Rise of the planet of the apes

Effects + Heart = Movie goodness. Yes, please.


It's exciting to see the fruits of the latest technology applied to movies. In this case, Avatar's big push in motion capture technology, with which the actors can capture body and face performance, allows the "Planet of the Apes" sequel to exist.

The danger is to learn to use this new technology integrated in the storytelling process. Looking at the trailer, it looked a bit like the tragic "I, robot", with Apes replacing the hordes of robots. Except for a couple of images, which encouraged me to go see it, and eventually enjoy it enormously.

The greatest archievement is to me that you root for the main character, a bloody monkey, to the point that you side with him against humans (the little bastards). Apes are in the movie more human than humans, just as in other good stories has happened with robots (Wall-e, Johnny 5), monsters (Hulk, King kong) or aliens (E.T. or this guy). Easy. By doing this rather than trying to trick the audience, the achieve effects that enhance the story instead of replacing it (films like "Hellboy 2", "Clash of the Titans"* or the "Transformers" eternal sequels spring to mind now), and that's why, I believe, certain sequences, which would have otherwise been just a way how showing off much money the movie had, work so well and so honestly. I personally loved the helicopter moment, you'll now when you see it :)


Click HERE if you want to see a special-effects-featurette.
Don't click on it if you don't, that would be silly.


Sure the writers took to some licenses in the story, but the final result is good enough as to want to ignore those bits. Only the feeling that the story wasn't going as far as it could have stopped me from loudly cheering at the end. It seems it was thought up as a trilogy. Well, ok they earned that. As long as we don't go back to battles of giant robots destroying cities for cosmical reasons.

Bring it on.


Niceties aside, "Clash of the Titans" is still the worst movie in modern times in my book. Its sequel, now on the making, means a step back in human evolution and will probably end up destroying the world at least twice.