This is the anger that is sometimes translated into the anger of the reader who goes to see if the movie lives up to the expectation. It mostly, never does. One such recollection is watching Chamber of Secrets in theater and being hyper pissed off with a mediocre director (yes, you Chris Columbus) and yet the next one Prisoner of Azkaban (kudos, Alfonso Cuaron ) I still love. It is this genuine anger , of the generation that was the audience of the original that sometimes becomes the bane of remakes, reboots and pRequels. Some franchisees (without too much critiquing) hold onto the interest and do end up becoming better. Others you know were a troubling addition one that will malign the original no end. For my generation's Star Wars is The Matrix which was completely diluted by its sequels, seriously WTF!!! Each of the movies mentioned here deserves a seperate blog and in the future will deserve its own piece. And I am coming to my point, sometimes you have to re-package the original in a different coating altogether and call it something else for it to be loved for what it is.
Scene from Prisoner of Azkaban with Original touches added by Cuaron.
The breakdown of the original story is this astronauts lost in space, go through a space anomaly, hero astronaut loses lab-pet-monkey , follows monkey, lands on planet where apes are dominant species and humans are pets, leads the rebellion, without revealing too much, pet monkey comes to his rescue at the end, go back to space ship, finds way back to earth, (and this is the interesting bit) crash lands to find earth run by Apes. Now, I believed for a while the last part was the astronaut's mind playing tricks on him. What the scriptwriters have done is taken this as a bookend to the story and charted the course of events on earth that would make that happen. Still Interested in this idea? {yawn} Me, either.
So I was ,quite a bit, skeptical when the movie came out. Once the rave reviews started, I was perplexed. The best way to review a movie is to cut yourself off from the marketing of the movie and avoid knowing too much in advance about it. Sometimes when a movie is hyper recommended take a few months before you watch it. This is exactly what I did.
Trailer Rise of the Planet of Apes
Now, I am happy to report. It really is quite as good. This is the kind of movie that you should let yourself be surprised by. Even if you know the ending , which I did. It really is the journey that is brilliant. The story starts small with a scientist trying to find a cure for alzheimers and his father who is suffering from the disease. The movie focuses first on the family; the father, the scientist and the Ape. The dynamic between his father (the inimitable John Lithgow) and him plays beautifully. Franco plays the son struggling with his father's illness and the relationship adding fuel to his need for a cure, terrifically. The only dynamic that irked me (surprise) is the uneccessary addition of a Veternarian as Franco's love interest. Frieda's acting is at best mediocre at worst yawn worthy but it is true that the script is forced here. She could have just been a veternarian and that would have made no difference to the meat of the story. Love interest truly uneccesary.
The true Star of the movie without a doubt is Andy Serkis playing motion-captured Cesar. Serkis does so much without speaking just by emoting with his eyes and his body, it is tragically brilliant. He infuses so much life into Caesar that we do genuinely care for the Ape and what he goes through and understand his emotions and eventual transformation. Post the movie there was a whole groups of Netizens urging the academy to either nominate him for best supporting actor or create a new category for motion captured actors. Seriously the man deserves an Oscar. He deserved it for Gollum, for Caesar and in case you have not seen it for Capt Haddock in Tintin. The man whom Spielberg described at the Golden Globes as 'The Man with a thousand Digital Faces'.
This brings me to the most important aspect of the movie, the script. The concept was so hammy that it would have been difficult to make a movie that was not as hammy. Somehow, the script writers (Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver) rose above that challenge by carefully teasing out some beautiful drama, emotion and feeling. At its core the script is about family, love, betrayal and anger. Though it can be compacted so succinctly it is difficult for story tellers to bring about the character transformation , we the viewers, find genuine. But they managed it.
I will write about another movie in this 'how to repackage better' theme. Oh! So this makes this part 1, DOINH!!!
On a personal note: It has been over 2 years since I wrote much on here. Loads has happened since then. I moved cities and am back in Mumbai. Significantly, I met a brilliant woman who will change my life :-) Kalpita and I have now been married 3 months, happily.
