From his earliest days as an adorable baby chimp to becoming an ape with human-level intellect and emotional capacity, every key event that drives Caesar here forms the framework of what drives him in Dawn, and from there into War. In terms of story, Rise plays more like character drama than a sci-fi thriller.
RELATED: Wes Ball Suggests His ‘Planet of the Apes’ Movie Won’t Be a Reboot But writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (with Dawn and War’s Mark Bomback doing an uncredited rewrite) saw a chance for true reinvention, and by treating Caesar as a flesh and blood character who, out of his own heartache becomes a revolutionary, established his story as the core of the first movie and the narrative thread that makes the trilogy a seamless whole. In lesser hands, this easily could’ve fallen into the trap of an outbreak-action flick, wherein humans try their damndest to fight back a horde of snarling apes that soon run amok and, I don’t know, steal some cars and eventually kill the president.
Instead of once again dipping into the dystopian future wherein talking apes are the established rulers over humans, Rise wisely goes back to a newly-crafted beginning, delving into the creation of the virus that would soon wipe out most of humanity but makes apes immensely smarter – with Caesar being Patient Zero.
As far as those final two movies took the story of Caesar ( Andy Serkis) as he and his ape colony navigated the physical and moral challenges of their growing community, neither would be as great as they were had the foundation not been so excellently established in that first entry.ĭirected by Rupert Wyatt, Rise acted as a reboot to the original Planet of the Apes series (which began in 1968) and was then-20th Century Fox’s next crack at the series after Tim Burton’s 2001 remake. This August marks the 10-year anniversary of the entry that started it all – Rise of the Planet of the Apes – which in turn paved the way for the unforgettable, just-about-perfect sequels, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes. But even as the last decade saw IP mania hit exhausting heights, we should be grateful that in that time we got the monumental achievement that is the singular Planet of the Apes trilogy. Film trilogies - that is three movies with a clear ending-have become few and far between as the age of endless brand expansion keeps characters and stories chugging to no end.