Caesar leads the charge in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."
(Rupert Wyatt, 2011)
August 11, 2011
by Joel Crary
I admit that I didn’t hold out much hope for “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” As far as weak retreads go, the trailers made it look like one of the weaker ones, packed with action sequences sporting unconvincing special effects. But that’s why you can’t go by trailers; for better or worse, they’ll either overshoot or under-represent, and it’s certainly the latter in the case of “Rise.” The end result is far better than it has any right to be. The appeal of the “Apes” films has always been their willingness to showcase spectacular ridiculousness accompanied by overstuffed social critiques. This time around, it offers something more: empathy.
I just watched “King Kong” last week and was amazed anew by what Peter Jackson and team were able to do with CGI. We’re now seeing movies that simply weren’t possible as recently as 15 years ago. Think back to the last “Planet of the Apes” installment, the remake directed by Tim Burton in 2001. Regardless of what you think of that movie, Burton was able to do a lot with people in monkey suits, which have gone a long way in characterizing the “Apes” movies as little more than kitschy entertainment. Burton’s actors trained hard and were able to move like chimps, but swinging from treetops with a 360-degree perspective on action still eluded the series.
No longer. Hollywood now has Andy Serkis, who back in 2001 provided the human basis for Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.” Gollum came to life through the process of motion capture; while the creature still looked relatively artificial, it captured Serkis’ mannerisms and voice to a credible enough extent. Yoda might have been a puppet back in 1980, but we accepted him because he was physically in the frame. CGI has now progressed to the point where we can buy an artificially inserted character if it looks real enough in and of itself, but it also needs the all-important ingredient of a story. What brought Gollum to life wasn’t his creepy underwordly appearance. It was his plight.
Caesar, the main chimp in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” has a story, and Serkis gives him an overly effective sense of presence through movement and expression (no stranger to simian roles, Serkis also worked as Kong in 2005). This is why “Rise” succeeds; though the effects work is jarring at first, we become accustomed to it because we’re attracted to the performance behind it. There’s a very real emotional core underneath Caesar’s trials and tribulations. We forget that it’s a collection of pixels and focus on those pixels’ relationship to the world in which they’ve been unwillingly placed.
“Rise” tosses us into the action right away, as a collection of chimps are rounded up from the jungle and held in the GEN-SYS laboratory, a cold and sterile contrast to freedom. Dr. Will Rodman (James Franco) is searching for a cure for Alzheimer’s and administering a virus to the chimps, who grow exponentially smarter as a result. A violent outburst from one chimp cuts potential funding off at the root, and all of the test subjects are put down save baby Caesar, whom Will takes home to continue his research unabated. Will’s father (John Lithgow) has Alzheimer’s; his waning ability to play the piano clashes tragically with degrees of music on the wall.
The movie is paced incredibly well. We watch the intelligent Caesar grow into adolescence, when he starts noticing differences between himself and human beings. Will builds the obligatory love interest with animal doctor Caroline Aranha (Freida Pinto), but we’re focusing on Caesar’s inevitable outburst. It comes in an attack on a neighbour (Hey! David Hewlitt!), landing him in an ape penitentiary with a PO’d Brian Cox serving as warden. This is where “Rise” gets really good, showing its true nature as a prison film; Caesar learns to communicate with the other apes, learns about dominance in the animal kingdom, and builds a understandably nasty grudge against humanity in the process.
The uprising is a sight to behold. “Rise” rarely winks, and when it does, it’s to terrific dramatic effect. There are a couple of homages to Charlton Heston, and both play incredibly well with regard to the film’s thematic structure. The rest holds on for dear life to the wacky pseudoscience on display. It doesn’t overindulge to the extent that the recent sci-fi actioner “Cowboys & Aliens” does; instead, “Rise” takes careful aim at developing its central creation, giving it a psychology, letting it react to the situation it’s been placed in, and affording it a way out that makes perfect sense.
The film sports a few glaring plot holes, mostly human related. (We’re given a “five years later” placard to get Caesar to adolescence; a lot can happen in five years, but not much seems to.) But director Rupert Wyatt and the writing team have done a very respectable job with this material, mining every scrap of empathy we can possibly feel for Caesar along the way and making it feel deserved. I wanted the story to continue right after the film ended. It’s quite possible that after over 40 years, we haven’t yet seen the best of the “Apes” films. “Rise” gives the franchise new legs and holds promise for a dystopian future of computer-rendered-beach-pounding proportions.
I was more than pleasantly surprised myself. Generally speaking, I dislike CGI, especially when it intends to be organic. However, I don’t think the performances in ‘Apes’ would have been as good had they been done animatronically. Certainly most of the apes’ sequences would not have been as successful. As you stated, a good story and a good film can make one overlook flaws in special effects.