San Francisco researcher Will Rodman (James Franco) isn’t developing weapons, nor is he an entrepreneur creating a theme park.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes doesn’t pack much cautionary punch, though, nothwithstanding a few Jurassic Parky lines about the consequences of scientific overreaching. The original film, scripted by Rod Serling, was a “Twilight Zone”-esque inversion story with a subtext about race relations and an explicit anti-war twist. Rise doesn’t want to end on a downer, though, and the swelling score during the final scenes underscores the film’s sympathy for the ape uprising, and specifically for its leader Caesar, a computer-rendered chimpanzee whose movements and expressions are supplied by Andy Sirkus via the same sort of performance-capture technology that he used to play Gollum and King Kong in Peter Jackson’s films. For those who haven’t seen the original, I won’t spoil what that image is, but I can’t avoid taking for granted that Rise of the Planet of the Apes must put mankind’s planetary dominance on the path to collapse. Yet how are we meant to feel about that crescendo? That iconic final image in the original film was horrifying because it represented the downfall of humanity’s best and noblest ideals and aspirations. In some ways Rise is a better-made film, particularly in the final act, where it builds toward an inevitable climax like a crescendo. Like Captain America, Rise is based on a ridiculous premise but takes it seriously, spending a great deal more time on the pseudo-science and, despite some lapses, investing it with a greater sense of plausibility. Think of the famously iconic climactic image from the original 1968 Planet of the Apes - the downfall of everything Captain America represents. Instead of a research project intended to create an army of super-soldiers that, due to unforeseen misfortune, never gets beyond the prototype, Rise offers a research project that produces an accidental prototype which eventually leads to an unforeseen army - not of super-soldiers but of super-apes, who of course do not champion the American way but will eventually destroy it.
In a number of respects, Rise of the Planet of the Apes plays as a sort of mirror image of Captain America. Like First Class, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a prequel/reboot to an existing cinematic franchise and, like both First Class and Captain America - the best popcorn action movies of the summer - Rise tells a well-crafted back story about biologically enhanced beings. An origin story, oh yes, like so many others this summer, including X-Men: First Class, Thor, Green Lantern and Captain America: The First Avenger.
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