With a screening for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes just around the corner, a revisit of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Rupert Wyatt’s unexpectedly successful prequel/reboot, was necessary. I missed it in theaters, but after viewing it on home release was just as surprised as everyone else to learn that the Apes series was not only still relevant in 2011 (especially in the shadow of the execrable remake from 2001), but that it had such wide box office appeal.
A rewatch hasn’t done much to change my opinion on Rise, though that means maybe it deserves even more credit for the often-seamless motion-capture technology bringing the ape characters to life. The naturalism to Andy Serkis’ performance as Caesar is the keystone for the film’s success both emotionally and financially: for better or worse, audiences are much more sympathetic towards on-screen animals than they often are to most humans, even when the humans aren’t written as so in need of a comeuppance as the ones in Rise are (there’s an audacious misanthropy to having your closing credits showcase most of the world’s human population being wiped out by a virus).
Wyatt could have easily capitalized on this alone to make the film a self-loathing Nature’s Revenge film, a la Godzilla, wherein we kinda get off on the (safely theoretical) premise of humanity’s destruction of earth being forcibly balanced by other inhabitants of the planet There is, of course, an element of that here, but the script and Serkis’ performance make Caesar a captivating and tragic figure all on his own. The brilliant prison-break structure of the film’s mid-section transitions the character from pitiful Andy Dufresne to a charismatic Spartacus, and the 20-minute climax on the Golden Gate Bridge is refreshingly focused for a blockbuster finale; no ticking time bombs, no secondary squad of characters trying to achieve another goal, just a good, clean mad-dash to freedom.
The second viewing did further reveal the ironic contrast between the heightened intelligence of the apes, and how generally dumb Rise is as a film. It treats scientists like magicians with trendier set designers (making occasional overtures towards a theme of “look at man’s hubris!” incredibly grating), which is pretty much par for the course, but even cursory analysis of the plotting on a scientific, geographic, or temporal level reveals a story riddled with inconsistency. It doesn’t really matter though; Apes is a ridiculous premise, but it explores emotional truths about people and our world in ways that all good science fiction should.