A 2011 reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise. Word Of God says that whilst the film is a loose remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes it's set in a new continuity intended to be the Origin Story for future films.Will Rodman is a scientist attempting to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease, his work fueled by the desire to cure his father of the illness. When his experimental drug ALZ-112 shows incredible results with a female chimpanzee "Bright Eyes," making her more intelligent, Will believes the time is right to fund human testing. However, during his pitch to potential backers, Bright Eyes inexplicably goes berserk and is gunned down in the middle of the meeting. Fortunate to still have his job after the project is scrapped, Will discovers Bright Eyes had just given birth and her sudden aggression was simply an instinctive attempt to protect her child.The young chimp is spared the euthanasia of the other test subjects, and Will soon becomes attached to him, naming him Caesar. The ape immediately displays intelligence beyond his years and species, making it clear he inherited his mother's enhanced brain power. Through him, Will hopes to keep his work alive. However, as Caesar grows older, a chain of events leads him on the path to revolution.The film also marks the first time in the franchise the apes are created as Serkis Folk (with Andy Serkis himself playing Caesar).
This movie contains examples of:
Abnormal Ammo: Who would've thought that manhole covers could be used as shuriken or the posts of wrought-iron fences as spears? The apes did, and with surprising accuracy.
Art Major Biology: Apes cannot speak human languages because of the different structures of their vocal chords...but then we wouldn't have two of the most powerful moments in the film, would we?
Apes aren't so much incapable of language as they are incapable of speech. This is why primate researchers teach chimps and gorillas sign language.
Apes are incapable of throwing with the distance and accuracy shown in the film. The evolutionary reason that our shoulders are so different from those of apes is believed to be so we could throw spears and such.
Break the Cutie: Abuse at the hands of Dodge and the other chimps at the primate facility do this to Caesar.
Butt Human: Hunsiker again. Every scene involves him suffering one way or another. We never get to see the guy in a good mood because of this. Though if your reaction to everything is extreme violence and anger, this quickly becomes Laser-Guided Karma.
Especially notable in the scene where he confronts Franklin. Yes, he was trying the doors to the neighbor's house, but calling the cops and keeping an eye on the situation would probably be a better bet than getting directly in the suspicious person's face, especially when it's not your house.
Call Back: When Caroline says it's appropriate to be afraid of chimpanzees, Caesar mocks the idea by jumping on top of Will and miming punches at him, all while everyone is laughing. Caesar later does nearly the exact same thing to Hunsiker, except he's actually beating the shit out of him.
Cassandra Truth: "I dunno... maybe the (Caesar's) clothes will upset the other chimps." Rocket reacted very angrily after taking a couple sniffs at Caesar before ripping what he was wearing and administering that No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.
Actually, the response to that wasn't disbelief, it was "Good."
Coming of Age Story: Caesar, naturally. He is taken as a baby by Will, grows in mind and body, and then, through a series of events, leaves his nest and becomes a freedom fighter.
Creative Closing Credits: Goes hand-in-hand with the Downer Ending. The credits roll over an animation of international flight patterns spreading the ALZ-113 virus across the globe.
Deadly Disc: Maurice uses the classic manhole cover to take out a police car.
Dolled-Up Installment: A weird one. Rick Jaffa wrote the first treatment as an original story inspired by reports of people raising primates as children in their homes and being attacked by them. It wasn't until he was finishing it that he realized that, given enough time, the situation created by the ending could very well lead to the world seen in the 1968 Planet of the Apes. So Jaffa contacted FOX, presented the story as a reboot for Planet of the Apes, and this is the result.
A blink-and-you'll-miss-it example, but the crude sketch of the window in the Rodman's Attic that Caesar drew on the wall of his cage in the San Bruno Pound to comfort himself later shows up rather ominously on a highway marker overlooking the Bay Valley skyline when Caesar and his band of apes break out of the San Bruno pound, as though it were graffiti left a gang marking their territory.
Downer Ending: It seems that the apes will inherit the earth after the same substance that made them intelligent kills off the human race. It's a bit of a foregone conclusion though since this is a prequel.
Earn Your Happy Ending: For Caesar and the few apes that made it past the Golden Gate Bridge.
Evil Brit: Dodge and John Landon. At the very least, they are portrayed by British actors with the former English and the latter Scottish respectively.
Flowers for Algernon Syndrome: After Will's father's body begins rejecting the treatment, his Alzheimer's starts to set back in. In fact, it gets worse, and his health declines, and he dies.
Fog of War: A very convenient one hides the apes on the bridge from the police.
Token Evil Team Mate/ Sixth Ranger: Possibly Koba the ALZ-113 test subject (in a deleted scene, he would even try to gas Jacobs while escaping the lab)
Foregone Conclusion: It's called RISE of the Planet of the Apes, so this was to be expected.
Genius Bruiser: Maurice the orangutan is the only other ape who initially knows sign language, but being an orangutan, he's incredibly strong and at one point hurls a manhole cover straight through a police car windshield as if he were throwing a Frisbee.
Green Eyes: The ALZ-112 causes green pigmentation in an ape's eyes.
Grey and Gray Morality: One can't fault the apes for rebelling, humans being bastards and all (some more so than others), but the tests being conducted on them was for a good cause.
Gunboat Diplomacy: Caesar pulls this on Rocket to get him to step down as the leader of the apes. Rocket was a lot more compliant when Caesar's 450-pound gorilla friend was around to help with the convincing.
Heroic BSOD: Poor Caesar goes under two of these- the first one after experiencing his Curb-Stomp Battle of a beatdown by then-alpha male Rocket, the second after learning once again that he could not go home with Will and Caroline after the hell he has experienced.
Hero of Another Story: Throughout the film, various background references are made to a manned spaceflight that gets "lost in space", no doubt into some kind of wormhole that will spit them out thousands of years into the future right near a watery planet, the third from the sun in its solar system.
An unintentional one when the gorilla attacks a police car with a parking meter.
Hope Spot: For Will when he sees the initial cure work on his father. However, anti-bodies soon develop to fight the cure and the Alzheimer's comes back with a vengeance.
Serves as a bit of Shown Their Work, since this is generally the final outcome of most Alzheimer's treatments in real life (the ones that work at all, anyway).
Hot Scientist: One could say both Will and Caroline fall into this category.
Hulk Speak: Sign language between apes are subtitled in rather poor grammar, including Ceasar's. However, this isn't because the ape are unintelligent, it's because it's an alien way for them to communicate with one another. Different species have different methods and the signing is a common language they can learn.
Humans Are Bastards: The movie is more even-handed with its overall characterization of humanity than you might expect, but the plot still hinges on people being dicks to the apes for really no reason. Sadly, much of it is Truth in Television in regards to animal testing and the way the legal system handles animal rights (but not the part about the experimental drug that can make apes smarter than humans).
Human Trial Is Human Error: Will, without any authorization, tested the ALZ-112 on his father, who had advanced, and rapidly deteriorating Alzheimer's. At first, everything seemed to be going well (he regained every single piece of his memory and his physical condition improved drastically). But then, the Alzheimer's rebounded with a vengance. This is after Will informed his superior that he had performed the tests with significant success, and that they already started to work on the ALZ-113. Little do they know that this batch has an even nastier side effect: an unstoppable plague that threatens the very existence of mankind. And only a select scientists, Will being one of them, know that both the ALZ-112 and -113 is what gave the apes their superintelligence and hatred towards their former masters.
Idiot Ball: Will. When your father has advanced Alzheimer's, it's generally not a good idea to leave him alone in the house while you're at work. Double for Hunsiker, who apparently leaves the door of his sports car unlocked and open, with keys in the ignition, on a regular basis.
Gen*Sys not immediately quarantining Franklin after he inhales the untested ALZ-113.
If Will would have told his boss everything during the five years of his father miraculous recovery, ALZ-112 would have been Jacobs's blockbuster drug, millions of Alzheimer patients would have gotten their lives back and Caesar might have been invited to talk shows.
Improvised Weapon: The apes are absolute masters of finding innovative uses for random stuff - wrought-iron fence poles become spears, a manhole cover becomes a thrown anti-vehicle weapon, and a heavy iron chain can kill a helicopter's door-gunner.
Ironic Echo: From how Landon uses the phrase "It's a madhouse!" in the original to how Dodge uses it.
Also, within the movie, "Stupid monkey!"
Jerkass: Dodge is actually even worse than Hunsiker. Tom Felton has said that Dodge "makes Draco look soft" and, let's face it, he would know.
Karmic Death: Let's just say that being mean to Caesar is not a good way to make it to the end credits.
There's also Jacobs, who's killed not by Caesar, but by Koba, who has a more personal reason for killing him.
Language Equals Thought: The line "Why cookie Rocket?" in the dialogue between Caesar and Maurice could symbolise the solidarity of the apes in fighting for their cause. Their use of language is similar to others which don't pinpoint blame for actions.
Meaningful Name: Obviously Caesar, as the military and political genius, but also Koba, the first successful test subject for ALZ-113. "Koba" was also the code name of Joseph Stalin, which the Georgian based on Robin Hood-type character from a local book, The Patricide.
All of the apes, i.e. Maurice, had names that were based on names of apes of the original film series or crew members that worked on the original film series.
Multi-species Team: Caesar's a chimpanzee and his eventual allies include gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos.
Mood Whiplash: When Dodge snarls "Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape", people laugh. When Caesar stands upright and shouts NOOOO, entire movie theaters fall silent.
Monumental Battle: The final showdown between apes and humans takes place on the Golden Gate Bridge.
My God, What Have I Done?: Caesar's reaction as soon as Will's father snaps him out of his unstoppable rage towards his neighbor.
Also, whilst he gets over it quickly enough, Caesar still looks incredibly shocked at Dodge's death.
That might be more of a "Holy fuck what just happened?" reaction, since he's probably never seen anything like what killed Dodge.
Dodge: Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" Dodge: "It's a madhouse!"
The way Caesar is treated at the ape prison is nearly identical to the way Taylor was treated in the original film.
The manned space mission to another world, clearly meant to evoke the lost astronauts from the classic film. Probably a Sequel Hook to this movie to have this series follow the original.
Caesar is seen working on a 3-D puzzle of the Statue of Liberty.
Caesar is designed to resemble Roddy Mc Dowall's Cornelius and Caesar makeup from the original series.
Films starring Charlton Heston appear on the televisions at the ape prison.
Caesar's first word — NOOOOOO! — is the first word his character famously said that led to the uprising of apes in the original mythos.
The start of the movie with the poachers hunting the wild chimp troop is similar to the human-hunting scene from the original movie (albeit done in a way that also echoes how poachers hunt chimps in Real Life).
"Bright Eyes" was the name Zira gave Taylor in the original Planet of the Apes before learning his real name.
The main guard in charge of the animal pound sounding like Paul Giamatti is a reference to his role in Tim Burton's 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes, in which he played a orangutan that dealt in human trafficking.
Part of Caesar's plan for getting through the police blockade involves him riding a horse.
One of the characters is named Dodge Landon, Dodge and Landon were Taylor's male companions in the first movie.
Never Trust a Trailer: The trailer suggest that the ape hoard Caesar leads are trying to violently conquer the whole planet, when in the actual film they're just trying to escape from captivity, generally only responding violently as a reaction to humans trying to hurt them.
No CDC Compliance: Gen*Sys has some serious issues about keeping experimental drugs from being constantly stolen from their labs. An employee is maskless in the same room as an untested, genetically modified, airborne virus - yet he is not detained for observation, and he calls off sick for two days before anyone puts two and two together.
Obviously Evil: Koba wears a permanent angry snarl and some pretty epic Evil Scars. It seems even Jacobs himself noticed this, as when Caesar refuses to save him, his reaction to Koba approaching is a terrified "Not you..."
It is implied that Koba was used in other kind of tests before, for the same company; now that he is intelligent; he realizes Jacobs is somehow responsible for the PAST tests; so he's not evil in any way, he's getting revenge on one of the guys responsible for the scars he has. When they first set him up to take the drug; the lab guys comment on how easy it is to work with him since he's used to it.
The Obi-Wan: Sort of. Will does teach him the developmental skills he needs to survive during the first eight years of his life, and Maurice helps reintroduce him into ape society and acts as a surrogate parent, but Caesar, due to the ALZ, is his own Obi-Wan, having managed to teach and improve upon all the skills taught to him within those eight years.
Caesar himself will presumably become The Obi-Wan for his fellow apes, as they build their own society.
Oh Crap: Rodney, Dodge, and even Buck reacts like this when Caesar screams "NO!" to Dodge. Will's, Caroline's, Will's father's, and even Caesar's reactions to when Caesar viciously bit—nearly severed—the Jerkass neighbor's finger when trying to defend Will's father. Jacobs when seeing the facility's balcony filled with apes. And Rocket's when Caesar corners him with Buck the gorilla. Jacobs again in the aforementioned helicopter scene. The cops when wrought-iron fenceposts start raining don on their cars.
Poor Communication Kills: Will drops the ball many times. He doesn't fess up about taking the cure home and its effect on his father until his father is starting to relapse. He doesn't fess up and point out that one of the test monkeys intelligence is off the charts. Despite knowing the intelligence level of Caesar, and knowing full well there are children out in the street Will doesn't have "the talk" with him.
At one point, Caesar is constructing a model of the Statue of Liberty, which was featured in the Twist Ending of the first film.
Will Rodman was named after Roddy McDowall, who played Caesar in Conquest.
Caesar appears on horseback late in the film.
The orangutan is named Maurice, after Maurice Evans, who played the orangutan Dr. Zaius in the 1968 film.
The Landons (the father and son who worked at the San Bruno Primate Shelter) were named after one of the astronauts in the 1968 film. Dodge's first name was also after the other astronaut.
Dodge firehoses Caesar, as Taylor was firehosed in the 1968 film.
Dodge has two lines originally spoken by Charlton Heston (See Mythology Gag.)
Caesar's mother was nicknamed "Bright Eyes," the nickname Zira gave to Taylor in the original.
A female chimp is named "Cornelia."
One of the chimps is named Koba, like the protagonist of Alexander Kazbegi's "The Patricide." Guess what he ends up doing to his metaphorical father Jacobs, personification of Gen*Sys — not to mention the fate of all other humans. Also, it was Josef Stalin's favorite pseudonym.
The movie that Rodney is mouthing along to stars Charlton Heston.
The cops chase after the monkeys on horseback with night sticks, similar to the apes on horseback chasing after Taylor in the first movie.
The cure, ALZ-112. 112 was the original runtime of the first Planet of the Apes film.
Smart People Play Chess: An early sign that Caesar is progressing way beyond ordinary chimp capacity. Also that he is able to think strategically, plan ahead, and utilize numerous subordinates with differing skills and abilities. Just in case that will come in useful later.
Soft Glass: The Apes charge through tons of glass with no ill-effects.
The Sons And The Spears: Caesar does this with Maurice to explain why he's trying to get the apes to band together.
Third-Person Person: Caesar. With a sample size of 1 ("Caesar is home"), it's hard to say if it's an example of Hulk Speak or if Caesar is imitating his namesake Julius (who Will's father is fond of quoting).
Thirteen Is Unlucky: ALZ 113 is the designation of the drug that causes the whole mess.
Thou Shalt Not Kill: Caesar. While he seems fine with certain peopledying, he is clearly not kill-happy. He jumps in and stops the apes from killing one of the guards at the ape-facility, stops Buck from killing a police officer, and while he personally kills Dodge, he is clearly shocked by it. Besides, it's more an accident caused by Dodge's stupidity than anything else.
Timeskip: Three major ones occur within the 105-minute timespan of the film. The first occurs during the Distant Prologue, or at least the distant prologue presented in in Bright Eyes' flashback, creating an undetermined amount of time between when she was captured and brought to the Gen Sys laboratories. Two more timeskips occur after that, whittling down 8 years of Caesar's life into 40-70 minutes.
Too Dumb to Live: Dodge Landon. Even if Caesar wasn't aiming a hose at him at the time, what kind of idiot arms an electric prod, whilst standing in a puddle?
All three ape-housing facilities that we see have the worst animal-handling policies imaginable.
Towers of Hanoi: named in the film the "Lucas Tower", after its inventor, even though no one calls it that.
Trailers Always Spoil: Bucks death by taking down the chopper, was one of the most used scenes for promoting the film.
Averted with Caesar's ability to speak. All of the trailers kept it hidden, maintaining the surprise and shock for audiences in theaters when he shouts that first word
Twenty Minutes into the Future: Assuming that the beginning takes place in modern-day 2011, that would point the film's events taking place between 2014 and 2019.
Unstoppable Rage: Caesar, when he sees Charles Rodman being bullied by his neighbor, goes berserk and attacks the neighbor, eventually biting off one of his fingers until Will Rodman manages to call out to him and snaps him out of his enraged state.
Undying Loyalty: Caesar apparently earned this from Buck the gorilla when he let him out of his cage for the first time.
Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Will's neighbors don't notice a large primate looking out his windows and ask about it. No one notices the primate in the back of his station wagon as he drives around. Primates on leashes must be a common sight in California state parks.
Weirdness Censor: The Sanctuary manager clearly notice something is off when he see the apes 'political rally' but he ignore it because it's just a bunch of silly apes.
We Need a Distraction: Caesar and his apes battle the California Highway Patrol on the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a distraction so that most of the apes could escape by crossing the bridge from underneath undetected. Also, Will needs to get past the police to reach Caesar, so Caroline climbs onto the railing to get their attention.
We never see what becomes of Caroline after the battle on the Golden Gate Bridge. Did she actually get arrested? Do she and Will get back together? Then again, considering that it's shown already that the human race is doomed, maybe we're better off not finding out.
John Landon also vanishes from the film rather abruptly; he is last seen discovering the police watching security cam footage of his son's death at the hands of Caesar.
You Shall Not Pass: Done with an orangutan wielding a manhole cover and a gorilla wielding a parking meter he ripped from the pavement. Exactly as awesome as it sounds.
You Will Be Spared: Will Rodman, Caroline, and the person in charge of the San Bruno Animal Pound were spared without a single scratch. Rodney, the guard who worked alongside Dodge is an interesting case: Though he was at the mercy at a furious No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, he was still spared since, compared to Dodge, he treated the apes with more compassion and actually tried to stop Dodge's ruthless tactics on more than one occasion.
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