Apes Rise!
By Nathan Cone

Early on in second-time director Rupert Wyatt’s flawed but highly entertaining “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” a mama chimpanzee goes berserk. She’s hopped up on ALZ-112, an experimental drug designed to treat Alzheimer’s Disease in humans.  Mama breaks free from the lab and careens through the facility at breakneck speeds, only to be shot and killed. I thought to myself, “Stupid scientists. Always have a stun gun nearby.”

In fact there are plenty of questionable moves made by scientists and other humans in this movie, making it all the more easy for the apes to rise, and for us maniacs to blow it up, damn it all to hell! But despite a few convenient plot points, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is great escapist sci-fi fare.

James Franco plays the main human character, Will Rodman, a neuroscientist that has a bad habit of taking things home with him, whether it’s drugs to cure his ailing father, or a little chimp named Caesar that he raises to the age of three and trains to do complex mathematical puzzles.  Caesar, having been affected by the ALZ-112 vaccine, makes astonishing leaps forward in cognitive development. Will treats him like a member of the family, and he almost gets away with it except for -- well, there you go again, he doesn’t lock the doors, and one day Caesar gets out, harms one of Will’s neighbors, and is captured by the animal control program of San Francisco.

Penned up with other primates for the first time, Caesar begins to resent his human daddy, and eventually claims his stake as the leader of the ape jail. For Will, a science experiment that began with good intentions soon turns into the beginning of the end for the rest of us, damn it all to hell!  (Coincidentally, the Institute of Medicine this week recommended stricter guidelines for chimpanzee research, so maybe we’re safe from Caesar after all).

Really, the humans aren’t the main reason to watch this movie, though they do help move the plot along. Poor Freida Pinto is cast as a very good looking primatologist, but isn’t given much to do other explain things like “he’s holding his hand in a submissive gesture.” John Lithgow ambles through the role of Will’s father, and in a bit of typecasting, Thomas Felton (Malfoy in the “Harry Potter” movies) plays a cruel animal keeper at the primate facility where Caesar is held.

No, the apes are the stars here, and by that token, Andy Serkis should take top billing on the movie. This month, 20th Century Fox is launching a unique promotional campaign to get Serkis an Oscar nomination for playing Caesar, despite the face and form of Serkis never appearing in the film. Through the magic of motion capture CGI, Caesar is recreated from Serkis’ performance. I must say it is very, very impressive, and expressive. Motion capture has obviously advanced to the point where a talented actor/mime like Serkis can help animators deliver a photo realistic creature that sidesteps the Uncanny Valley and feels genuinely real. “The Time Is Now,” the Oscar ads shout, and I can’t say I disagree with them. Caesar is the real star of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” and his role, and the movie itself, would be nothing without Serkis’ performance.

Caesar eventually breaks free of his prison, taking his ape army with him. After a spectacular battle on the Golden Gate Bridge, it’s clear us maniacs are blowing it up, big time. Damn it all to hell, there’s going to be a sequel!  But wait a minute--they already made one--in 1968!

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES ON BLU-RAY

The Great Apes of “Rise” looks terrific on Blu-ray. The expressive apes really feel like flesh-and-blood creatures.

The Blu-ray of the film includes many, many special features, from deleted scenes, to audio commentaries, trailers, and making-of featurettes.  Three of these stood out for me, and are well worth your time in exploring.

First, there’s a detailed examination of the motion capture CGI technique used to Andy Serkis and other actors into their simian counterparts on-screen. Seeing the actors deliver their performances on the set really drives home the point that the animation used to create the apes in this film would be much more difficult to complete, and probably less believable, were it not for a human performance behind the character. Indeed, in a movie where the apes are meant to be approaching human intelligence, it’s probably essential that humans play the parts.

I also enjoyed a short interview with composer Patrick Doyle, and footage of the orchestra and African choir he employed to perform the score.  Doyle even shares a very funny story about how muttering to himself while walking around the kitchen inspired a key cue in the film. I won’t spoil his joke, but I was actually laughing out loud as I marveled at how the creative process works sometimes.

Finally, I was quite surprised to see three short interviews with primatologists and scientists about the diet, habitat, and life of gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees, accompanied by weblinks to non-profit preservation organizations. It’s an educational feature I would have never expected on a big studio video release, and kudos to 20th Century Fox for including it.

12/15/11

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