Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Upon close examination of this blog I realises there is little evidence as to how much of a geek I truly am. Sure, you know my favourite film is Aliens, but aside from that, you have little knowledge of how deeply rooted my nerdiness is.
I decided that I needed to remedy this and so today I'm posting a review of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Now, this review is designed mainly for the fans of the original film (not the piece of rubbish they released in 2001).
Personally, when this film was first releases I refused to watch it on principle. I wasn't going to risk ruining the original film for myself by watching a crappy remake.
This idea was reinforced after hearing how terrible the 2001 version was, and so I thought I'd made the right choice. The other part of this choice was based on my experience with The Italian Job. Original film with Michael Caine -amazing, one of my favourites... Remake, made me want to turn off the TV and never turn it on ever again.

Anywho, I digress, after sitting through a hundred trailers for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, I decided I was going to bite the bullet and give it a shot, and thus I had to start with Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

First good point, the creation of Caesar and the other Apes is brilliant and incredibly life-like, not to mention Andy Serkis' Ape voice is really impressive. Automatically, this is a pro above the original film, however I was at first saddened not to see grown men running around in monkey costumes with sideburns.
In terms of the actually plot, I really liked it. I felt that the initial humanisation of the Apes helped to give the viewer a much greater compassion for and relationship with the Apes, and thus set up an effective plot where you were rooting for a species which could lead to the extinction of your own race - that's a lot deeper than I meant it to be, but I'm going to leave it!
Looking then at the acting, its hard to go wrong with James Franco, and all off the supporting actors also did a fantastic job of capturing the differing layers of humanity, some were compassionate, some were vulnerable and some were cruel... It lead to a mix that did leave you feeling quite conflicted at the films climax.
Generally, the cinematography was leaps and bounds ahead of the original, but I felt that it was the lack of impressive cinematography that has made the original film so timeless.

Overall, I think this film is definitely worth a watch, whether you're an fan of the original or not. It is action packed, but still pulls on your heart strings and is so vvastly different from the original that you can almost watch it independently, with limited association to its predecessor, leaving your opinion of the original unscathed.
I'm going to give this film 8 stars for general enjoyment and successful execution.

I hope to see the newest film (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) soon, and so hopefully I'll have a review up for that soon.
xx