REACTION PAPER:

“RISE OF THE PLANET

APES”

Prepared by:

CHRISTIAN BLANCAS

Presented to:

Madam GOLDY GRACE P. ESTRADA

Subject Teacher

March 2019
CHARACTERS
Humans
James Franco as Dr. William "Will" Rodman, a biologist who is trying to discover a cure for
his father's Alzheimer's disease by testing ALZ-112 on chimps; he is a father figure to
Caesar. James Franco was cast after talks with Tobey Maguire broke down.
Freida Pinto as Dr. Caroline Aranha, a primatologist who begins a relationship with Will
and grows attached to Caesar.
John Lithgow as Charles Rodman, Will's Alzheimer's-afflicted father and a former music
teacher who improves after Will gives him the ALZ-112 and forms a grandfatherly bond
with Caesar.
Brian Cox as John Landon, manager of the San Bruno Primate Shelter where Caesar is
confined for a time.
Tom Felton as Dodge Landon, John's son and an animal caretaker at the shelter, who abuses
the apes for sport. His first and last name are references to two of the astronauts in the
original Planet of the Apes.
David Oyelowo as Steven Jacobs, Will's arrogant boss.
Tyler Labine as Robert Franklin, a chimp handler at Gen-Sys and one of Will's friends.
Jamie Harris as Rodney, a caretaker and a nightwatchman who is much kinder to the apes at
the sanctuary and is regularly mocked by Dodge for this.
David Hewlett as Hunsiker, Will's hot-headed and boorish neighbor. He despises his
Rodman neighbors for no reason, and helps the Simian Flu destroy humanity by spreading it
around the world.
Chelah Horsdal as Irena, a nurse who is looking after Charles.
Apes
Andy Serkis as Caesar, a chimpanzee whose intelligence is increased from being exposed in
the womb to ALZ-112 when the drug is administered to his pregnant mother, and who is
raised by Will for eight years. Caesar is based on Roddy McDowall's character in the last
two films of the original Apes series.
Karin Konoval as Maurice, a wise and benevolent Bornean orangutan who was retired from
a circus and knows sign language; he becomes Caesar's closest ally. Konoval also cameos as
the court clerk whom Will briefly argues with about his appeal. His name is a reference to
Maurice Evans, who portrays Dr. Zaius in the first two films of the original Apes series.[10]
Terry Notary as Rocket, the dominant chimpanzee at the ape sanctuary, until Caesar
overthrows him. Notary also plays Bright Eyes, Caesar's mother, who was captured in
Africa.
Richard Ridings as Buck, a western lowland gorilla who pledges his allegiance to Caesar
after he is freed by him.
Devyn Dalton as Cornelia, a female chimpanzee in the ape sanctuary.
Jay Caputo as Alpha, the dominant male chimpanzee of Bright Eyes' troop and Caesar's
father.
Christopher Gordon as Koba, a scarred and aggressive bonobo who has spent most of his
life in laboratories and holds a grudge against humans.

SUMMARY OF THE STORY

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a film in which digital FX technology has now evolved to
such an extent that super-intelligent apes can be shown convincingly on screen for the first
time. No more dressing up in comedy monkey suits, or as semi-transformed ape characters,
such as Helena Bonham Carter's poignant, ridiculous but fondly remembered turn as Ari in
Tim Burton's 2001 reboot of the first film. The simian star of this one is Caesar, whose
movements and characterization are provided through motion-capture technology by Andy
Serkis, who similarly played the gorilla in Peter Jackson's 2005 remake of King Kong.
Caesar's mother is one of many primates caught in the jungle and brought to present-day
San Francisco, where they are experimented on in the labs of a drug-research corporation
that is amoral and profit-driven in the time-honored manner. There is one terrifically
Ballardian scene in which the inmates, driven apeshit by new drugs, smash their way into
the sleek boardroom and cause chaos, before being taken down by stun darts. The
experimental programmed is hurriedly closed down, to the horror of Will Rodman (played
by James Franco), a decent, troubled young scientist who has been willing to accept these
procedures in the search for an Alzheimer's cure. His poor old dad Charles (John Lithgow),
who lives with him, suffers from dementia. Will sneaks a baby chimp home – little Caesar,
as it were – and feeds the experimental cure to both the ape and his own dad. Meanwhile,
just to keep us in the narrative-saga loop, a throwaway scene reveals that a certain manned
space-rocket has blasted off to Mars.
This really is a very enjoyable film: suspenseful and involving, and Caesar is a great
character with mannerisms and expressions that are neither simian nor human but bizarrely
convincing as a combination of both – dramatically and comically, if not scientifically.
Caesar should be absurd, but never at any time will you feel the urge to laugh at him, though
you might laugh with him, as he grows up and realizes his destiny.
There is unexpected tenderness and also tension in the family scenes in which Will presides
over a household in which his father has been gloriously brought back to mental life, and
which is also invigorated by the little kiddie chimp swinging around the house. Caesar is
almost a son to Will and a grandson to Charles: Will realizes that he is lonely, and that of
course is where the beautiful veterinarian Caroline (Freida Pinto) comes in.
This prequel does not quite have the scabrous quality of the original 1968 movie, the topsy-
turvy world in which apes rule over human slaves, nor its bold racial satire: a suggestion
that having set about brutalizing and dehumanizing the black peoples, racist whites could
now be reaping a karmic whirlwind. But there is something transgressive in the story of
Caesar's relentless IQ-march, and a radical political education not attributable to the drugs.
Locked away in cages with other apes in the hateful primate centre, Caesar achieves a kind
of new Spartacist consciousness. He brings his fellow prisoners together, sees how the
existing hierarchy is structured, and then moves in as the alpha-ape.
No prequel or sequel to Planet of the Apes can avoid the great statue-shaped shadow of that
famous finale, one of the most brilliant endings in Hollywood history. Burton
unsuccessfully tried putting a new twist on it. I wondered if Wyatt would try to show us
exactly how a certain part of the New York skyline came to be changed. The action takes
place in California. Would we be getting over to the eastern seaboard some time before the
closing credits? The final scene involves an airport, and I was quite certain I knew what
catastrophe was on the cards. But no. Perhaps Wyatt was thinking what I was thinking, and
rejected it as too obvious. Well, his monkey business is perfectly acceptable without it.
LESSON LEARNED IN THE MOVIE
THE WRONGS OF ANIMAL TESTING-- Despite the best intentions of the scientists
involved in this movie trying to cure Alzheimer's disease, animal testing is dangerous, cruel,
and wrong. Products have to be tested on something, certainly, but most exploits and takes
advantage of innocent creatures. Surely there's a better way.
ANIMALS ARE NOT STUPID BEASTS-- I'm not trying to go to an All Dogs Go to
Heaven level, but many animals, especially our fellow primates have functional intelligence.
It may not be as well-developed as our own as a species, but they're far from stupid. They
are cognizant of cruelty, threats, affections, and love. Just watch the training and sign
language that is possible in even zoo and circus animals. Like us, they have feelings and
memories too. Respect that and treat them as you would like to be treated.
SOME THINGS ARE NOT MEANT TO BE CONTAINED OR CONTROLLED--
Mankind often wants to "play God." We change the course of rivers, develop medicine to
fight disease and death, and try to assert ourselves as the dominant species on the planet.
Take movies like this one, 1995's Outbreak, the upcoming Contagion, and just about every
cheesy creature-feature to see that there are plenty of things in nature that can't be controlled
or shouldn't be controlled.

SIMILARITIES OF HUMAN AND ANIMALS

Chimps may never be fully as intelligent as humans, gene therapy not with standing (“our
brains are physically three times bigger—this is not a small difference”). But de Waal adds,
“chimps do have many mental capacities—thinking about the future, planning ahead,”
which are necessary for the sort of strategic thinking they do in the movie. “So that’s not
unrealistic.”
It’s also not at all unrealistic that the primates would band together to fight their human
antagonists. “Chimps do wage war,”. “They’re quite territorial.” As an admirer of chimps
and other primates, he was worried that his cross-species friends might be stereotyped. “I
was afraid they’d portray the apes as aggressive and the humans as angelic—but it’s the
opposite. The apes want peace in the beginning.”
We as a humankind was supposed to be the highest form of animals. Why?
We, in this 21st century, we are highly influenced by the modernity, science beliefs and
theories that undeniably affecting each and everyone’s thoughts and beliefs. As an
individual, we may differ with our perspective perception in every ideas taught and issued
among our society. Like for example, some of us believed that we came from a single celled
organism that was formed into a human individual based on what the lectures that we had in
our Biology class. Some may not agree, for they believed that man was an evolved kind of
animals which is considered in the Theory of Evolution formulated by Charles Darwin. On
the other hand, many people believed that God created man and all living and non-living
creation existing in this world.
There are several ideas, theories and evidences that are continuously spreading out
nowadays. But how come there are considerations about man as the highest form of animals,
and why not?
We as a human, we are gifted with our ability to think, to understand, to communicate, to do
actions without being told so. We have the ability to reproduce our own kind, we know how
to deal situation that enables for us to survive. We posses knowledge, and we are made
differently and absolutely unique from anybody. We learned how to build society, socialize
with other people out there. We had our own culture and belong to different races. And we
are also classified according together it’s our gender, status and ages.
Same with the animals, they had their own way of surviving, finding foods to eat and they
had the capability to reproduce also. They are also classified as mammals, amphibians,
reptiles and aquatic animals. They have instinct and senses same with human. Animals
differ with one another as man did.
Humans are sometimes compared to animals, not only because there are times that man
showed their uncontrolled behavior and ignored the principles or laws of being a true man.
But because there are somehow similarities on the ability that an individual and an animal
posses. There are instances that we are compared because of the physical characteristics of
an animal, such as monkey. They can eat with both hands, they have feet and they have
faces near similar to humans.
But of all creation, created by God as the Christian people believed, and of all the creation
made by the nature and ideas of evolution, formulated theories about life origins produced
by the imaginative and creative human mind, there is one thing for sure; MAN is the
SUPERIOR and HIGHEST of all.
For man can create something we never expected, man can invent and explore new ideas
and knowledge. Man has mind. And man was created to be the steward of all creation based
on the bible. And man was the greatest contribution in the world. For without man, there
would be nothing. There were no studies about origin of life. Without man, there was no
society, no one to gain knowledge, no record of history, there’s no past and no tomorrow.
Man can control things, their mind are powerful. And that was the reason of being the
superior. Besides, man was given the capability to love, to possess emotions and ability to
identify and name those feelings, those wonders of life.
Despite of all these things, I believe that it doesn’t matter if we are said to be an animal. For
MAN and ANIMAL is just a word, used to label us and classify us within our characteristic.
Besides, being an animal is not a bad one or a curse, for animals sometimes posses the
attitude that the man was lack of.
But what most important is, we, which are supposedly called as MAN must be like a unique
masterpiece that should stand out from other piece. We should prove that we are the highest
and greatest form of masterpiece.