Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

Despite the rather long title, this was an eagerly awaited prequel to a series that has gained equal admiration and admonishment. The thought of apes ruling humans is hard to digest for many, but it has been a stirring story, brought to notice in the Charlton Heston version in 1968 and in the Mark Wahlberg version more recently. The film does an honest job of tracing the roots of the uprising of the apes and creates a good platform on which we can imagine the next steps that led to the power swing.

The story revolves around Caesar, an orphaned infant chimpanzee who is adopted by Will Rodman, a scientist at Gen-Sys, a pharma company that is trying to find a cure for Alzheimer’s through genetic engineering. The administration of the drug causes the chimps to develop a human level of intelligence. As Caesar grows up with Will, he is able to communicate with him through sign language and is able to perform tasks way beyond the usual level of comprehension. But, this intelligence also brings a realization of being a human pet and this begins to gnaw at Caesar.

When he tries to protect Will’s father, an Alzheimer’s patient, his show of aggression leads him to a monkey detention facility, where he befriends more apes and slowly begins to assert himself as a leader. He escapes from the facility and steals a few vials of the drug from Will’s house and administers it to the apes in captivity, thus increasing their intelligence and aggression levels. It is time now to escape.

While the earlier films show a much developed version of the story with apes being intelligent and capable enough to dominate and hold humans in captive, the prequel rightly focuses on the trigger points such as feelings, emotions and egos and that is the USP of this film. Rupert Wyatt’s direction carefully transcends the species gap to slowly show Caesar as a near-human gradually during the film. His depiction of the growing frustration of a species that is considered good enough only for experimentation or for entertaining children at zoos is superb. He is aided by excellent performance capture technology that shows the apes to be lifelike even though they are digitally created over the performance of human actors.

Andrew Serkis, seems to be carving a niche for himself in the performance capture space, with roles like Gollum in Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Captain Haddock in TinTin and now Caesar. This is a new field of digital acting and looks promising enough to become commonplace in the years to come. James Franco as Will Rodman shows good dramatic range as an ever improving actor. Frieda Pinto as Rodman’s love interest has a blink and miss part, while John Lithgow as Will’s ailing father is convincing in a small but significant role.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a as good a prequel as you can get.