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 Novel 1963

Next in the  gorillas series is the novel Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle written in 1963.

When I decided to include the Plant of the Ape series I really doubted I would enjoy reading a science fiction novel but I loved it!  Who knew??

Basically it takes place in the future where 3 astronauts land on what seems to be a planet like Earth.  It appears to be paradise but we all know, anything that seems too good, isn’t.  What they discover is that on this planet humans are savage ignorant beasts who run around naked.  Who rules? Apes of course and there is a hierarchy in this ape world:  gorillas take care of manual labor, chimpanzees are highly intelligent, and the orangutans are high officials that ultimately rule the planet.  Only 1 astronaut actually survives and he must make his way from his capture, kept naked in a cage, to unlock the secret of this terrifying civilization.  Adventure, satire and suspense leads this book that comes to a very surprising end, different from the movie but the same basic outcome.

It took 2 years of space travel to arrive at this planet that very closely resembled Earth.  They ventured out onto sand and saw a print that looked like a human footprint.  Another planet and species similar to Earth?  What could this be? Gorillas appeared, dressed in human clothes and the humans they saw were without clothes.  The gorillas captured the astronaut in a net and put him in a cage with the others and soon realized they couldn’t speak.  He later saw lady gorillas sitting in armchairs sipping drinks through straws!

Zira was the she-chimp and the Head of the Department.  Once she realized that Ulysse’s could talk, she became interested in him and ended up helping him escape.  She told him that “With only two hands, each with short clumsy fingers, man is probably handicapped at birth…”

Many situations take place that you will want to read but eventually Ulysse is let out by Zira to explore and figure things out and it gets very interesting.  He finds a doll and skeletons of men.  MAN HAD preceded these apes!

Read it to know it all!!

 

Frankenstein Book Series by Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz is a New York Times best selling author and he decided to write his own version of Frankenstein in 5 separate books.  I read them all ravenously.  The first 3 were especially good.  At the time, I was so engrained in the old black and while movie versions that I didn’t really think I would be able to transition to a new science fiction aspect, but I did.

Book 1:  Prodigal Son (2005)

Before the first chapter, he starts out with FIRST… he wrote a 60 minute TV series pilot but during the planning of this endeavor things changed and Dean backed out.  They were changing his vision.  In addition, the first 2 books were co-written and Dean says he saw “another character flaw in himself:  I’m not able to collaborate.  I have sat alone at the keyboard for so many years that alone is the only way I know how to do this.”  So now, here we go:

Chapter 1: ” Deucalion seldom slept, but when he did, he dreamed.  Every dream was a nightmare.  None frightened him.  He was the spawn of nightmares, after all; and he had been toughened by a life of terror.”  Here is our monster and finally, he has a name!! Deucalion!  I’ve been waiting for a name in all of my Frankie blogging.  Thanks Dean!

This is a powerful reworking of the original by Mary Shelley filled with mystery, the myth, the terror and the magic.  The two characters who will throughout the series track him are detective Carson and her partner Michael.

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Book 2:  City of Night (2005)

Author’s Note:  “As a kid in school, I never got a positive mark in the plays -well- with -others column.”

Chapter 1:  “Having come to life in a thunderstorm, touched by some strange lightning that animated rather than incinerated, Deucalion had been born on a night of violence.”  Victor Helios (once Frankenstein) had engineered a new race of “humans” to take over the world.  Carson and Michael are still on the heels of Helios.  What will they do about this new “group of Helios humans?”

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Book 3:  Dead and Alive (2009)

Chapter 1:  “Little traffic moved on the streets of New Orleans.  Many restaurants closed early.  For lack of customers, some of the clubs went dark and quiet.  A hurricane was transiting the Gulf…”  Helios’ benighted creations were spinning out of control.  “An ultimate confrontation between damned creature and his mad creator is approaching.  Helios has no idea that his original creation has such powers.  It was beyond his imagining.”

It was in Book 3 that I started to notice the clever little hints of referrals to lines and such from the original black and white movies.  Only those who know those movies would recognize those little lines.

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Book 4:  Lost Souls (2010)

“Men do not differ much about what

things they will call evils;

they differ enormously about what evils

they will call excusable.”

~~G. K. Chesterton

Chapter 1:  From time to time, Deucalion heard sounds from unknown origins but he felt no anxiety.  “He carried no weapon because he feared nothing in the forest, nothing in the night, nothing on Earth.”  The war of humanity had begun.  Intruders were invading homes and assuming identities.  Deucalion saw his maker die in New Orleans two years before yet intuition told him differently.  Detective Carson and Michael are working with Deucalion, and Victor’s engineered wife, Erika 5, to overthrow Victor’s army of intruders.

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Book 5:  The Dead Town (2011)

“Men can always be blind to anything so long

as it is big enough.  It is so difficult to see the

world in which we live.”

~~G. K. Chesterton

Chapter 1:  “Owl-eyed and terrified. Warren Snyder occupied an armchair in his living room.  He sat stiff, erect, his hands upturned in his lap.  On his left temple a silvery bead gleamed.  It was packed with electronics…and had been fired into his brain…he said nothing…as he stared his wife Judy with a similar silver bead and his other wife Judy.”  The war against humanity is now raging in Rainbow, Montana.  The creatures have been set loose.

This is the last book in the series.  How do you think Deucalion, Carson, and Michael will end the war.  Or will they?

Koontz is scary, stylish, inspiring, sharp, and comical.  He is a mastermind of suspense.  If this interests your reading desires, check it out.  I must say that the first 3 were fantastic and I couldn’t s top reading, but I had to read the last 2 to find out what happened!!

Dean Koontz

You’ve gotta wonder about minds like his……