Z/Web

I was really hopeful of this one as I loved the concept (humans make apes smarter and apes take over), but after the disappointing Cowboys and Aliens and the CGI apes looking questionable in some of the trailers, I kept my expectations low. To my surprise, this was really good. I worried that it would be mostly an apes-versus-human battle, but instead the film is mostly about the development of the apes. Our scientist has a human side, as he’s searching for a cure for Alzheimer’s to help his ill father, and it’s that drug that he develops that spurs the apes rise to power. There are weak aspects, such as the girlfriend role which is just wasted, but I really appreciated the slow, realistic development of the apes. This isn’t the “ape gets injection and a week later apes have taken over” which I feared. Instead, the main ape is very human: we seem him slowly go from loving humans to being mistreated and misunderstood and learning to prefer his own kind. It’s actually quite extraordinary that a big-budget Hollywood scifi movie would take that sort of realistic character development. I also didn’t have any problems with the CGI monkeys — they looked amazingly good throughout. Some shots in the trailers looked fake, but maybe they were early cuts before the special effects were finalized. Ultimately I’m not sure if this is a classic — it’s certainly not as ground-breaking as the original — but it’s a terrific restart of the series and I’m looking forward to more.