I’m pretty stunned by how much I enjoyed Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Easily in my top 5 movies of the summer. Anyone else see it? Thoughts?
Haven’t been planning on seeing it myself. I get the impression that, from seeing the previews and having seen Planet of the Apes, I know how it’s gonna end.
It’s not the end that’s the important part, it’s how you get there. Hence the reason I don’t really care about “spoilers”, because if knowing the end of a movie makes it not a good movie, it probably wasn’t a good movie to begin with.
You may know how it ends, but you don’t know how it gets there.
Adam: Have you been spending too much time ripping off ahem creating remarkably similar but legally distinct comic boock characters such that you uncontrollably retitled the name of the movie?
Just thought it was clever.
I am a fan of the original movies. I think I might even be the only person who enjoyed the 2001 Planet of the Apes movie. So of course, I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
First, I like this origin story so much better than the original (which relies on an infinite time/causality loop wherein Caesar is his own grandfather). Second, the special effects were great - half of the characters in the movie were CGI and it wasn’t obvious. Very cool. Third, I am not a fan of James Franco and yet his acting in the film did not offend me, in fact, I rather enjoyed it.
There was only one thing I didn’t like about the movie [Highlight for Spoiler] : At the climactic moment of the movie, when Caesar is facing off with the evil ape keeper (played by Draco Malafoy), the evil ape keeper says “get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” Charlton Heston style. And it fell flat. That was the moment in the movie theater that you should go to movie theaters for - the moment when the audience collectively reacts to something awesome. In my theater, we all heard it coming and there was a whooosh of inward breaths in anticipation of the awesome line and then he said it and … nothing. It fell flat. I think that this was mainly because they gave the line to the one character you must hate in the film. Other ape keepers treat the apes poorly, heck, even the bad-guy drug company executive shows some modicum of humanity, but this guy is pure evil. And they gave him the line. It just didn’t work.
(I didn’t see a spoiler tag - is there one?)
That was one of those movies I thought “This won’t be very good.”
I was so, so wrong. I loved every second of it.
Yeah, I also found it to be a really fantastic film. I’m also super impressed with the ever-increasing skills of Weta Digital when it comes to motion capture for digital characters.
Evandan, I also was skeptical. RotPotA and Thor were my underdog movies of the summer, but I ended up loving both of them.
Thor was your underdog movie? Really?
Thor starred some hot guy from the Star Trek movie and Natalie Portman - there was no way that could not be great.
Just saw this, and I thought it was fantastic. I loved the nods to the original.
I’ve never been a fan of the Thor comics, they never seemed to touch on anything interesting to me until the JMS run a few years ago. So in going to see the movie, I was expecting more of the same, but they managed to make the characters very compelling and keep the action going.