We just finished watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes (for the third time, I think). I have been in love with this franchise ever since I was a kid. I was disappointed with the 2001 version, but Rise was everything I thought I wanted: high production values, standout performances (by James Franco, John Lithgow and Andy Serkis to name three) and, most importantly, a believable and scientifically plausible reason for the not only the rise of the apes, but the fall of mankind as well. There were lots of little "Easter eggs" in there for fans of the original films, not the least of which was the TV news coverage of the manned space flight to Mars and the later newspaper headline "Lost in Space?" But this is a very difficult movie for both Tracy and me to watch, especially knowing in advance what's going to happen every step of the way. The credits sequence of the virus spreading was chilling, especially in the COVID era. I'm not going to summarize the whole movie here, but I will reiterate my previous advice: if you don't like this one, chances are you won't like any of the subsequent ones, either. Okay, now that we're gotten that one out of the way, tomorrow we'll be moving on.
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That's James Franco.
James Franciscus was the star of Beneath the Planet of the Apes.
Still, that's quite the coincidence!
One good thing about the Planet of the Apes reboot movies series (if you're an "Apes" fan) is that it spawned the Planet of the Apes Omnibus reprint paperback series, as well as a reprint of the original Pierre Boulle novel. Before I get to the "omnibus" series though, let me just say that if you are unfamiliar the original book, it is very short and if you have never before read French satire, it is very French, in the same way that A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess is very British. Moving on to the omnibus series...
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which not only had an "official movie novelization" (by Alex Irvine), but also an "official movie prequel" titled Firestorm (by Greg Keyes). Full disclosure: I have not read these last two yet and have no plans to do so at the present time. Next time for sure, though.
The credits sequence of the virus spreading was chilling, especially in the COVID era.
"Jeepers," as Jimmy Olsen would say. We did not see that. Did MAX cut it off? Did we turn the TV off too soon? Dunno. But it's kind of a big deal that we didn't see it. It informs the second movie quite a bit, plus my wife is in public health, is getting her Master's in this sort of thing and has written papers on it. She would call "disease vectors." I'll have her watch that, and see if it induces her to watch more PotA. Honestly, it makes the second movie make more sense to ME.
It was a mid-credits scene, so maybe you did switch it off too soon, but the second movie began with that same sequence, so you should have seen it there as well. Basically, it is relvealed that the man who lived next door to James Franciscus Franco (who was the recipient of a bloody sneeze earlier in the film) is an airline pilot. By the tyime he gets to the airport, he is symtomatic (bloody nose). As his plane takes off, the scene switches to a screen tracking its flight overseas. Ahen it lands, several more flgihts are shown to take off from that point, and so on and so on. By the time the original aircraft makes it around the world, the entire planet is criss-crossed with lines of infection.
Perhaps not enough people stayed for the mid-credits sequence because we could have learned some lessons that would have proven useful a few years down the road.
Tracy reminds me that the sequence in question was part of a montage at the beginning of Dawn which recapped Rise and filled in the 12-year gap between movies; it is more effective in Rise.
The second movie in the series is titled Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and already I have a problem with it. Logically, the dawn of something must precede its rise. If they'd've been thinking ahead, the first movie would've been Dawn and the second Rise. This one is somewhat lengthy, clocking in at two hours and ten minutes. It was filmed in 2014, but takes place in 2026, 15 years after the events of the first film in the series. Its a dystopia, but given the start 2025 has gotten off to IRL I'm no longer so sure. I know we've watched this before on DVD (because I remember one of the "extras" pointing out that they had to rebuild the house set from still photos), but Tracy assures me we saw it in the theater as well. If that's the case (and I have no reason to doubt her; her memory is certainly better than mine these days), I nevertheless didn't has good of a handle on Dawn as I did Rise. I found myself remembering scenes as they were playing out in front of me, but I didn't remember what was going to happen next. Objectively the reboot series is better than the original, but the reboot series didn't capture my imagination in my 50s the way the original series did when I was ten.
Next up is War. The DVD is still in its shrinkwrap (so we obviously haven't watched that), but neither one of us can remember whether or not we saw it in the theater. I'm sure I'll be able to tell you one way of the other once we have watched it (again?).
Like Dawn, War also had an "official movie novelization" (by Greg Cox) as well as an "official movie prequel" (again by Greg Keyes), Revelation, which presumably (I have not read it) fills in the two-year gap between films. As far as the movie is concerned, the producers seem to have realized that they f*cked up the titles of the first two and tried, unsuccessfully IMO, to course-correct with the following summary:
As soon as the movie began we both realized we had seen it before. The DVD was still in its shrink-wrap, so we obviously saw it, once, at the theater. Unlike rewatching Dawn, which I remembered as I was watching it last night, I didn't remember much of this one having seen it only once. It was very much like seeing it for the first time, except for certain scenes. I am reluctant to say too much about the plot on the slim chance that Cap (or anyone else who has not seen it) may decide to watch it, but I will say it explains how humans will eventually lose the ability to speak. Beyond that, Woody Harrelson does an excellent job playing bat-sh*t crazy Colonel J. Wesley McCullough and, as always, Andy Serkis also excels as Caesar. Caesar's younger son (born in Dawn) is named, not unexpectedly, Cornelius. This movie is obviously intended to be the final part of a trilogy, which makes me curious what Kingdom will be about.
I probably will watch War, but I don't know if my wife will.
Oh, the other thing I was going to say is that I do remember getting to the end of the trilogy the first time and being disappointed that the "spaceship to Mars" angle was not followed up on.
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