The Rise of Planet of the Apes 2011

So here we are at The Rise of the Planet of the Apes from 2011!  We find Charlton Heston making his 5th appearance in the series.  In this movie, Will Rodman works at a science lab and he is looking for a cure for Alzheimer’s because his father, Charles, has been stricken with it.  In reality, Heston passed away from it in 2008.  This brings it close to my heart because my mother has dementia, a close cousin to this disease and often a precursor to the disease.

The budget for this movie was a whopping $93,000,000!

So into the movie we go…there is a chimp named Caesar who Will brings home and he grows up in their house.  He’s very close to Charles:

 

Caesar works on cognitive skills designed by Will, sign language, and puzzles (the puzzle he works on is the Statue of Liberty, a nod to the original Ape movie, and at another time, Caesar is posing as “The Thinker”, the famous French sculpture).

At the lab, Will is working on a drug for Alzheimer’s, the ALZ112 shot.  He steals some and starts injecting his father as he slips further away mentally.  It improves his brain function and brings him back.  Things are great!

Caesar is taken to the Redwoods to play and sees pets on leashes.  At age 5 he questions his life and wonders:  Am I a pet?

Soon the Alzheimer’s disease returns to Charles and in a neighborhood event, Caesar violently protects Charles.  He goes ape shit!  He is taken away and caged at a horrible facility, unbeknownst to Will, with enraged apes in cages.  It’s like an insane asylum.  He is hosed, tortured, etc. and ends up in a fetal position, feeling left by Will.  When will finally returns to visit him and promises, “Trust me.  I’ll get you out.” Caesar is disappointed and mad.  He has lost his trust for humans.

By this time, Charles has died and Will comes to take him home.  Caesar won’t go.  His heart has hardened and he is hurt which leads to the great apes escape.  Caesar leads a revolt.  As in the original movie, we see a famous line, “Take your stinking paw off me you damn dirty ape!”  Caesar says, “NO!”

The apes are on the loose, kind of like “Apes in the City” (Sex in the City).  They tear up the city and let all the animals in the zoo loose.  Chaos erupts!

Later, Will finds Caesar and says, “I’m sorry.  I’ll take you home.”  Caesar responds with, “Caesar is home”, in the wild, in the Redwoods, where he belongs.

Here’s the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28Z_D9Grh18

Shouldn’t we let the animals live in their natural habitat instead of housing them in zoos?

To me, this was one of the best in the series.  It really had me interested!

The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes of 2014 would be my next blog but I have had enough of this series, and of science fiction.  It’s time for me to go to my s-hero and one of my all time top 5 fave movies–Gorillas in the Mist!

Planet of the Apes–Remake–2001–Tim Burton

    

Can you believe it?  After all of the sequels they decided it wasn’t enough and made a remake of the original 1968 version (that I recently reviewed) in 2001.  Well, I decided I just had to check it out but first, let’s check on the movie trivia!

Tim Burton directed it so that causes immediate interest.  What crazy stuff would he do?  Well one thing is that he refused to call it a remake (so sorry Tim) but rather a reimagination.  Mark Wahlberg was in as soon as he heard that.  He refused to wear the loincloth so as not to remind audiences of his undie modeling 🙂

33 years after the original, the budget for this one multiplied, just…oh…100 billion!

Rick Baker is the genius behind the make up. Fantastic sets and make up:

      

Rick is also briefly in the film when the humans are transported to Ape City in a cage.  The ape in the middle with gray hair smoking a water pipe? That’s Rick!

——–SPOILER ALERT——-

(as in all my blogs)

The film takes place on Feb. 14 of 2029 and in Dec. of 5021.  The original movie was set on a future earth but this one is set on a different planet with two moons.  The ending is more like the novel ending whereby Taylor finds a ship and escapes the ape planet with a human female.  They set our for Earth but because they traveled at light speed, many centuries have passed and Earth has evolved into an ape society.

Time for the movie and time to see what Tim Burton has done (here’s Tim!):

This version began with what I call “technical boredom” but I appreciated the updated landing!  So I’m watching the movie and who pops up on screen?  Chris Kristopherson!  Say what??  Anyway, the gorillas chase down the humans and bag ’em.  One ape says, “You damn dirty human!”  Interesting because in the original Heston says that about an ape.  Additionally, there’s a lot of humorous lines such as, “Can’t we all just get along?”  (Apparently not…)

All the humans converge with Taylor and there is a war between the humans and the apes (obviously).  An explosion, fighting, blah, blah, blah…

Then a little spaceship lands with Taylor’s chimp inside!  There’s a thumbs up and the famous kiss between Taylor and the lady chimp:

Now it gets interesting.  Taylor and the female/human jump into the spaceship and crash land!  Not in front of the Statue of Liberty but in front of the Lincoln Memorial Washington Monument!  But look closely at the statue:

Did you see it? Lincoln has an ape face!  The gorilla police arrive and we have reached the end…oh those apes 🙂