Rise of the Planet of the Apes: A LOOK AHEAD TO THE NEW APES MOVIE

By Geno McGahee

In 1968, one of my favorite movies of all time was released: PLANET OF THE APES. Charlton Heston played “Taylor” and found himself a stranded astronaut on a foreign planet ruled by apes. It was written by Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling and it had a very TZ-like ending. It was an immediate classic and is still incredibly popular to this day. It spawned several sequels and a stage show, and in 2001, we saw the remake or reboot or re-imagining…whatever it is that they called it.

The 2001 Tim Burton PLANET OF THE APES was terrible. Mark Wahlberg played the role of “Leo,” a stranded astronaut that apparently had no interest in the incredibly hot girl that he found, Daena, played by Estella Warren. You add the “vision” of Burton, and we have a terrible pile of crap and an insult to the original.

They’ve given us 10 years to forgive them for recruiting the overrated Tim Burton to make a remake, and now bring us RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. From the previews, this movie looks very good. It is a prequel to the original, showing the reason why the apes have gotten so intelligent and we get a nice war between humanity and the chimps and gorillas.

The apes are CGI, but it’s rather good CGI. It was a good idea to not recruit real chimps and gorillas. I have heard many movie producers complain that have worked with chimps that they spend most of the time playing with themselves. If you had that many chimps in one scene, you would surely find a few getting familiar with each other or themselves and the studio wasn’t going to deal with that. I hope nobody complains about the CGI without knowing the facts.

I’m rather excited to see this prequel…it could re-launch the series in the right way…