When you’re being outpaced by computer-generated monkeys, it might be time to retire. We analyze the extraordinary over-performance of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and the career-defying box office poison that walks around on two feet and calls itself Ryan Reynolds.
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I know Apes is supposed to be a popcorn flick, but when Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler
Caesar talks for the first time and the last I got chills and goose bumps.
Was a big fan of the film, but advanced brain activity cannot get around the fact that apes don’t have the vocal cord capable of speech…they should have let it to a couple thousand years of post-human society befor the aPes started to talk, or far far creepier, for the sequels have thm as speech free films, where the apes sign each other everything; that would be quite daring in a film, actually!
It also wouldn’t do shit for business.
No doubt, Matt. No Doubt. But I was enamored with the first half of the film (the Ape-pocalypse which seems a bit over blown, with a nonsensical volume of apes, which was unnecessary, could they not have done gangbusters with 100 apes instead of making it look like 300-400?) Thus if they were going to flirt with social science and go just a tad harder-science fiction than the original films – and clearly the screenwriters have read the account of Nim Chimsky, there is so much of that book (odd that James Marsh’s film is playing simultaneously!) in RISE that the missed or ignored the fact that apes don’t have the biology for human speech?)
Either way, I quite liked the film, surprisingly engaging emotionally, and hits a lot of great character beats with Caesar, whilst paying some quite fun homage to the franchise in general.
Is it wrong to want to take the blockbuster parts of the film out of the blockbuster?
I don’t think they flirt with ‘hard sci-fi’ as you say. I think the filmmakers are just updating the scientific context for modern audiences and utilizing the home-experiment more as a thematic device than a portrayal of reality. RISE is first and foremost a genre film that is still part of the ludicrous universe of POTA.
I will say that Apes has probably the worst read piece of dialogue all year. I think Franco slept walked through the whole movie, but when he’s in the presentation and say we call it the cure of Alzheimer. It’s cringe worthy
I’m subscribing to Goon’s multiple Franco theory, where there is one clone that ‘brings it’ ala 127 Hours or Pineapple Express, and one phones it in, ala Spiderman, Anapolis and yea, mostly here.
Finally saw this. I don’t get it. RISE / APES defines the bleeding edge of “average.”
That said, it’s in the top three PLANET OF THE APES movies, which is of course saying not very much at all.