Just to be clear, I've seen the trailer that runs before Harry Potter -admittingly, six of the eight times I saw HP, so I had some idea of the point of the movie- but beyond that NO IDEA.
Maybe I'm the only person in the world who's never seen or read about the other Planet of the Apes movies, but I haven't. I knew from the trailer that it was about super smart apes that get mad at Draco Malfoy and get powerful. But really, I had no idea what it was about at all, and I have a feeling this affected what my final feeling of the movie was.
And since I'm pretty bad at not spoiling movies, I should probably spoiler warn right here.
Anyway, so the movie starts off with this chimpanzee being tested on in a lab. They have her working on this test called the Tower of Hanoi and the perfect score to that is a 15 and she got a 20. Just to be clear, because this confused the crap out of me, you want a lower score. I never understood why she got a higher than perfect score, but apparently she was 5 points from perfect. So anyway, the scientist watching over starts freaking out with excitement. He convinces his boss to let him present this drug that he's been injecting into chimpanzees that is supposed to be the cure for Alzheimer's (ALZ-112 being the drug's name). So they go to present the drug, and of course, the special chimpanzee named Bright Eyes freaks the eff out and goes crazy, destroying parts of the building they're in.
The boss orders all of the chimpanzees being tested to be euthanized because the company is ending the project. After euthanizing all of the chimpanzees, they find that Bright Eyes had just had a baby chimpanzee and that's why she went insane (mother's are apparently protective). Let's just ignore the fact that as a test chimpanzee, it's basically impossible for Bright Eyes to have been pregnant without the scientists knowing, because otherwise the movie has not plot.
So lead scientist takes the ape home and notices that the smart genes its mother had genetically got passed down and made baby-chimpanzee super smart. (He gets a perfect 15 on the Tower of Hanoi). The lead scientist names him Caesar and raises him like a son.
Apparently this was supposed to be some sort of reveal, but lead scientist working on an Alzheimer's cure has a father affected by Alzheimer's (I thought it was obvious, but the people at my theater sounded shocked). He injects ALZ 112 into his father who is magically cured.
So one day, the cure wears off and the father of lead scientist goes back to Alzheimer's-like ways and when he has a bad episode, one of the neighbors starts roughing him up causing Caesar to jump out of the house and viciously attack the neighbor in some form of retribution. Caesar gets sent away to Ape-Prison which keeps the apes inside of tight cages (boohoo) and is led by three guys. One is the typical innocent evil guy. Then there's the father-son duo and the son is the evil one (maybe because he is Draco Malfoy...) and basically they're evil because they don't treat all the apes lovingly. Even though only a handful of apes are normal wild animals, they're still expected to be sweet and adoring with them.
So the lead scientist goes to work on a new form of the medicine ALZ 113 and because 13 is an unlucky number, while it works on chimps (some of them brought in from the ape prison Caesar is in), it basically murders humans. Seriously, assistant scientist and the lead scientist's dad both die as a result. But anyway, I seriously expected something to come out of the fact that they were taking sample chimpanzees from the same ape prison that Caesar was in, but nothing came of it.
So the apes start plotting to get out and when they do, they murder Draco Malfoy and shove the innocent evil guy into a cage. Caesar, when fighting with Draco Malfoy says the word NO in a really dramatic effect and it reminded me of Chuckie Finster in Rugrats yelling out no.
Then the apes try to take over San Francisco and start murdering the police who are trying to stop them. There's a big fight on top of the Golden Gate Bridge. Loads of people die (including a scene where they let the boss of the medicine company fall and drown to death for no apparent reason), a few apes die, and then some weird ending happens in the forest where Caesar who has the ability to talk now tells lead scientist he is home and it is supposed to be a heart warming ending. Until you realize that the protagonists of the movie would like to murder you.
To be honest, this movie was good up until the end. I had problems liking a movie where the good guys want to murder me. Just saying. They were hardly likable protagonists. I liked the lead scientist a million times better. I guess maybe if I'd seen the other Planet of the Apes movies, I would've understood the point of this movie, because I've heard it's some form of a prequel, but I just thought the ending made the movie horrible. It just seemed to be going nowhere thematically.
I give this movie a 4.5/10. It was entertaining for the most part, but frustrating at the end.
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