Rise of the Planet of the Apes, showing on Hulu, is the first movie in this series and has a theme entirely different from the original Planet of the Apes. They aren’t comparable. Which is good, because it’s difficult to beat the gravitas of Charlton Heston. He had some great lines and really sells them. The 1968 series has a racial tension theme, and while the first movie is enjoyable, the rest of the movies in that series are a weak.
The Tim Burton Planet of the Apes from 2001 is best forgotten.
The 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes has a straight forward theme. Don’t be this guy:
When the robot uprising begins, saying, “I was just following the testing protocol.” isn’t going to work any better than, “I was just following orders.” worked at Nuremberg.
The message of Rise of the Planet of the Apes is that humans are jerks. Even the scientist who is kind to apes is a jerk for ignoring testing protocols and lab safety procedures. The escaped virus kills most humans and makes apes smarter.
The movie came out in 2011, and has good looking CGI. It cost $93 million to make, which is $173 million in today’s money. That’s not bad considering all the CGI apes. The apes were as realistic as they had to be. Perfectly realistic apes would take away from the movie because they wouldn’t be as expressive.
I’m not reviewing all of the movies in the series because the quality is maintained.
The theme of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is that apes are jerks, just like people. Apes can kill apes, run false-flag operations, lie and ruin lives for personal power. This movie takes place a decade later, when most humans are dead and there are a bunch of apes living like savages in the forest. They live in an Ewok village and have the ability to make fire. The phony masks on the medical apes are a nice touch. It’s a Cargo Cult imitation of a doctor’s mask.
