and Will uses the chimp's DNA to create what he thinks is a successful cure for Alzheimer's.
Of course, the drug makes monkeys awesome and humans suck so the monkeys take over the world. I’ve gotta say, the effects in this flick are pretty insane—the monkeys are incredibly lifelike. The blu-ray picture is killer with every hair on the monkeys’ heads crystal clear.
There is a bunch of special features here:
- Two feature-length commentaries - Included on the disc are two commentaries, one from director Rupert Wyatt and the other from writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.
- Deleted scenes (12:00/HD)
- Mythology of the Apes (7:11/HD) - The filmmakers talk about the earlier films in the series and how they drew from them.
- The Genius of Andy Serkis (7:48/HD)
- A New Generation of Apes (9:41/HD) – How they created the apes.
- Scene Breakdown (1:34/HD) -
- Character Concept Art Gallery
- Breaking Motion Capture Boundaries (8:43/HD) – About the Golden Gate bridge scene.
- Composing the Score with Patrick Doyle (8:07/HD)
- The Great Apes (22:37/HD) – It’s all about apes!
I really recommend this one. Just don’t pick up the Marky Mark version by mistake.
