After the discreet role of Tim Burton remake, the latest fantasy film from Fox recovers the original spirit of the «Planet of the Apes»And raises for the umpteenth time one of the recurring obsessions of the genre since its origins.
Like the Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, the starting point of the Science Fiction genre, the film presents the risk of altering the designs of nature, warning us of the risks of man playing God.
In this case, researcher Will Rodman (James Franco) works on the development of a drug to cure Alzheimer's, motivated by his own father's disease. In the course of his experiments with chimpanzees, he begins to see that the scope of the project may be even more ambitious, since the apes subjected to the drug increase their intelligence significantly.
Cesar, the chimpanzee played by Andy Serkis (who also gave life to the Gollum of The Lord of the Rings), is the undisputed protagonist and leader of this new breed of apes with hyper-developed intelligence. Raised by Will and his father with love and dedication, throughout the film he will become aware of the reality of the species to which he belongs and the need to free it from submission to human beings.
In this sense, saving the peculiarity that the protagonist is of another species, the film connects with cinematographic epics such as “Spartacus" or "The ten Commandments”, Which relate the life of liberating leaders who direct the steps of their people, unjustly oppressed, towards freedom. Likewise, the sequences located in a primate shelter evoke classic scenes from the prison cinema( "Cadena perpetua","Escape from Alcatraz","The legend of the indomitable”,…), Portraying the meanness of those in charge of the maintenance of the center, the relationships between the“ inmates ”and the cruelty of the treatment given to the apes.
Thus Rupert wyatt it goes back to the origins of the saga, infusing the film with a committed and moralistic air, although less allegorical. While the original scripts featured an emancipatory struggle between men unjustly oppressed by oppressing apes at a historic moment when the civil rights movement in the United States called for equality between blacks and whites, theprequel is explicitly positioned against animal abuse, presenting the use by the pharmaceutical industry of apes destined for research in a raw and stark way, from the capture of chimpanzees in the African jungle to their sacrifice at the conclusion of the experiment.
At a technical level, the use of motion capture, developed by Weta digital and used notably in "The Lord of the Rings" and "Avatar«, And that this time it has been taken a step further by combining it with real exteriors (in Avatar all the images were studio images). The good use of this technology allows that despite the lack of articulated language, the facial expressions recreated in the apes are sufficient to understand the plot and empathize with the characters.
In short, it is a film that, based on highly realistic special effects to provide credibility to the staging, satisfactorily fulfills its role of justifying the conclusion of the original saga, recovers the vindictive character that marked the origin of the film. series and, despite moments in the story in which the pace slows down, it has quality to satisfy both fans of the genre and those looking for popcorn and entertainment for an August afternoon.
To whet your appetite, here is the trailer: