This new Apes film reminds me of the way I looked at the reimagined Battlestar Galactica TV series. In that case it was the the 70s TV show was just that a TV show while the Ron Moore version was like someone was filming the actual events. For the Apes series we already know how it all started. Rodney McDowell tells us the story in the first movie and we see it actually happen by the fourth movie. In the original legend there’s some sort plague that kills off all the dogs and cats in the world. Apes start as a replacement pet but soon turn into slaves. Finally Caesar has had enough and says “no”. We actually see this happen in the fourth movie. The original series of movies is a nice tight time loop where events in the future cause events in the past.
In many ways this new movie replaces the third and fourth movies in the series with James Franco in the role originally played by Ricardo Montalbán, Instead of time-traveling Apes going into the circus we have James Franco as geneticist. Aside from a few plot changes the story tracks very well with the original series.
The movie was full of references to the original series. There’s a TV clip of Charlton Heston as Moses playing on a TV for stimulation. Someone tell someone else to get their “stinking paws off”. There are references to Bright-Eyes, a nick name for Charlton Heston in the first movie. We see another ape named Zira and of course Caesar, the start of this movie. I especially liked the references to the launching of the Icarus, the first manned mission to Mars. Although never named in the first film the spaceship is known by fans as the Icarus. Later we learned that the space mission was lost. Can you say sequel? I think I would actually like to see how the crew of the Icarus react to a world run by Caesar’s dependents. Stick around after the credits for even more clues to a sequel.
The movie also stands alone. It has a good plot, good action. The characters have real emotion. Andy Serkis embodies Caesar with real expression. There are a few Hollywood clichés that really bugged me. For one we learned that an ape can run through a plate-glass window at full speed and not get hurt (or even slowed down) by the experience. We learned that the fog on the Golden Gate Bridge can roll in and out in the middle of the day with almost no notice. Actually there were a lot of problems with the bridge scene. Some of the ape animation is a bit rough.
Overall, I really liked this movie. I hope it does well enough at the box office to give us a sequel. Our little local theater was quite full but not sold out. We shall see.