By Govindini Murty. There’s clearly a divide emerging between sci-fi films that believe in the value of humanity and those that don’t. On one side are films like Transformers, Battle: L.A. and Cowboys and Aliens that depict humans as heroes defending freedom and civilization. On the other side are films like Avatar, Super 8 and District 9 that take a far darker view of humanity, portraying them as villains who torture alien ‘others’ out of a lack of compassion or understanding. You can put Twentieth Century Fox’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes squarely in the latter category. Billed as a prequel to the original Planet of the Apes, which starred Charlton Heston as a heroic astronaut who fights back against the barbaric rule of a planet run by apes, Rise of the Planet of the Apes reverses every message of the original film by featuring the apes as the noble, intelligent heroes and humans as the sadistic, barbaric villains.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes depicts a scientist, Will Rodman (James Franco), who invents a serum that can cure Alzheimer’s for the pharmaceutical company Gen-Sys. When tested on chimpanzees, it has the amazing effect of increasing their intelligence to the degree that their brain power exceeds that of humans. It also appears to cure Will’s own father Charles (John Lithgow) of Alzheimer’s. However, when things tragically go awry at the lab, the unscrupulous head of Gen-Sys, Steve Jacobs (David Oyelowo), shuts down Will’s promising research. Will is left to care for a baby chimpanzee who has had the serum passed on to it. Having nowhere to take it, Will raises the chimpanzee in his own home. It becomes a companion to his father (who names it ‘Caesar’ in an obvious historical metaphor) and Will’s girlfriend Caroline (Freida Pinto), a veterinarian, also helps care for it. But because Caesar the chimpanzee is super intelligent, he outgrows the bounds of his home, and a series of conflicts result in the chimpanzee being jailed in a brutal animal shelter before he ultimately leads an uprising against a cruel and intolerant humanity.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes follows in the footsteps of Avatar in its efforts to denounce all human science and civilization in the name of a simplistic over-romanticization of all things primitive and non-human. The standard array of establishment film critics have swooned over the film’s “intelligence” as a result. However, like Avatar, Rise of the Planet of the Apes displays a dislike of humanity that is out of all proportion with any concern for the environment. Its ruling anti-human ideology has the quality of a religious mania – akin to that seen in ancient agricultural cults in which animals were worshipped as deities and humans were sacrificed to the nature gods.
James Franco, curing Alzheimer's.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes uses the standard techniques of propaganda. The humans in the film are turned into dehumanized ‘others’ so that when violence is done to them, the human audience won’t feel bad about it – they’ll actually cheer. For example, the stated leads of the film are James Franco and and Freida Pinto, and yet their roles are so underwritten that their characters resemble cardboard cut-outs. Franco comes across as a surly, thoughtless scientist, while Pinto is given hardly more to do than smile, look pretty, and occasionally make portentous comments (“You’re trying to control things that weren’t meant to be controlled”). Both characters have no emotional arc; they’re basically the same at the end of the film as they were at the beginning.
Franco and Pinto are deliberately kept as ciphers in the film, which is about as positive as things get for the humans, because most of the humans who show up in the film are complete monsters.
The abusive, jerk guard who utters Heston's lines.
***SPOILER ALERT***There’s the greedy head of the pharmaceutical company who heartlessly tests drugs on apes and kills them in cold blood when things go awry. There’s the nasty next-door neighbor who tries to beat a baby chimpanzee with a baseball bat when it just wants to play with his children. There’s the sadistic guard of the animal shelter who brutalizes the apes (and who, in a very ugly dig against Charlton Heston, is explicitly compared to Heston’s character in the original film). And then there are the many San Francisco police officers depicted mercilessly attacking the apes when they start to run amok through the city. Through such depictions, the humans are turned into dehumanized others, with the majority of them devoid of basic compassion, intelligence, or morality.***END SPOILER ALERT***
All the effort and energy in the film is instead lavished on the real hero: the chimpanzee Caesar. Caesar gets the most heart-rending backstory and the biggest emotional arc in the film, he gets the most closeups, the most sympathetic exploration of character, the most in-depth analysis of every shift in mood. And, of course, unlike the humans, it’s made clear that he has no inherent evil in him – he only acts badly because he’s tormented by humanity. Caesar and his ape allies are naturally virtuous – whereas most of the humans are not.
Ironically enough, of course, Caesar the chimpanzee’s much-lauded performance is by … a human. You see, Caesar is not a real chimpanzee, because real chimpanzees – for all that they are wonderful creatures – do not have the intelligence or range of expression of a human being. So the role of Caesar had to be performed by a human actor, Andy Serkis, through complex motion-capture technology that was then digitally-combined with images of a chimpanzee to create the photo-realistic, emotionally-nuanced, super-smart ape known as Caesar. Thus it took the most advanced human technology to create this paean to non-human primitivism. So as with Avatar, a film is made that denounces human science, capitalism, and civilization … by humans using advanced computer science, funded by giant capitalist corporations, and distributed and promoted through the communications means of modern civilization.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the product of a segment of our popular culture that has become deeply self-loathing. It apparently isn’t enough anymore to demonize America and the West – now the entire human race is the enemy.
Poster for the 1933 "King Kong."
Rise of the Planet of the Apes fulfills all the chief characteristics of propaganda: it contains ludicrously over-simplified, two-dimensional characters, it features the abuse of the hero at the hands of a monstrous protagonist that eventually leads to the hero’s awakening to his class (or species) consciousness; and it has a pre-ordained outcome that is not the result of the complex and honest interplay between equal protagonists, but the predetermined outcome of ideology. The film thus has the feel of ’20s Soviet propaganda films like Battleship Potemkin or Storm Over Asia (albeit without either of those films’ innovative editing and cinematography).
Better films are possible. Just look at three classic films that also dealt with the interaction between humans and apes: King Kong (1933), Mighty Joe Young (1949) and the original Planet of the Apes (1968). In the first two films, much sympathy is given to the apes – which is appropriate -because one of the great virtues of humanity is our capacity for compassion and selfless altruism toward all living beings. Both the apes King Kong and Mighty Joe Young have three-dimensional characters – but here’s the key difference – so do the humans! Therefore real drama is possible between the human and ape characters because they’re both given equal weight in the films. Both are shown to be capable of good and evil, and neither is categorically condemned. Rather, these films are more concerned with the tragic clash between two very different ways of life: the way of the ape in nature, and the way of the human in civilization. Like the great Greek tragedies, these films explore how their protagonists deal with inescapable fate – in this case, the inexorable process whereby humans – who are acting true to their natures by building great cities and seeking to conquer nature in order to live longer, better, more comfortable lives – come into conflict with the apes and other animals, whose nature is to preserve their own way of life, which is simpler than that of humans due to their smaller brain size.
That is the way of the world and the mysterious ways of God. Humans were given large brains and physical abilities that enabled us to create all the wonders of art, science, and civilization – other animals were not. What makes us special as humans is that we also have the capacity for compassion toward other species, and when exercised in a rational way, this means that we make every effort to be good custodians of this planet and to protect other life forms. However, this does not mean that we should be abusive to our fellow humans or suicidally seek to wipe humanity off the planet in the name of saving the environment. That is the way of madness.
And that madness was brilliantly portrayed in the original Planet of the Apes. Planet of the Apes showed that when apes take over the world, they are actually just as brutal as the worst sort of humans – that in fact, when human civilization is wiped out and apes take over, there is no utopia of peace and justice. The apes have their own inequality, their own intolerance, their own wars. And it is a courageous human, Charlton Heston, who stands up for the freedom of humanity with his immortal line, “Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!” All this is rancidly reversed in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
***SPOILER ALERT***In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it is the brutal, sadistic guard of the primate shelter, Dodge Landon, who utters the line “Take your hands off me, you damn dirty ape” when the chimpanzee Caesar finally attacks him in his effort to break free from the primate shelter. Thus, a line that was a declaration of human freedom when uttered by Charlton Heston in the original film is now turned into an insult when uttered by the villainous Dodge Landon. I was appalled when the people in the audience broke out in spontaneous cheers and applause at the reversal of this famous line, and who continued to cheer as Caesar killed Landon. In case we didn’t get the explicit comparison between Charlton Heston and the nasty Landon, a clip of Heston is shown on a TV in the guard’s office right before Landon is killed. Is this how Charlton Heston is to be treated forevermore by Hollywood – demonized simply because the film industry disagrees with his politics? This was a disgusting slur against a great star who not only launched the original Planet of the Apes franchise to success, but also brought to life the leading figures of history in some of the finest films of all time, marched for Civil Rights long before it was fashionable, and fought for the rights of his fellow actors as a multi-term president of SAG. It’s typical that the people who should make a film like Rise of the Planet of the Apes that demonizes humanity should have no trouble being inhuman to a great star simply because he had different beliefs than they do. Where is the much-vaunted tolerance of Hollywood today?***END SPOILER ALERT***
Caesar leading his troops.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes is emotionally-manipulative propaganda that will no doubt make money and brainwash a certain segment of the public because it feeds off dark human anxieties about technology and progress while providing it with easy answers (“wipe out human civilization and everything will be great”). I compare it with Steven Spielberg’s far smarter A.I., which tells the story of a humanoid boy robot who yearns to fit into his adoptive human family – but is instead tragically abandoned. Spielberg doesn’t seek to denounce humanity in the film. Rather he makes the film a genuine exploration of what it is to be human – to ask whether a machine that is made by a human can possess human intelligence, soul, and dignity – or whether there is an impossible divide between human and machine that should never be breached lest humanity lose itself. Rise of the Planet of the Apes isn’t interested in any of these questions. The film has already made up its mind; it orients all its big emotional moments around valorizing the ape so that the audience cheers when it destroys human beings. The film doesn’t seek to inspire the human soul to dream of bigger and better things – it works to make humans angry and vengeful in order to score an anti-human political point.
This is typified by Rise of the Planet of the Ape’s astonishingly reactionary attitude toward human science and progress. Scientists who explore the brain are depicted as Frankenstein-level madmen. The space ship that is shown blasting off on the first manned expedition to Mars is snidely described as the “Icarus” mission – implying that, like the mythological figure Icarus, humanity has no right to aim for the stars because it will be burned by the sun and fall to earth. (Yes, I know, this is a set-up for the sequel, but it’s still obnoxious.) The film implies that it is better to constrain horizons, shut down the effort to expand knowledge, and instead live in as primitive a state of nature as possible – like the apes.
It’s only a matter of time before this kind of ideology starts to have serious consequences in the real world.
Posted on August 10th, 2011 at 12:14pm.
Great review and my apologies for misremembering that critical scene. As your last paragraph describes and I’ll be blunt, We’re already reaping the consequences of our current President, Ned Ludd and his worldview. We’re effectively abandoning our space program because it’s too expensive. I believe it fits into the narrative of these particular filmmakers and their hatred of humanity and the dominion of animals. I grew up listening to a lot of people who never understand why We explored space instead should use that money for social programs. These are the same people that will tell you that having taxpayers pay for healthcare or cell phones or cable television is a right.(ironically these last two probably owe a debt in some form to the space program. I don’t recall any liberal feel good programs fostering these inventions) I always wanted to visit Greece….I just don’t want to live there.
Johngaltjkt – Thank you! Actually, I was going to get back to you about that scene. I don’t think you misremembered it – it’s just you were watching the film in a normal manner and probably weren’t writing down every detail as I was! I actually take a notepad into every movie screening and basically have found a way to take very quick notes as the movie is playing without having to look down at my notepad. That way I get a lot of specific details down as well as lines of dialogue without having to go back and watch the movie again (because honestly, who wants to have to see some of these movies again?!). In any case, that’s how the scene played out. As for the movie clip of Heston playing on the TV in the guard’s room, I think it was potentially from Heston playing John the Baptist from “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” or it may have been a clip of him from one of the “Apes” films. Whichever it was, it was clearly intended as a nasty dig because of what it sets up just a few minutes later.
As for the abandonment of the U.S. space program, don’t even got me started. It’s one of the things that really to me is so un-American because it abandons the exploration and advancement of human knowledge that was one of the great achievements of our country in the second half of the past century. And it was a bi-partisan issue: both a Democrat President like Kennedy and a Republican President like Reagan understood why it was so hugely important to support the space program.
The abandonment of the space program also obviously bothers Michael Bay as well, because it’s a repeated theme in all three “Transformers” films. Just as the Autobots are gaining ground in fighting the Decepticons, some jerk bureaucrat always comes along to shut down the program as part of the overall plan to shut down all space missions. Bay repeatedly shows how these efforts inevitably lead to handing some huge space advantage to a non-democratic, non-peaceful enemy. By the U.S. abandoning the space program, aren’t we just ceding outer space to China, Russia, and any other dictatorial nation that comes along with untold consequences for democratic nations like the U.S. and its allies?
Nice piece. Calling out the explicit propaganda elements in the movie is something that is rarely done and most welcome. Not everybody “gets it” when it comes to being manipulated.
Authoritarian leftism needs the culture to be anti-human. It’s so much easier to control them with a clear conscience.
K- Thank you. It’s the anti-human elements in these films that are bothering me more and more. It really disturbs me how easily the average member of the audience is taken in by the cinematic spectacle to applaud this stuff. “Avatar” was the worst example of this. Having studied a number of Soviet propaganda films, I can tell you that not even the Soviets went this far.
Darn good review, Govindini. Thank you for taking the time to express this so eloquently.
You’re welcome, JohnJ, and thanks for the comment.
Wow … what a toxic motion picture. At least with “Avatar” I can make the case that, while the film has a distinctly anti-human tone, there’s a little more editorializing that pure propaganda, which is what this film appears to be.
Writing a screenplay is not easy, so a person really has to be sick to sit down, harness this sort of motivation for an extended period of time, and craft such a vulgar narrative.
As I read your review, I imagined Ayn Ran watching this film. She would’ve melted down if she were alive to see this. Imagine the perversion: Humans using the peak of technology and artistry to make a film that, as you say “implies that it is better to constrain horizons, shut down the effort to expand knowledge, and instead live in as primitive a state of nature as possible – like the apes.”
Your assessment on A.I. is perfect. It sounds weird, but all my life, I took such great care of what my parents bought me because I felt a connection to them. Later in life, I realized that they were somewhat sacred because they were acquired by the fruit of my parents’ work and God-given abilities. I think that’s why that film still captivates me.
I haven’t even seen “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” but just reading your review gives me the need to watch every Michael Bay film for a 24-hour period.
Vince – you’re quite right – it’s the mindset required to write this that baffles me too. What I kept asking myself is – what’s the end purpose of this? Do they really want to retreat to some primitive state of nature, or is it just a pose? As for Ayn Rand, I’m sure she saw all this coming in the ’60s and ’70s, which is what gave her the impetus to continue writing about the importance of individual human endeavor.
And that’s so touching about your parents! “A.I.” is a brilliant film. The boy robot’s love for the blue fairy and how it endures over thousands of years is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever seen. “A.I.” was based on a Philip K. Dick short story that was supposed to be filmed by Kubrick, but wound up being directed by Spielberg. What I appreciated about Spielberg’s work is his refusal to take the easy way out with characters or with stories – and to always focus on the human.
And the same is true of Michael Bay’s “Transformers” films, which I like for the warm and funny human interactions, and not just for the amazing special effects. I never thought I’d say it, but I really appreciate what he did in those three films. To me they’re almost classic Americana.
An excellent review by Govindini but like many today I smelt a rat from the get-go when the making of this movie was announced. An all too-often occurrence that also effects so much viewing in all media and entertainment. The promotion for this movie on ESPN’s “NFL Live” show has been excruciating as the title has seemingly been juxtaposed into the football show’s title, as well as constant verbal cross-promotion. And now any possible chance of seeing this movie has been extinguished by Govindini’s terrific examination.
Martin – thanks so much for your comment. I think viewers have become very savvy about what is being pushed at them and will quickly discern hidden messages. When I heard about this remake I too was suspicious of where it might be headed. And I agree about the relentless cross-promotion on TV. If there’s some movie you don’t want to see, you still can’t escape it because it will be all over the TV even in the middle of your sports program.
I dunno. I definitely felt the film was a little too pro-ape, and the demonization of so many humans in the movie got on my nerves and made me uncomfortable, so I don’t think you’re completely off base. But I’m not sure this movie is actually as anti-human or simplistically propagandistic as Avatar or as you’re making out.
In particular, I don’t see the film as advocating a rejection of technology and a romanticization of primitivism. Clearly there is an element of Frankenstein-ian cautionary tale here–we must be careful what we create, and deal with the results in a moral way. But where is the rejection of all scientific endeavor in that? Part of what makes Caesar special is his ability to understand and use technology. The apes do a lot of smashing things, but people do that in action movies too, and I really didn’t see anything thematically assertive in them busting up cars. I thought the action was exhilarating and disturbing at the same time, and I think most discerning viewers would feel the same. The sequence sure is exciting, but can we really cheer the death of innocent people here? Nobody at my screening did, and the others in my party expressed the same ambivalence. I think this might even have been intentional on the part of the filmmakers, to create a moral conflict here: If these apes are as intelligent as humans, than they are in fact people, and entitled to some rights, but if they’re rampaging around a city then the cops need to be brought in to put them down. Who to root for in such a situation? Anyway, I don’t see anything there asserting primitivism as better than technology. The apes like the trees because they are free, but the last shot—looking through the trees at the city–is ominous, not triumphant.
I also don’t think they were trying to demonize Charlton Heston here. They showed a clip of him as Moses, one of his best-known roles, which is in now way demeaning, just a little in-joke. (It was the other guard watching it, too, not the mean one.) And the lines given to Tom Felton also seem like little in-jokes just supposed to nudge people. They do take on added resonance, re-contextualizing the words as insults suggesting how things look from the apes’ perspective when they’re the ones imprisoned, but I think seeing that as a rejection of Charlton Heston’s character and a demonization of his politics is reading way too much into it. They are clearing tying themselves into the first movie in the series, and while they’re definitely saying “let’s show the apes in a better light this time,” I don’t think they’re saying, “see how Charlton Heston’s character was really a bad guy?” That wouldn’t make any sense, and I doubt anyone else out there felt this way as they watched it.
Excellent points, Stephen, and while I can agree to disagree with Govindini, still reminded of the Joker’s immortal “Why so serious?” line. Maybe we saw different movies, but wasn’t Franco’s dogged determination to create a cure for Alzheimer’s, out of immense love for his father and all of humanity who would benefit from science, put on the back-burner and he quit when Gen-Sys went too far with their testing? Hardly as 2-D as Pinto’s character admittedly is, but far from the same Franco we saw at the beginning of the movie. Caesar also spares the life of a human because he realizes there are good and bad humans as much as there are good and bad apes.
Also trying to decipher the “obvious historical metaphor” with Caesar’s name. Maybe I’m a little naive or maybe I’m just too much of a fan of the original series to remember Caesar was the name of the speech-gifted ape born in Escape from the Planet of the Apes who ended up leading the revolt against the humans, but who also eventually believed enough in humans to live in peace with them (Battle for the Planet of the Apes).
Um, I think “Caesar” stands for Julius Caesar and especially Augustus Caesar (Octavian), who overthrew the Roman Republic and created the Roman Empire. I have not seen the film, but from everything I have read it sounds as if all of the apes are endlessly noble and almost all of the humans are either foolish dupes or repellent creeps, hmmmmmm, much like the Smurf/Human divide in Avatar!
While this is a well-written and thoughtful essay by Govindini (as usual), I must respectfully disagree with some of her points, and agree with some of the things Stephen and EricP said above.
I enjoyed “Rise” as a summer action-adventure flick, with an impressive performance by Andy Serkis in creating a sympathetic non-human character that had to carry nearly an entire movie — no easy task. Call me naive, but I did not feel the film was trying to preach to me, or bludgeon me with propaganda ala “Avatar”. I didn’t sense that it was an anti-humanity or anti-science screed, or that the film considered it a “good” thing that humanity would be wiped out. And while there were certainly some unsavory human characters in the film, there were also sympathetic ones, too — like Will and Caroline, but especially John Lithgow as Will’s Alzheimer’s–suffering father.
I think one could see the film not as anti-science but rather as a cautionary tale about how good intentions can go awry, and about the unforseen consequences that can result from rushing headlong into things we know little about. Will had the noblest intentions in pushing to find a miracle cure for Alzheimer’s, but in his fervor he accidentally unleashed the virus that destroyed humanity instead. Also, viewed now as the beginning of the overall “Apes” mythos, it lends a bit of irony to the way the apes in the original movies treat humans as lowly animals worthy only of contempt, as it was we humans, through our science, who gave the apes their intelligence, and therefore enabled their rise in the first place.
Finally, like Stephen, I didn’t get the impression the film intended to demonize Heston. I also thought the recycled lines were intended more as in-jokes and call-backs to the original film, which the makers were big fans of. And it may be a stretch, but one could say that this film makes Heston’s character in the original even MORE sympathetic and heroic than before, as if to say “Yeah, humanity REALLY screwed up in the past, but on the whole we are still noble, and worthy of redemption.”
Thanks for this review – it has helped me clarify a lot of my own reactions.
The original Planet of the Apes was such a brilliant satire of Conservative reactionary politics. Its depiction of Dr. Zaius, the conservative theocratic ideologue desperate to defend his ‘faith’ from factual truth, and the subtle depiction of the racialized hierarchy of the apes themselves, made it a brilliant and penetrating satire as well as a warning about the threat of nuclear holocaust thanks to the military obsessives of the Cold War. I wondered what a contemporary take on this would be. And like you I was sorely disappointed.
As you point out the Kennedy-era optimism about technology, social progress, equality and ‘the race for the moon’ are all suppressed in this version. Instead it promotes a kind of simplistic Tea-Party style idea of freedom as entailing a rejection of science and urban life and seems to be in favor of a kind of rural back to the trees idiocy; going back to the land and rural life is presented as far better than anything contemporary life has to offer in just the same way that so many Conservatives promote the small town and farm life as much better than anything city-based, technologically advanced and drawing on the best that educated minds can offer (including ‘Harvard’ educated ones of course since the Tea Party demographic to which this film appeals especially hate those).
And on top of that it uses its propaganda techniques to further spread the right-wing hostility to multiculturalism: it tells us that there is no way that we can live alongside our differences; Caesar has to go and be with his own kind and his own kind only. You are right – that way madness lies.
Like you I also noticed the way the film treated the main human characters. The liberal and well-educated scientist is portrayed as a shallow and ineffectual person who never really sticks up for anything. And you are right about the film’s anti-feminist sexism as well. There is only one female character in the entire two hours and although she seems to have a very highly skilled job as a veterinarian she is reduced in the film to simpering second-class status unable to initiate any action of her own.
Ultimately I feel that a brilliant piece of progressive even radical film making from the sixties has been trashed by this ‘re-boot’ and turned into a piece of right-wing, sexist propaganda attacking all the achievements of the last decades. No surprise to find out that it was – of course – made by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox propaganda machine!
[...] gab es jedoch fast ausschließlich positive Kritiken, wobei es mittlerweile auch den einen oder anderen kritischeren Text zum Film gibt. Die letzte Folge des ausgezeichneten Podcasts Horror Etc widmete [...]
Excellent objective review!
I posted a paragraph and link back to your review on my blog:
http://ronbosoldier.blogspot.com/2011/08/rise-of-planet-of-apes-leftist.html
However, are you sure this movie wasn’t an allegory and Film Noir for the Tea Party Movement (TPM) and the soon-to-come Second American Revolution?
After all, to hear the Leftist Establishment tell it we of the opposition are a bunch of “damn dirty apes,”
On second thought: “Nah…Obama Loving Leftist Hollywood would never make such a movie with this intention!”
Your fan, Ronbo