[HorrorScience] Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

Remakes (or reboots or whatever you want to call a new version of a classic and famous film) are not usually very good since they are mainly made to squeeze a little more out of a license that made a lot of money in its day and left a good memory (come on, like the sequels but with the drawback that they tell you the same story again). It is true that there are good remakes (or reboots) (like The Thing by John Carpenter or Scarface by Brian de Palma) but in general, they are not usually very interesting.

The advantage of making a remake is that you use a famous franchise to make quick money and the main drawback is that whatever the movie is, it will be compared to the old ones, which will surely not sit well with it.

On this occasion I am going to talk about Rise of the Planet of the Apes (The origin of the planet of the apes in Spain and Planet of the Apes Revolution in Latin America) the new remake (or reboot) of the franchise planet of the apes.

Will Rodman is a scientist who works in laboratories looking for a cure for Alzheimer's (since his father suffers from it). The experiments are carried out with apes, and end up causing them to become more intelligent. Unfortunately, one day one of the chimpanzees in the laboratory goes crazy and is killed, which causes the cancellation of the tests on apes.

Shortly afterward, Will discovers that the ape that went crazy had recently had a child, which has to be eliminated like the rest of the specimens, however. He is not able to do it and keeps him as a pet..

Years later, the ape (named Caesar) has developed incredible intelligence and is an active part of Will's family. His uneventful life is cut short when the animal attacks his neighbors to protect Will's father. Being considered dangerous, Cesar is taken to a shelter where will have to live with other apes in conditions that can be improved, because the workers there humiliate and mistreat the animals, so César's response will not be long in coming.

The origin of the Planet of the Apes It is a film that, despite the bad feeling it gave me at first, is very worth it. It is true that It totally loses the science fiction essence of the originals (there is no space/time travel here) and it doesn't have the freshness, the anti-war message or the incredible ending of that one either.

The truth is that this movie looks more like some of the sequels from the original, specifically to the one from 1972 (Conquest of the Planet of the Apes , known in Spain as Rise of the Apes) and that doesn't have to be a bad thing, since if they had tried to do the same thing as the original but in a different way, a film similar to Tim Burton's version could have come out, which is a totally unnecessary and forgettable film.

It is true that summarizing the plot to the typical story of experiments done to cure diseases and then the animals rebel is anything but original or fresh (it was not when it was released Deep Blue Sea, imagine now…) but I think it is a lesser evil. I guess it was the simplest and most believable (cinematographically speaking) way to make the apes more intelligent. They could have had Caesar arrive by mistake on the human planet (come on, like the original movie but in reverse) but surely that would have created more problems than solutions (also, remember that Escape from the Planet of the Apes 1971 was already about something like that).

Curiously, what distances this movie the most from the original It is not the story, but viewer positioning and by this I mean that the entire story turns in favor of the apes and it is very difficult not to take their side. The first part of the film may be balanced in this sense, but once Caesar frees the other apes, it is impossible not to hope that they reach safety and emerge victorious. In that sense it reminds me completely of Rise of the Apes, since in the other previous films, sympathy was on the side of humans for the most part.

In summary, although an unoriginal story has been used and its science fiction roots have been completely forgotten espacial El Origen del Planeta de los Simios es una buena película y nos enseña cómo sería una nueva versión de La Rebelión de los Simios. Lo curioso es que en esta película la rebelión no sucede como tal, de manera que recae en las secuelas la tarea de mostrarnos la batalla entre humanos y simios.

Curiosities about the film:

• El simio protagonista se llama César en honor al de La rebelión de los simios.
• Andi Serkis (Gollum en la trilogía de El señor de los anillos and El Hobbit) fue el encargado de interpretar a César.
• El nombre de muchos simios es un homenaje a actores que participaron en las películas antiguas de Planet of the Apes, por ejemplo el orangután se llama Maurice en honor a Maurice Evans, el actor que interpretó al Dr Zaius, una chimpancé se llama Cornelia en Honor al personaje Cornelius y el gorila se llama Buck en honor a Buck Kartalian, que interpretó a los gorilas Julius y Frank.