There’s the scene of an eight-year-old Caesar feeling angst upon seeing a family’s pet dog leashed the same way he was. The script worked best when it allowed Serkis to give us his interpretation of an intelligent ape going through the spectra of human emotion. At no point did the CGI fail and give us the idea that this isn’t a real ape in front of us. Seeing Caesar as a three-year-old, masterfully swinging on the rafters of his California home and then later on, in a forest reserve was a visual treat. The film could have been titled Caesar and dealt only with the travails in the life of an intelligent ape and it would have been a far better movie. As expected, complications would arise which would then supposedly lead to the status quo of the original Planet of the Apes. Believing the virus a successful cure to Alzheimer’s, Will injects his father with a prototype vaccine and cures Charles overnight. The years soon pass and Caesar proves to be superior in intelligence to human children his age. Wanting to observe the effects of the virus on the ape, now named Caesar, Will decides to raise it. Charles is fascinated with the baby ape Will brought home especially after it first exhibits signs of higher-than-normal intelligence. Due to this incident, all the apes that exposed to the virus strain get put down save one, a newborn who Rodman agrees to bring home.Īt home, we meet Will’s Father, Charles Rodman, (John Lithgow) who turns out to be the very reason why Will is so obsessed with curing the disease. Right before human testing can begin, though, the project is nearly shut down as a runaway ape wreaks havoc in the scientific facility and crashes a meeting of the board of directors. The potential cure being tested at the moment by their drug company is a virus strain injected into apes which seems to stimulate their brain functions. Will Rodman (Franco) is a brilliant scientist hard at work trying to develop a cure to Alzheimer’s.
#RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES WILL MOVIE#
Unfortunately, the movie ends up just a notch better than the usual summer Hollywood blockbuster fare as the actual ascension of these intelligent simians by the end of the film becomes too much of a by-the-numbers affair. Those scenes would invariably be the ones where the film’s true protagonist, the precocious ape Caesar, played by Andy Serkis, managed to shine. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a pretty enjoyable Hollywood movie with a handful of scenes of both visual wonder and solid character work.