Page 18 THE VILLADOM TIMES I, II, III & IV • August 17, 2011 ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ showcases special effects by Dennis Seuling “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” takes viewers back to a time before the action in 1968’s “Planet of the Apes” to show how apes came to surpass human beings at the top of Earth’s food chain. Will Rodman (James Franco) is a research scientist for a large drug company. He is working on a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. He has a personal stake in making a breakthrough, since his father (John Lithgow) has the disease and is gradually slipping away. Will uses chimpanzees in his test trials. The serum Will and his staff develop has a profound effect on the lab chimps: It sharpens their intelligence, heightens their awareness of danger, and gives them the ability to reason. This leads to complications when the chimps start thinking about their lot in life. Director Rupert Wyatt has put together a first-class action flick with occasional lapses in logic, but the computer generated image work on the apes is so amazing, it carries the movie. Actor Andy Serkis, who was the motion-capture basis for Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings” films and for King Kong in the Peter Jackson spectacle, does similar duty here for Caesar, the chimp Will brought home as a baby after an accident at the lab. Viewers see Caesar grow to adolescence and then adulthood as Will and girlfriend Caroline (Freida Pinto) raise him. When Caesar attacks a neighbor, animal control Caesar leads a primate rebellion against the humans in ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes.’ removes him to a primate facility that resembles a block of cells at Sing Sing. It is here that Caesar experiences cruelty at the hands of man and the “rules” of the animal world, eventually using his superior brain to turn the tables on his captors. The last half-hour of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” contains some terrific scenes of Caesar and his follower apes using their innate abilities to escape the authorities. The standoff occurs on the fog-shrouded Golden Gate Bridge, where a slew of cops and S.W.A.T. teams along with massive firepower await the advancing apes. The bridge has figured as a landmark of sci-fi mayhem as early as Ray Harryhausen’s “It Came from Beneath the Sea” (1955) and as recently as “X-Men: The Stand” (2006). Franco is never really believable as a scientist bright and focused enough to develop a cure for Alzheimer’s, but he delivers his dialogue straight and avoids making the movie campy and self-mocking. Pinto is pretty, but her role is superfluous. Scenes of dialogue between the two could profitably have been replaced by expressions and reactions. Franco proved he is adept at this in “127 Hours.” The original “Planet of the Apes” was co-written by someone who knew something about science fiction and twist endings: Rod Serling. The dreary 2001 remake that starred Mark Wahlberg neither improved upon nor sufficiently departed from the original. The prequel lacks the elegance of Serling’s writing, but makes up for it with a wham-bang extended finale that never loses its grip on the viewer. Prequels tend to make one wary. Made to capitalize on the success of a very good film, they often betray the very qualities that made the original superior by dumbing down the script, miscasting, or applying a restrictive budget. “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” rated PG-13 for stylized violence, gets it right and serves as an intelligent yarn of how apes vanquished people to become Earth’s dominant species.