Rise of the Planet of the Apes is one of the more accomplished franchise reboots of its era, a film that takes the considerable risk of centring its architecture on a motion-capture performance and delivers something moving and intelligent. Rupert Wyatt's 2011 picture is not a remake of the 1968 original but a reimagining of the franchise's premise from the ground up, and its decision to tell the story of Caesar's development from infant to revolutionary leader gives the reboot a dramatic focus and an emotional coherence that the Burton remake entirely lacked.
At a Glance
Director: Rupert Wyatt
Runtime: 105 minutes
Starring: Andy Serkis, James Franco, John Lithgow, Freida Pinto, David Oyelowo
Release: 2011
Critics Rating: ★★★★ (4/5 stars, a confident and emotionally intelligent reboot)
Audience Rating: ★★★★ (4/5 stars, one of the best blockbuster reboots of its decade)
Review Breakdown
Plot
Will Rodman, a scientist at a San Francisco pharmaceutical company, is developing a drug designed to cure Alzheimer's disease. When his research programme is shut down, he secretly raises Caesar, the infant chimpanzee offspring of his most promising test subject, who has inherited the drug's cognitive-enhancing effects. As Caesar grows into an adult of extraordinary intelligence and emotional complexity, his experiences of the human world, including his confinement in a primate sanctuary after an incident with a neighbour, radicalise him toward the uprising that the franchise's title promises. The screenplay by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver handles the origin story structure with considerable skill, building Caesar's development through specific experiences rather than generic narrative beats, and the emotional investment in Caesar's perspective gives the uprising its justification without requiring the audience to abandon their sympathy for the human characters.
Characters
Andy Serkis's Caesar is the indispensable element and one of motion capture's defining performances, a portrayal of developing consciousness and growing political awareness that communicates an extraordinary range of emotional states through physical performance alone. The most effective strategy is the consistent prioritisation of Caesar's perspective, which gives the audience an identification with a non-human character that the franchise's original series achieved through dialogue and the audience's established sympathy for McDowall's characters. James Franco's Will is a less fully realised protagonist, a scientist whose emotional investment in Caesar is credible but whose professional ethics are drawn with a broadness that the more nuanced treatment of Caesar makes more visible. John Lithgow's Charles, Will's father suffering from Alzheimer's, is the most affecting human character, and his relationship with Caesar gives the early sequences a warmth that makes the subsequent radicalisation more emotionally complex. Serkis's performance is the most important achievement and the primary reason the reboot succeeds where the Burton remake failed. David Oyelowo's Steven Jacobs is the most effectively drawn human antagonist, a corporate scientist whose pragmatic indifference to the ethical implications of his work is more chilling than straightforward villainy would have been.
Tone
Wyatt pitches the picture at a register of grounded science fiction drama rather than action spectacle, a tonal choice that gives the domestic sequences a weight and that makes the uprising's eventual arrival feel like a culmination rather than a genre obligation. The most effective sequence, in which Caesar signs the word home to Will from his sanctuary cage, is the franchise's most purely emotional moment since Escape from the Planet of the Apes, achieved entirely through Serkis's physical performance and the audience's accumulated investment in Caesar's perspective.
Meaning / Themes
The central concerns, the ethics of animal experimentation, the relationship between intelligence and moral status, and the consequences of treating sentient beings as instruments rather than ends in themselves, are handled with enough specificity to give the picture a thematic dimension beyond its entertainment mechanics. The pharmaceutical company's treatment of its research subjects as disposable assets is the most pointed satirical target, and the refusal to present the human characters as straightforwardly villainous gives the ethical argument a complexity that the original series' more schematic political allegories did not always achieve.
Direction
Wyatt's direction is the most tonally disciplined of the reboot trilogy, maintaining the grounded register across the transition from domestic drama to primate sanctuary to the Golden Gate Bridge uprising with a coherence that gives the picture a unified identity. The uprising sequences are staged with a spatial intelligence and a sense of physical danger that the original series' action sequences rarely achieved, and the decision to present Caesar's perspective throughout gives the action a weight that pure spectacle would not have provided. Patrick Doyle's score is the reboot trilogy's most emotionally direct, supporting the character-focused drama with a warmth and a restraint that suit the tonal register.
Cultural Reception
Rise of the Planet of the Apes received outstanding reviews on its release and was a major commercial success, grossing over $481 million worldwide and significantly exceeding expectations for a franchise reboot. Critics praised Serkis's performance, the emotional intelligence of the screenplay, and the grounded approach to the science fiction premise, and it is now regarded as one of the decade's most accomplished franchise reboots and a landmark in the development of motion capture performance as a medium. Its success directly enabled the Caesar trilogy's subsequent entries.
Who Should Watch
Anyone interested in how franchise reboots can use their origin story structure to generate emotional investment, and anyone curious about the possibilities of motion capture performance. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a significantly better film than its blockbuster franchise context might suggest, and Serkis's Caesar is one of the decade's most compelling screen performances regardless of the technical means by which it was achieved.
Final Verdict: A confident and emotionally intelligent reboot that succeeds primarily on the strength of Andy Serkis's landmark motion-capture performance and the care with which it builds Caesar's development from infant to revolutionary. Its human characters are less fully realised than its ape protagonist, but as a franchise origin story it is one of the decade's most accomplished, and its investment in Caesar's perspective gives the uprising a justification that the franchise's subsequent entries build on with considerable skill.
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