Wyatt’s prologue is written in the primitive language of the signing apes, in contrast to the florid prose of Schaffner’s classic. There are superficial thrills moments of great intensity in the company of the animals, but it’s not a very likable movie. Its themes are obvious, inherited from better material, it employs a simpleton’s morality and it’s po-faced to a frame. The problem with Rupert Wyatt’s prequel is that it has no such wit. Science fiction, when in such playful and acutely satirical form as this, is a pleasure it’s a wit that ridicules our most cherished assumptions. Humans were “a walking pestilence” for orangutan scientist Dr Zaius, and they needed to be controlled. Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes, adapted from the novel by Pierre Boulle, inverted the prejudice. In Wolfgang Petersen’s Outbreak they incubated a virus that threatened to destroy human civilisation and its discontents Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later found them as test subjects, transmitting a wild animal’s aggression and bloodlust to humble Londoners, while in Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys, the very mention of their name made them culpable symbolically, if not in deed, for a global catastrophe that drove man underground.įranklin J. There’s no escaping the link between those tree fetishists and pestilence. Whatever the truth about our homonoid friends, Hollywood likes to think of them as dirty. Warning: This review discusses aspects of the plot and key scenes.

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