The climactic conclusion of the original Planet of the Apes is hard to top, but that hasn\'t stopped Hollywood from trying. That head shot of the Statue of Liberty, rearing from the sands of time, triggered a series of sequels that milked the story dry, and after a gap of nearly a quarter century, Tim Burton began his slide into self-satisfaction with a colorless remake.
This summer writer-director Rupert Wyatt tried again, but with greater success than most of his predecessors. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a prequel engineered to produce sequels. Perhaps if the franchise endures, an astronaut yet uncast will once again stumble through time and look with astonishment at the head of Lady Liberty. Meanwhile, we have James Franco disappearing into the role of Will, an affable everyman scientist developing a serum to reverse Alzheimer\'s in a laboratory stocked with guinea chimps.
The movie\'s best moves come early on. The opening scene is thrilling: a band of chimpanzees pick their way forward through a cackling rainforest, and although they wear wary frowns, they are ambushed by poachers. After a kinetic chase, a female is caught in the net—her fearful eyes fill the slot in the box where she is confined. Priceless moments follow soon enough in the lab of a pharmaceutical corporation as that same ape bursts into Will\'s PowerPoint presentation on the serum he\'s been administering to the apes. “There have been absolutely no side effects,” he assures his audience, moments before the chimp goes, well, ape shit as a result of the experiment. Among other things, the drug stimulates intelligence. That monkey could outsmart many of us!
The movie\'s special effects are, for once, impressive, especially the expressive faces of the apes. Andy “Gollum” Serkis is a fine face behind any sentient, non-human creature. But more importantly, Rise of the Planet of the Apes grasps with the brave hand of a good genre flick at a raft of anxieties, including greedy pharmaceutical giants, the plague of Alzheimer\'s, the gap between species, the unintended consequences of scientific research, the cruelty of animal research and the cross-species spread of disease—the latter being the one angle for the sequel to explore.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes will be out on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download on Dec. 13.
