Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a smartly made, effective movie — but what sort of movie is it, exactly?
An origin story, oh yes, like so many others this summer, including X-Men: First Class, Thor, Green Lantern and Captain America: The First Avenger. Like First Class, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a prequel/reboot to an existing cinematic franchise; and, like both First Class and Captain America — the best popcorn action movies of the summer — Rise tells a well-crafted back story about biologically enhanced beings.
In a number of respects, Rise of the Planet of the Apes plays as a sort of mirror image of Captain America. Instead of a research project intended to create an army of super soldiers that, due to unforeseen misfortune, never gets beyond the prototype, Rise offers a research project that produces an accidental prototype that eventually leads to an unforeseen army — not of super soldiers but of super apes, who, of course, do not champion the American way, but will eventually destroy it. Think of the famously iconic climatic image from the original 1968 Planet of the Apes — the downfall of everything Captain America represents.
Like Captain America, Rise is based on a ridiculous premise, but takes it seriously, spending a great deal more time on the pseudoscience and, despite some lapses, investing it with a greater sense of plausibility. In some ways, Rise is a better-made film, particularly in the final act, where it builds toward an inevitable climax like a crescendo.
Yet, how are we meant to feel about that crescendo? That iconic final image in the original film was horrifying because it represented the downfall of humanity’s best and noblest ideals and aspirations. For those who haven’t seen the original, I won’t spoil what that image is, but I can’t avoid taking for granted that Rise of the Planet of the Apes must put mankind’s planetary dominance on the path to collapse.
Rise doesn’t want to end on a downer, though, and the swelling score during the final scenes underscores the film’s sympathy for the ape uprising, and specifically for its leader Caesar, a computer-rendered chimpanzee whose movements and expressions are supplied by Andy Serkis via the same sort of performance-capture technology that he used to play Gollum and King Kong in Peter Jackson’s films.
The original film, scripted by Rod Serling, was a Twilight Zone-esque inversion story with a subtext about race relations and an explicit anti-war twist. Rise of the Planet of the Apes doesn’t pack much cautionary punch, though, notwithstanding a few Jurassic Park-y lines about the consequences of scientific overreaching. San Francisco researcher Will Rodman (James Franco) isn’t developing weapons, nor is he an entrepreneur creating a theme park. His motives are nobler and more personal: He’s trying to cure Alzheimer’s, which his father (an affecting John Lithgow) suffers from.
Of course, Will’s wonder drug doesn’t just restore lost brain function in test chimpanzees, but elevates their brainpower — and a test subject, Bright Eyes, somehow passes on a capacity for higher cognitive function to an infant chimp who will be Caesar. (One of the more glaring early plausibility gaffes: Neither Will nor anyone else in the lab knew Bright Eyes was pregnant or had delivered an infant on the day of a critical demonstration.)
From its opening scene, Rise establishes a theme of innocent apes terrorized and abused by human beings. (Contrast Jurassic Park’s first scene, in which human beings are terrorized by predators of their own creation.) Ape-on-ape cruelty is seen, but in captivity, where the apes are mistreated in a bleak animal-control facility by the facility director and his sadistic son (Brian Cox and Harry Potter’s Tom Felton).
Rise tells Caesar’s story slowly and with pathos, creating a level of sympathy remarkable for a computer-animated character who doesn’t speak (or rather who generally communicates with limited bits of sign language). Caesar is brought up not in a lab, but in the home Will shares with his father and later with his live-in girlfriend, a gorgeous chimp specialist named Caroline (Slumdog Millionaire’s Freida Pinto). Like many adolescent chimps, Caesar develops the potential for frightening violence, but it’s given a sympathetic spin in a fateful episode that’s one of the film’s more complex and effective moments.
There are striking resonances with the current documentary Project Nim, about a chimpanzee initially raised as a human being, but eventually transferred to less stimulating and comfortable quarters. Nim’s handlers strove to teach him sign language, though the project’s director, Dr. Herbert Terrace, ultimately judged the experiment a failure, concluding that Nim had merely become a “proficient begger.” Of course, Nim’s mother wasn’t Bright Eyes.
On the other hand, Rise ascribes super simian capabilities even to non-enhanced apes — notably a preposterously proficient orangutan that Caesar meets in the animal-control facility. (“You can sign?” Caesar signals incredulously to the orangutan. “Circus orangutan” is the other’s laconic explanation. A response truer to the gibberish that ape signing generally produces might have been something like “Sign me orangutan me me want sign orangutan” — and, if Terrace was right about Nim’s proficiency being begging rather than verbalizing, the orang might have had no interest in signing to Caesar anyway. Other insights from the non-enhanced orangutan include things like “Apes stupid” and “Humans no like smart apes.”)
The gap between ordinary apes and enhanced once — and, by extension, between apes and humans — is further blurred when a small mob of enhanced apes descends on the San Francisco Zoo, liberating the apes in captivity and swelling their ranks with additional troops who all apparently follow Caesar, and instructions, as readily as the enhanced apes. (The movie cheats with numbers: Caesar’s original force can’t be much more than a few dozen — an implausibly high number to start with — and the zoo can’t have that many more; but, by the end, it appears Caesar’s army somehow numbers in the hundreds, at least.)
This glossing over the linguistic and cognitive gap between humans and apes is more problematic here, in a story about the beginning of ape ascendancy and human downfall, than it might be in another story. The film suggests an incipient posthumanism in more senses than one: Not only does it depict the beginning of the end of the age of humans, it doesn’t seem to recognize anything precious or unique being lost with human nature, since people and animals aren’t that different to begin with.
On the contrary, the ape uprising is depicted as an oppressed population rising up against the oppressors. The climactic set piece, a clash of human and ape forces on a mist-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge, echoes all sorts of monster-movie scenes — a scene in James Cameron’s Aliens, in which the Marines know the aliens are approaching but can’t see them, comes to mind — but the film’s sympathies are with the approaching creatures, not with the humans. Nothing identifies the humans making their stand on the bridge with anything as nobly human as the ideals evoked in that climactic image from the original film.
The last act of Rise is both compelling and troubling in a way that reminds me of the History Channel’s series Life After People, a surprise hit that vividly extrapolates the science of how the natural world would reassert itself over the works of man if human beings suddenly vanished from the earth. The science of how abandoned buildings decay and crumble, domesticated animals return to feral conditions and so forth is fascinating, but there’s something disconcertingly nihilistic about the sensationalistic evocation of the world going on in the sudden absence of people.
The show’s tagline, “Welcome to Earth … Population: Zero,” captures the spirit of what troubles me. In a world rife with posthuman philosophy, in which human beings are often seen as a blight on the planet and eco-nihilists like the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement fantasize about “phasing out the human race” to “allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health,” it seems to me that there is a potential posthuman porn effect in the likes of Life After People. We’re invited to contemplate a world without people, not in existential terms, but in terms of how fascinating the results are. In a world without people, it may be felt that the achievements of human civilization no longer have meaning. If the Washington Monument falls in D.C. and nobody hears it, does it make a difference?
I’m not necessarily indicting Life After People, or Rise of the Planet of the Apes, as “posthuman porn.” For what it’s worth, I enjoyed Rise while I was watching it. It works well as a prequel to the original film, complete with obligatory quotations and clever visual references. My concerns may be as much a matter of cultural context as content. Still, cultural context can be as important as content in what a work has to say to us.
Register film critic Steven D. Greydanus blogs at NCRegister.com.
Content advisory: Scenes of violence and menace, including mistreatment of animals by humans, conflict between apes, and a battle between apes and armed humans; an apparent live-in relationship; some cursing and limited profanity. Teens and up.
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“The movie cheats with numbers: Caesar’s original force can’t be much more than a few dozen — an implausibly high number to start with — and the zoo can’t have that many more; but, by the end, it appears Caesar’s army somehow numbers in the hundreds, at least.”
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This is partly why the movie’s premise fails the verisimilitude test for me: in the US we have (relatively) few apes, and whole lot of gun-toting humans (plus tactical nukes).
FWIW, Pierce, that’s a verisimilitude problem for a sequel. Rise ends with the downfall of humanity still very much in the future—although there’s a definite indication that the clock is ticking, and not simply because of the apes.
This movie makes the obvious choice and sympathizes with the apes. this movie could have been very good, if it had maybe gone in a somewhat different direction, here are the changes i would have made- I would have shown humans in a slightly more sympathetic light, it would have still been a tragic story, but not just because the apes are mistreated, but because all the noble values that America holds dear are crumbling before your eyes. but i’m just some kid, i could be getting this completly wrong.
as I was discussing this with a friend—so if this happens in the US, the rest of the world just sits back and watches ? I dont think so.
@JL,
Silly! This is Hollywood. The US is the world.
I look forward to seeing it, despite all those terribly redundant flaws that you have pointed out (the very reasons why I disliked Cameron’s Avatar). Yes, humans are evil. Human-like apes would be just as bad, wouldn’t they? Hopefully a sequel will show us how a group of 100 chimps can take down 7 billion people. It’s with nets and horses, right? Or, maybe these super-smart apes invent the four-pronged trident!
The irony of the “post-human” phenomenon is that if there’s no one left in the future, there will be no “person” to observe it (leaving aside spiritual beings, or hyper-intelligent apes), so there’s no one to engage in the act of contemplation and appreciation that its proponents are carrying out. Is it good for the Earth not to be able to understand itself? Even the highest animals have an incredible myopia compared to the human mind.
I was really hoping I would read your review of Rise and say how exciting it was and how the plot was ripe with strong subtexts thus saving the summer not just from the apes, but from the string of lousy films. I’ll probably save my cash and stay home for this one.
@ William: I was really hoping that too. Sorry. Right now your best bet is Captain America. Or maybe Midnight in Paris.
@Colin Kerr:
Would a “four-pronged trident” be a tetradent? Or a quadtent?
What would Lewis Carroll say?
TeaPot562
@ TeaPot562: Excellent question. The most common usage seems to be “quadrident.” (“Tetradent” is a pharmaceutical, and “quadtent,” with that stray “t,” seems to be a tent for four people. “Quadent” appears to be a software company.) Thanks for keeping it real and raising the important questions. ;-D
Well they also hadat least a few dozen research apes to swell their numbers,remember. I don’t think the apes contribute directly to the fall of humanity,but rather the virus created by James Franco’s character wipes out a majorit of humanity,and the descendants of Caesar’s small group,now passing on the intellectual enhancements genetically,multiply and spread and pick up where the humans left off,building their own civilizationon the ruins by salvaging leftover human technology.I too had a problem with the preposterously articulate orangutan character,but it doesn’t detract at all from the excitement of this filmI give it a 9 out of ten
[reading from the sacred scrolls of the apes] Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.
Although I’ve seen few reviewers mention this I think this sounds like a redo of a specific “Planet of the Apes” movie rather than just a prequel. Or at least I remember a film with a chimp named “Caesar” leading a revolt. Although the revolt in this one sounds like it makes less sense. In that one, from the 1970s I think, an entire race of apes has been genetically engineered and enslaved. (Although Caesar is the child of the couple in the original film, who ended up in the 20th c via time travel) Also at the end Caesar decides not all humans are bad and they will allow a kind of uneasy-peace with humans.
As for the “post-human” thing I think it’s somewhat like the thing Lewis was dealing with at the time. Not that there would be no “persons” “After Humanity” but that there would be some new sentient-sapient being. So they would be able to observe whatever “cool thing” happens. (“Life After People” doesn’t precisely do that, but it sounds like this film does. I don’t think that “Some other species, if smart, would be better than us” is nihilistic so much as misanthropic.)
@ ChoRyu , I think part of movie was showing that American values and civilization are declining. This is represented metaphorically by the demise of the world at the end of the movie. Trust me, if our great nation continues to decline and disappears into history, we are in that much trouble. It will be the end of the world.
Greed, like the kind that recently has placed this great country into a spiral downfall, is portrayed in the movie. The President of the pharmaceutical company is the poster child for this. It also shows how greed overshadows the common good. I’ve always heard that polio is the last disease that will ever be cured. The reason being that it is not profitable for these companies to cure diseases. So their goal is to find a treatment that will allow us to live with the disease, but be dependent on their drugs for the rest of our lives. This is somewhat portrayed in movie in that the company did not want to research the cure further even though it would be for the benefit of mankind to cure the disease. The company president only wanted to study the medicine when he thought he had a cash cow.
This is contrary to when polio was cured. I wasn’t around back then, but I’ve noticed that there was a social evolution during those days. Many social programs designed to help people, like welfare, Medicaid, etc., were put in place between the 40’s and 50’s and 60’s. Whatever good or bad these programs have brought, they were designed to have one thing in common, to help those in need (the hungry poor, the sick, etc…). While not a perfect history (in terms of how people are treated), I don’t think that any other civilization in history has ever shown such an awareness of a person’s dignity and value and has done as much as the U.S. to help those in need. And while these programs are not perfect, they are a reflection of the value this country placed on its citizens. Didn’t Jesus ask that we help the poor, and sick, etc. No other nation in history has ever taken this to heart like the USA!! But this country is so divided today, I think most are blind to their brothers.
The apes in this movie show some of these good values. Just pay attention to how Cesear even extents his hand to his enemy and liberates him because he knows that his enemy has dignity and value as an individual and is no different than himself. Cesear is not greedy and shares the cookies with all the other apes. So I think that the movie does show how tragic it is that our country is losing the values that made it so wonderful.
I wondered what socially redeeming value the film had since there was no happy or positive ending. The film was exciting, but I would have ended it with a kind of “curtain call” to let the audience know that it was all in fun: During the credits, I would have had all the smart apes in a piano lounge singing, “I left my heart in San Francisco.” And I would have had some of the violent apes take a bow together with some of the law-enforcement folks to show that nobody really got hurt. One of my family members countered that that would make a sequel harder to believe, but I really do like to see a positive ending rather than something frighteningly depressing.
Stephen,
I agree with two of your thoughtful points about the film: that humanity is not portrayed especially sympathetically, and that because it does not uphold the nobility of humanity in some form, we’re left a little jarred at the end.
I would argue, however, that the movie is a less biting but solid heir to Rod Serling’s own satirical method, in which it’s natural that humanity is not portrayed sympathetically, and that the end should jar. Secondly, I don’t see a compelling argument that the ape uprising is portrayed in an “oppressed” over the “oppressor” way, that the filmmakers are striking a Spartacus note rather than what I think it is: a Frankenstein one.
Serling’s method involves what you could call “reversals in the form of ramifications.” He exposes us to human weakness we’d rather not deal with in our consciences, and then, in a reversal, shows starkly just where that “weakness” leads. There is a classic example in “The Twilight Zone” episode where the reversal is that a pig-faced humanity wishes to perform plastic surgery on the supermodel to make her “beautiful” like them. The whole episode we are perhaps not strongly morally opposed to what is going on. The plastic surgery, though, involves at least three gray areas in our experience: the quest for external beauty, the societal pressure of conformity, and science’s facilitation of these two things. The black reversal shows us that external beauty is very subjective, conformity can be very frightening, and that with such science in the hands of imperfect people, we may be not increasingly more empowered, but more trapped.
This movie also sets up a satisfying reversal in three steps involving uncomfortable truths about humanity.
1. The way that science treats animals is often shockingly cruel and offensive. All of us would rather not see pictures of the chickens tricked by twice-daily lamps to lay double the eggs they should, or hear about the animal parts they’re feeding cows, or how the latest breakthrough pain medication was tested by inflicting pain on animals. These are ugly truths which we squirm about a little but then force ourselves to ignore as not overly serious, until a report about the lack of nutrition in our eggs, or mad cow disease happens and the public suddenly wants to know why we’re feeding cow brains to cows. We only become concerned about cruelty to animals when it involves consequences to ourselves, without ever making the connection that to torture an animal cruelly for our goals may be an “ends justify the means” deal we should never be striking in the first place. That’s the soul of much of Serling’s black humor: he suddenly confronts us with a ramification of what we thought was only mild evil, and suddenly makes it real.
I was surprised at the subtle ways the filmmakers confronted us with the majesty of the wild animals, and how we can’t help but feel that caging and torturing animals is not what God meant by “subduing” creation. There is the powerful great ape, whose howl should be striking awe into the hearts of jungle-goers continents away, confined to a cage barely bigger than himself. Or rows of caged apes putting out their hands from their cages, asking in exchange for the environment they’ve been deprived of, at least a Chips Ahoy cookie. In a recent study with rabbits, scientists were baffled when one group of rabbits started to show increased overall health despite the same conditions as the rest. Later, an intern revealed she had been secretly opening the cages at night, and petting and playing with the bunnies. It’s things like this that confront us with the issue that there is something “respondable” in animals – something we should be respectful of, and that confronts us with an uncomfortable truth about how and why we allow science a carte blanche with their minds and bodies.
The majesty aspect may simply be my own idea but I believe the film definitely includes two things that follow from this cruel attitude to animals – one dark and Serling-esque, but the other I feel remarkably thoughtful, a.k.a. point # 2.
2. It’s logical that the aloof “objectivity” that allows scientists to inflict incredible cruelty to animals explains how increasingly humans are becoming the victims and even subjects of science. (Although it obviously doesn’t say this, it could be step one for why science can so easily contemplate things like cloning or embryonic stem cell research that we as Catholics find so offensive.) Flesh is flesh, or else flesh is money, and with no moral boundaries on how they treat test “subjects” in their pursuit of a “cure,” all flesh is about the same. We see this in Will who wants to use his own father, to use a pertinent phrase here “like a guinea pig,” and almost injects him with a deadly disease until his father, wise even in his dementia, leans a hand on his son’s to stop. Will’s pursuit has already mortally wounded one of the sympathetic humans in the film, though – his overweight, bearded co-worker – when his reckless experiments transfer the virus to him. Even in those with the best intentions, this unmistakable starting point of a certain type of science, the kind that wants to play God and starts by throwing accountability and boundaries out the window, can not help but have ramifications for all of us, which it does in the film.
3. This is where I think point three in the film comes out. The Serling-esque ramification by reversal is that that which was happening in private, which seemed to affect no one – what was going on in the dirty cages to the monkeys – becomes the only important and lasting thing on the earth, while the hoped-for Utopia that is the “march of science” that humans were willing to risk everything for, kills the humans. The movie allows the humans to kill themselves, by a logic that makes perfect sense.
I do not see the moral connection between Life After People and the Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I’m not sure how the filmmakers could have been any less anti-human than they were. The “rise” in the movie is not a revolution, but an escape. The apes wreak no Marxist revenge on the humans for years of mistreatment (which is arresting, given that Peter Jackson produces, and indulged in major animal violence against humans in King Kong). It is not portraying a glorious rise of non-humans, but the tragic combination of arrogance and irresponsibility that set this situation up in the first place. Will “created” Caesar, and then gave him no place to go. Caesar was rejected by the humans, but was too smart to be locked in a prison, and too compassionate for his species to leave them behind. He leads an escape of his companions, continually holding in check their violent natural impulses. Any deaths that happen are in self defense, against human threats they are not trying to confront but to avoid. True, Caesar does not help the vice president in the falling copter, but I believe the point is that he’s only imitating Will, not actively killing but more a “I won’t intervene – I’ll just let things happen.” If this seems hair-splitting morally, Caesar presumably is not even bound by positive human morality or the Ten Commandments (if he is, we’re saying he has an immortal soul, and this changes our whole discussion), which make his self-imposed limits more noteworthy. We can’t celebrate the climax anymore than we can thrill to the climax of the classic Twilight Zone episode where the selfish bookworm, happy that humanity has annihilated itself in nuclear war and that he can now read in peace, steps on his own glasses. Caesar could have committed suicide Frankenstein-style and let us drift back into forgetful bliss on the issue of an overreaching science, animal cruelty, and how “sad but inevitable” it is, but I appreciate the film parting ways with Serling here somewhat: letting the humans, Serling-style, reap their fruits, but giving some character in this apocalyptic world a chance of happiness.
@Walker: Thanks for your thoughtful comments. If we disagree pretty much completely about the film, it may be partly because I’m looking not only at where the film is but where it’s going. (I think it’s reasonable to assume that the sequels will follow the original series in depicting all-out war between men and apes—and for what it’s worth the filmmakers have indicated that’s where the next film will probably go.)
Beyond that, though, i don’t think the movie dwells on the question of fault or blame in relation to the coming fall of mankind. I don’t think it asks, “Was it human hubris? Is it the fault of men or apes? Is it nobody’s fault?” In a word, it doesn’t seem to me to care about the question one way or another. It’s too busy being caught up in the triumph of the apes.
Reading this story as a Frankenstein tale seems to me to be an error rooted in superficial plot connections in the teeth of more fundamental thematic and tonal differences. The Frankenstein story derives much its horror from the sense that from the outset Victor Frankenstein was trespassing where men ought never to go—that he was playing God, rushing in where angels fear to tread. He was a grave robber, literally a desecrator of sacred ground, a mutilator of corpses. He cut himself off from ordinary human feelings and violated every taboo. By contrast, James Franco is the nicest guy in the movie, and only wants to cure Alzheimers—and save dear old John Lithgow, his own father, for goodness sakes! Maybe he makes some mistakes, but they aren’t hubristic ones. If there’s one thing this movie isn’t, it’s a cautionary, horror-tinged warning against hubris and playing God.
Serling might have made us uncomfortable and shown us dark truths we would rather not face, but his oeuvre was fundamentally humanistic—human nature is the key criterion by which even human foibles and failings are judged and found wanting. (Again, the ruin of the Statue of Liberty is terrible precisely because the Statue of Liberty signifies so much about who we are and what we aspire to.)
By contrast, if I was “a little jarred at the end” of Rise, it’s not because the movie itself presents humanity in a jarring light, but precisely because it doesn’t seem to realize there is anything to be jarred about. It was the absence of any deliberate jarring that jarred me—and, pretty much (if not absolutely) by definition, I don’t think this was deliberate.
“Rise of the Planet of the Apes doesn’t pack much cautionary punch, though…” I would disagree acutely. This film should be taken on its own terms; it has lessons, which are different from those of the original film, but do suit our times. A fundamental moral question: If one does a scientific experiment that gives rise to an entity of humanlike intelligence, must that entity be accorded some or all of the moral respect due to humans and not brute animals? The answer to this question might be different depending on whether:
1. The entity is an animal-human hybrid, or an animal modified with human genes.
2. The entity is an animal with modifications that enhance intelligence, but are not specifically human. Caesar seems to fall in this category.
3. The entity is a machine which replicates (or surpasses) the cognitive function of a human brain. It may even have a similar architecture.
The most I have heard theologians say is that it is immoral to even create the first sort of entity, a proscription which could be said to follow naturally from the Biblical prohibition of bestiality. The latter two scenarios are uncharted waters, since humanity has not had the technological proficiency to risk them before. Even the first scenario is not fully addressed by the Bible, since bestiality could not actually produce offspring.
These issues are not hypothetical: Scientists have already inserted human cell nuclei into enucleated cow egg cells, yielding essentially human embryos with cow mitochondria. These had to be killed within two weeks to satisfy the moral code that our society has devised to deal with such matters. I see this as murder, no less than when normal human embryos are concerned. What say you? Efforts are underway to design “cognitive computers” which integrate memory and processing in the manner of a brain, and potentially scale to human level intelligence. What say you?
As to the ‘when is it human’ question. My criteria: If it is begotten of a human then it is human. In other words, if it is of predominately human genome-greater than 99% or so, then it is human. As to whether or not any other form of entity should be accorded the dignity and rights afforded of a ‘person’ if this entity is not begotten of a human then one might consider the following criteria: 1) is the entity aware of its own existence 2)Does the entity appreciate anything of a higher order-Truth, beauty or nobility, 3) Is the entity capable of love, or giving of itself for the good of another? 4) Does the entity recognize the difference between good and evil? 5) Is the entity aware of its own eventual death?
This list is by no means exhaustive.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes = Best blockbuster of the year.
Enough said. Period.
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