YMMV / Rise of the Planet of the Apes

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• Accidental Aesop:
  • The movie can be seen as a cautionary tale of how wrong can genetic experimentation go due to both lack of safety precautions and overwhelming Greed that caused it.
  • If you show any signs of illness stay home from work, lest you infect others.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: This film was widely mocked before release as appearing to be an ill attempt to revive what was pretty much a dead franchise, especially after the virulent fan reception of the remake ten years prior. Then it came out and, to everyone's surprise, turned into a critical success, with a groundbreaking performance by Andy Serkis, as well as a commercial success, bringing hope back to the series.
• Award Snub: It didn't win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. And many, including James Franco, feel Andy Serkis should have been nominated for Best Actor.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • For his unjust actions against Caesar and the Rodmans during most of his screen time, seeing Hunsiker getting his butt handed to him is very satisfying.
  • After having to sit through Dodge's sadism against the apes, seeing him electrocuted to death is ungodly satisfying.
  • Koba killing Jacobs can also warrant a cathartic feeling for the latter being a Corrupt Corporate Executive, even moreso if one takes Jacobs's actions from Firestorm into account.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Rodney never seems entirely put together: he's nervous, stuttering, awkward, slack-jawed, and submissive.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Maurice for both this and latter two films. A kindly orangutan who mentors Caesar and becomes his closest confidant in the sequels. Also notably averts the trend of evil orangutans from the previous films.
• Genius Bonus: Caesar explains why the apes should work in teams by using a bundle of sticks. In ancient Rome, from which Caesar owes his name, a bundle of sticks (or "fasces") was a symbol of authority, which in turn was where the word "fascism" comes from.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Koba killing Jacobs. In the context of this film, it's a triumph against an Asshole Victim oppressor. However, in the context of the sequel, it's Koba's first kill, and he happened to like the taste... Not to mention what we learn about his backstory in the “Dawn” prequel novel. Rewatching after reading that makes you see him more clearly.
    • Following that moment, Koba attacks Will with hostile intent, but when Caesar orders that he stand down and leave this human alone, Koba, out of gratitude to Caesar freeing him and allowing him to kill his abuser, obeys this order, showing how quickly he came to respecting Caesar and how much he does. This is horribly tragic to revisit given that in the sequel, Koba goes from being like a brother to Caesar to attempting to kill him and take charge of all the apes himself to get them to go against Caesar's wishes and wage war on humankind.
  • The film's plot about animals going free due to abuse and the police gunning them down became a whole lot more darker following the mass animal release in Zanesville Ohio, where 49 animals were deliberately let out of their cages by their owner. The police were forced to shoot all animals dead to protect the public.
  • Buck's death may come off as this after the infamous shooting of Harambe the gorilla, an incident that led to much debate and controversy.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The Spreading Disaster Map Graphic in the credits is far from funny. However, the mobile game it ultimately inspired uses a rather similar way of telling where disease spreads. Bonus points because by the time of the sequel, 20th Century Fox made a deal with the creators of Plague Inc. to allow use of the Simian Flu in their game, bringing the connection full-circle.
  • In this movie, Jamie Harris portrays a friend of the non-humans, while in this film's sequel, Kirk Acevedo plays a vicious human racist. Both appeared in almost the exact same roles in the second season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - and Harris' character even saves Skye from Acevedo's.
  • This isn't the first time Tom Felton portrayed a spoiled, abusive brat whose cruel actions are tolerated by his father. Draco Malfoy, anyone?
  • Ty Olsson plays a minor role in Rise as a police officer who fires at Caesar from a helicopter during the battle on the Golden Gate Bridge; a helicopter which Buck the gorilla leaps at and successfully downs, saving Caesar, but not before Olsson's character inflicts multiple gunshot wounds that result in Buck's death. 6 years later, Olsson gets cast in this film's second sequel, War for the Planet of the Apes, as the very thing he fired at in Rise - a gorilla. Not only that, but said-gorilla, nicknamed Red, is a secondary antagonist who starts out working for the humans, only to pull a Heel–Face Turn during War's climax, saving Caesar from a human, an act that costs Red his life. Talk about irony...
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Hunsiker is more loathed then the entertaining Dodge and Jacobs.
• Love to Hate: Dodge is an unsavory sadistic bully towards the apes in the animal shelter, but is grotesquely entertaining with Tom Felton's Evil Is Hammy approach and his liners peppered with Mythology Gag nods to the star of the original 1968 film Charlton Heston.
• Magnificent Bastard: Caesar is the revolutionary ape behind the uprising of simians throughout the trilogy of films. Gifted with intelligence and sentience rivaling that of humans, Caesar grows discontent with the lot life has given his kind and orchestrates a mass breakout of apes across San Francisco, using the same chemical that granted him his own intellect on the hundreds of apes to lead them in outsmarting local military. Peacefully parting ways with his former owner and kick-starting an entire civilization of his own, Caesar fearlessly protects his people and stands up to any factions of humans that cross him, nonetheless making a pact with a group of people to help them save their lives in exchange for peace. When betrayed by his right-hand, Koba, Caesar survives the treachery and defeats his old partner in combat to retake his spot as leader of the apes. As war breaks out between apes and humans, Caesar leads successful campaigns to stave humans off, and, even after being captured and enslaved by the Colonel, Caesar concocts a brilliant escape scheme for himself and hundreds of his brothers, overthrowing the Colonel and using his final hours to lead all of apekind to safety and prosperity for years to come.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Why Cookie Rocket?" has apparently become a meme.
  • The Ape With AK-47 online ad video for the Mood Whiplash and the ape's lack of reaction to what he just did. Amusingly, a lot of viewers don't seem to be aware that this is a commercial, as they have made jokes that this is the beginning of the Planet of the Apes franchise, ironically enough.
  • "Apes together strong" is generally used as a joke rallying cry, usually to unite a group of people who... don't exactly have the highest confidence in themselves.
  • As of 2016, Buck getting shot to death has gotten some Black Comedy association with the death of Harambe, a gorilla in the Cincinnati Zoo that was shot in defense of a toddler that fell in his enclosure.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • If he hasn't crosses this by trying to attack Caesar with a bat when he was a baby ape despite him being neutralized as a potential threat to his kids, Hunsiker absolutely crosses this when he inconsiderately confronts the dementia-stricken Charles Rodman for damages to his car and mercilessly tried to call the police on him and later tried to intervene by confronting ALZ-113-afflicted Franklin for trespassing onto a private property in a neighborhood he lives in and ordering him to get out of the said neighborhood after Franklin accidentally sneezes on him, infecting him. While Hunsiker's a Butt-Monkey in the majority of his screen time, he's actually a cathartic Butt-Monkey for his completely undeserved Irrational Hatred of his neighbors the Rodmans.
  • Dodge crosses this when he tortures Caesar by either beating him, spraying with a high-pressure hose, tasing him with a cattle prod or just insulting him, while his father John crosses this by indifferently doing nothing about his son's torture of the apes.
  • Jacobs crosses this for condoning the production of ALZ-113 despite its flaws out of Greed and nothing else, if not for ordering to open fire upon sapient apes on the Golden Gate Bridge later on. And when his previous actions come into light in the later installment Firestorm, including his deliberate torture of Koba out of spite, it becomes realized that his actions in the film are only the tip of the iceberg.
• Narm: Dodge's Call-Forward lines — "It's a madhouse!" and "Take your stinking paw off me, you damn dirty ape!" — are painfully forced. Although the latter has the benefit of directly preceding some Narm Charm...
• Narm Charm: Caesar's "NO!" would typically be Narm, but instead it ended up being a Moment of Awesome due to it somehow managing to successfully work as a Wham Line.
• Retroactive Recognition: Ty Olsson, who plays the police chief who co-pilots the helicopter that Jacobs boards and Buck destroys, who later go on to play Red from War for the Planet of the Apes.
• Shocking Moments: The first time Caesar speaks. Helped by the Mood Whiplash of it coming right after a Mythology Gag to the 1968 film, it stunning human and ape into silence, and being a simple Big "NO!" in defiance of his abuser.
• Special Effect Failure: There's several scenes during the Golden Gate Attack that seem more fitting to a cartoon than anything.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game, believes Rise to be "the first truly successful adaptation of my novel... to appear on the screen".^note This was before the actual film adaptation of Ender's Game came out. Aside from the protagonist being a chimp, the two stories are surprisingly similar: a child possessing seemingly unnatural intelligence is taken away from his family to be raised in an isolated environment by a group of manipulative adults who want to use his skills for their own ends, but he gradually develops his reasoning skills to become a strategic genius, wins the loyalty of a small group of devoted companions, and leads an outnumbered army to victory against another species— inadvertently wiping out the other species in the process.
  • It could also be seen as a treatment of F. Paul Wilson's Sims which involved transgenic chimpanzees fighting for their freedom, albeit less violently.
  • There are other influences as well. Let's see... An infant from an oppressed race is rescued by one of the oppressors' race. However, he is aware of his origins, and as he grows up, he injures one of the oppressors and is forced to flee. Sometime after, he finds himself in the possession of a powerful force that empowers his own people while simultaneously sending a plague onto the oppressors. He and his fellows are then hindered as they try to reach a promised land located beyond a large body of water, but they manage to miraculously defeat their enemies, allowing them to progress. Sounds familiar?
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: After several sequels to the classic original that failed to live up to the original and an earlier reboot that resulted in a Stillborn Franchise, Rise became the first movie in a long time for the franchise to attain both widespread critical acclaim and commercial success.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • Caesar's facial expressions are decidedly not chimp-like and a little too human. Justified in that he can't really be considered a chimpanzee anymore and he was also raised by humans.
  • Subtle differences can be found between the film's apes and real ones to make them feel more human. Observe this image of Caesar here◊ versus this photo of a real chimp here◊. The eyes have been made expressly human.
  • This is easily handwaved by Caesar being exposed to the genetic cure while in the womb. Apes other than Caesar and his adult son are much more ape-like (if a little bigger).
• Win Back the Crowd: This film was able to do so for the Planet of The Apes franchise.

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