Rise Of the Planet Of the Apes

IMDB

Caesar is home and wow, what a home-coming!

If a sci-fi movie is able to give me goose-bumps even a couple of times, I rate it as “achieved expectations” and recommend it to all my friends. And ROPOA did that to me four times at the least! Last movie that gave me such an experience was Avatar (which by the way was not from the plot or the performances but from the sheer brilliance of the visuals). ROPOA is a very worthy successor to the filming technology of Avatar – though technically not as flawless as Avatar, but emotionally very exuberant.

The buildup of the plot is time-consuming and is not something that’s awe inspiring but it’s also not boring. There might be a time when you may think when the “rise” is really going to start. The premise, although not entirely new, is promising. The whole episode of rearing of Caesar does force you to draw analogy to the parenting of the teenager in your home, complete with the sweet memories and the unpredictable mood swings!

When the rise of the apes does start, it takes the pace of the movie to a whole new peak. Caesar takes the stage by storm and his each and every move in gathering the apes for the rising is just awesome. I don’t know of an instance in the movie history when the uttering of a single word (“NO!”) on the screen has had such a profound impact on the viewer. This particular scene alone has made me a repeat audience of ROPOA, although there are a few more such incredible scenes.

There’s really nothing much to talk about anyone else in the movie and this is not because the performances are bad. It’s because Caesar just eclipses everyone else! James Franco and Tom Felton play their parts well and Freida Pinto doesn’t really have much to do.

The earlier Planet of the Apes was not a bad movie. I watched it ten years ago and the only emotion those apes evoked in me was fear. ROPOA instills the same kind of fear in the viewers but it’s the process of the instillation (through emotions and dialogues rather than through larger-than-life stunts and explosions) that makes ROPOA a lot better movie.

Have you ever felt sympathetic to someone while simultaneously being afraid of him? No? Then go watch ROPOA and when you meet Caesar, your answer will change to “yes”! Oh, I can’t wait to see the aftermath of Caesar’s rise!

My mobile can take good pics too!

Random Thoughts

Being the subject of constant scrutiny mixed with a bit of ridicule is not easy. This manifests itself in anger followed by denial followed by acceptance finally followed by discount. This painful process is amplified further if your decision is condemned but YOU know it’s the best for you.

While there’s no denying that this kind of scrutiny is an excellent growth proposition for the character, it also indefinitely limits the comprehensive decision-making abilities of the person. Developing a sense of insecurity as a result is - I would dare to extrapolate - very common. It also tricks you into thinking that life is very complicated and the only way to simplify it is to let go of all conceptions – good and bad.

Restricting the psyche of a person is by far the worst you can hurt him. What’s more appalling is people never realize the extent of this damage they have unknowingly inflicted. One challenge lies in getting them to realize this. For most victims, overcoming this challenge is a “work in progress” for almost their entire lives. There is really no fool proof method to go about this because though simple as it sounds, it is not as easy, especially because you are not dealing with enemies but with people you love. You have to deal with complex egos built up over long periods of time and such constructs that you may absolutely disapprove of but have to face nevertheless. The other challenge lies in bringing about a positive change in those people. Now what makes this challenge a grueling one is that though everyone knows that change is the only constant in life, they still prefer to resist it. So, not only is it your responsibility to make them vulnerable to this change, but you also have to cajole them to truly accept the change.

But that’s not all. Now comes the most difficult part - Absolution. When you feel that a person close to your heart has wronged you, let you down or has gone against your decisions, the most common reaction is anger and you draw yourself away from that person. This seems logical and normal, and the thought process stops here. Only on cogitating further can one stumble upon the realization that the person had the right to hurt you - a right needed to make the bond stronger. What better test could there ever be for the bond of love than the infliction of a state of facing your worst fears for your loved ones? And what better way to trump this test than to forgive the person from the bottom of your heart? 

Our bravest and best lessons are not learnt through success but through misadventures. And it is immensely pleasurable and easy to sail through these misadventures when you know that your loved ones are there for you, no matter what.

Cowboys & Aliens

I believe in comparing a movie to a dish and the director to its chef. There are world renowned chefs and there are aspirants with promising talents. And then there are those who are neither here nor there – the “middlemen” if you can call them that. Leaders, Aspirants and Followers.

So, there are leaders like James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, John Lasseter, etc, and there are worthy aspirants like Zack Snyder, Paul Greengrass, Danny Boyle, etc. These master craftsmen don’t follow a “trend”. More often than not, they define and build an era. And then there are people like John Favreau, Michael Bay, etc., who are proficient followers of those trends. James Cameron is what he is because he invents the recipes of his dishes. Even if you don’t love the dish, you most certainly will not hate it; and you cannot help but be amazed at the brilliance of the recipe and its ingredients. The aspirants are more inspired by the passion that goes behind the invention of such recipes than the recipes themselves. Which is why some of their initial attempts may founder but eventually they are guaranteed to join that altar where their works are beyond success and failure. The followers, on the other hand, are more interested in acquainting themselves with the ingredients used by the leaders and the aspirants. Just a mish-mash of different ingredients from different recipes and –voila – you get a movie like Cowboys and Aliens.

Faint and few streaks of genius intertwined with blunting performances further marred by blotches of déjà-vu is how I would define C&A. Oh, who would have expected Harrison Ford to choose C&A as one of his now-a-days rare silver screen appearances! And I constantly fail to understand why Daniel Craig literally sweats incessantly for his one-expression-fits-all acting prowess in every single movie. Dude, lose the drive to make yourself look cool. You remind me of SRK – that’s how pathetic you are on screen.

If Iron Man2 was a small step towards the abyss of self-annihilation for John F, C&A is one giant leap toward the same. After the well deserving debacle of Iron Man 2, John F takes another futile swing at the action + sci-fi genre, thus sealing the fact that he is better off acting than directing. The plot is straight out of a Hollywood studio blender; the alien creature VFX are Cameron’s Aliens meets District 9, and even the bonny Olivia Wilde looks like she just woke up with a horrible hang over - completely out of place.

Seriously, borrowing the “unobtanium-obsessed humans invading Pandora” plot and shockingly downgrading it to “gold-obsessed aliens invading earth” is freakishly infantile. Movies that lulled me to sleep are far and very few. C&A has joined that distinguished club – I found myself making an effort to stay awake at least a couple of times during the boring, long and “made to look and sound cool” cowboy conversations. While I agree that trying to copy the minutiae-obsessed but intensely grossing conversation styles of Quentin’s movies is not an easy job, I also despise anyone failing so poorly.

All said and done, you can’t help but sympathize with John F because the leaders have set the bar so high – you either die trying or live long enough to see yourself become a pitiful parody. If you are a teenager or have a teenager who is trying to make himself popular with his knowledge of movies, watch this movie for the numerous proofs it provides of how not to make a movie of this genre. Otherwise, you are well off giving it a skip and watching it at home whenever it is aired on TV.