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Rise of the Planet of the Apes - the apes are way too powerful

repoman

repoman

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I haven't seen it except the trailer, but I did see the first movie of this current reboot.

Despite some pretty good writing, and plotting of the first one, I was so taken out of it by the ludicrous physical prowess of the apes. And the thing is that a standard chimpanzee is very strong, so no need to amp it up for drama sake.

Am I being too critical?
 
No, you're not being too critical. But it's your overall premise that's most important, rather than the specific example.

What I mean is that there are many concepts and stories that can be told realistically in any movie genre, but that get crushed by Hollywood's addiction to over the top action scenes, ridiculous character actions (like the guy in Prometheus reaching out to pet the alien-cobra-snake thingy), dialogue that seems written by an ambitious 7th grade theater student, etc.

The worst part about it is that it's all unnecessary. The concept behind Planet of the Apes is intriguing but it gets utterly destroyed by the paradox of a shallow yet infinite pool of obvious stupidity. What then happens is that the initial concept comes to be viewed as stupid rather than the serious (and interesting) social, political, and even personally introspective potential that's inherent in it. The idea is also inherently unpredictable. You can go down a million paths with it. Unfortunately movie makers prefer to go down the path where orangutans can hurl fire trucks at poorly trained SWAT teams.

The worst that I've ever seen though might be Prometheus. God, what a fucking abortion that was. A great idea with great source material turned into nothing better than a special effects fest filled in with characters and a story that resembles the first Friday the 13th movie.
 
Watch the trailers.

Pay attention to who is making the movie.

They are making it very clear what the movie is about before you even enter the theatre.

I plan to go see this next week. I'm hoping that it is entertaining. I doubt that it is enlightening. Wouldn't expect it to be. If so, it'll be just like Prometheus, which I really enjoyed as a piece of entertainment.
 
Bacillus anthracis said:
The worst that I've ever seen though might be Prometheus. God, what a fucking abortion that was. A great idea with great source material turned into nothing better than a special effects fest filled in with characters and a story that resembles the first Friday the 13th movie.
Click to expand...

Agree, that one got a negative rating from me. I would have to be well paid to watch Prometheus again.
 
Maybe the chimps are powered by Higgs particles? Or perhaps nanobots? Nanobots make everything more powerful. [/sarcasm]
 
It is hard to see how to get from the current imagining of the Planet of the Apes, to Charlton Heston chewing the scenery at the sight of the destroyed Statue of Liberty.

The SFX in that first movie were OK for their time, but they went sharply downhill in the subsequent flicks - and yet still the series had sufficient intellectual depth and a powerful enough moral that the Futurama script could include such scenes as
Fry: Wow! You guys worship an unexploded nuclear bomb?
Mutant: Yeah, but nobody is that observant. It's mostly a Christmas and Easter thing.
Click to expand...
and expect a sizable part of the audience to get the reference.

Somehow I cant see any chance of successful pop-cultural reference to the modern reboot, thirty years from now.

The only aspect of the original films that has been kept is the idea of the other apes taking over from humans; Talk about missing the point - that was just about the least important plot aspect of the original movies, which would have worked just as well with dogs or pigs - or in Red Dwarf style, cats.
 
bilby said:
The SFX in that first movie were OK for their time, but they went sharply downhill in the subsequent flicks - and yet still the series had sufficient intellectual depth and a powerful enough moral that the Futurama script could include such scenes as
Fry: Wow! You guys worship an unexploded nuclear bomb?
Mutant: Yeah, but nobody is that observant. It's mostly a Christmas and Easter thing.
Click to expand...
and expect a sizable part of the audience to get the reference.
Click to expand...

I thought that was a Fallout 3 reference.
 
C_Mucius_Scaevola said:
bilby said:
The SFX in that first movie were OK for their time, but they went sharply downhill in the subsequent flicks - and yet still the series had sufficient intellectual depth and a powerful enough moral that the Futurama script could include such scenes asand expect a sizable part of the audience to get the reference.
Click to expand...

I thought that was a Fallout 3 reference.
Click to expand...

Not sure if serious...

Fallout 3 probably referenced Beneath the Planet of the Apes, but I am old, so I wouldn't know - I have never played Fallout 3 - I fell out with both my first two wives, and have no desire for a third fallout. ;)

The last computer game I took a serious interest in was Elite on the ZX Spectrum 48k - so called because of its impressive 48 kilobytes of RAM. A truly powerful
Gaming platform in its day.
 
repoman said:
I haven't seen it except the trailer, but I did see the first movie of this current reboot.

Despite some pretty good writing, and plotting of the first one, I was so taken out of it by the ludicrous physical prowess of the apes. And the thing is that a standard chimpanzee is very strong, so no need to amp it up for drama sake.

Am I being too critical?
Click to expand...

That is what I thought when I saw the trailor. Those apes were just destroying everything withouth even trying.
 
Bullmoose Too said:
repoman said:
I haven't seen it except the trailer, but I did see the first movie of this current reboot.

Despite some pretty good writing, and plotting of the first one, I was so taken out of it by the ludicrous physical prowess of the apes. And the thing is that a standard chimpanzee is very strong, so no need to amp it up for drama sake.

Am I being too critical?
Click to expand...

That is what I thought when I saw the trailor. Those apes were just destroying everything withouth even trying.
Click to expand...
Well, chimps are quite strong. Mae Noell(famed
carnival Impresario) once related how her husband once went into the
cage of a recalcitrant preforming chimp to beat it into submission
with a thick leather strap. The chimp ended up taking the strap away
from the man and gave him the whipping of a lifetime!
 
Chimps physically outperform humans in nearly every way. They can outrun the best human sprinters, they have a vertical leap about twice that of a human, and they are around four times as strong. All in all, I don't think the trailer was that far off from realistic (assuming we watched the same one).
 
Saw Dawn of the Planet of the Apes today.

Great movie, the physical prowess of the apes was much more in line with reality than the first movie I would say. Also the animation was much more fluid.

Made the mistake of reading the IMDB boards and found some trolling questions like why were there no gay apes? Or no "asian" apes? What would the latter even mean?!?
 
repoman said:
Saw Dawn of the Planet of the Apes today.

Great movie, the physical prowess of the apes was much more in line with reality than the first movie I would say. Also the animation was much more fluid.

Made the mistake of reading the IMDB boards and found some trolling questions like why were there no gay apes? Or no "asian" apes? What would the latter even mean?!?
Click to expand...

Gibbons and Orang-Utans are Asian apes; Gorillas, Bonobos, Chimpanzees and Humans are African apes; Capuchins are technically monkeys, but they are one of the most ape-like primate species native to the Americas, where there are no native 'true ape' species.

Whether or not any apes in the movie are portrayed as gay, there is no doubt that outside the movies, homosexuality is very common in Humans and Bonobos, and is also known to occur in the other ape species, although how common it is I am not sure - probably less common than in Bonobos and Humans, both of which species are pretty much obsessed by sex, and have very varied sex lives.
 
The troll obviously meant an ape with "Chinky" eyes.

Don't get technical, Mr. Smarty Pants!
 
repoman said:
Made the mistake of reading the IMDB boards and found some trolling questions like why were there no gay apes? Or no "asian" apes? What would the latter even mean?!?
Click to expand...
Don't know? Apes driving black Honda Civics? Apes that are very demanding of their offspring in school? Apes buying used underwear in a vending machine? Apes watching nothing but Ape Anime or dressed in Cosplay (Cosplape?)?

Hard to tell which stereotype they were looking for.
 
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