This is an edited version of a post I made on another thread earlier today:
Just saw the full
Rise of the Planet of the Apes trailer for the first time & am very impressed! Based on just these 2 minutes, it looks like they are going for a complete re-vamp, but at the same time will be keeping the spirit of the original films intact. Just based on this trailer, I'm looking forward to this film more than any of the other so-called summer "blockbusters" that are coming out this year. In fact, I have to say that I'm looking forward more to this film than I have to any new film in many years. What is especially interesting to me is that this time around, the explanation as to how the Apes actually become intelligent and take over humanity seems as if it will be more scientific.
Though I've been a fan of the franchise since I first discovered this as a kid in the early '80's, what always somewhat confused me was that that, based on what we see in
Conquest, the explanation as to how the Apes become intelligent and overtake the humans seems slightly far-fetched. I understand that in the time-line/story established in the original films, in the years after
Escape all dogs and cats died in a virus that was accidentally brought back from outer space, so Apes became more trained and domesticated to replace these pets. And, by the time
Conquest takes place, the Apes have become ready for revolution since they've been abused for years - and, Caesar (the child of the apes that came back in time) becomes the leader of all of the Apes since he had intelligence & could speak. However, I've always had several questions re: these original films , specifically
Conquest: First, just because the Apes become trained & domesticated, IMHO that wouldn't necessarily make them intelligent enough to take over nor would it necessarily make them intelligent enough to learn to speak (other than Caesar, of course). Second, it was never explained in these films how the appearance of the Apes changed from the way they originally looked to be more human & upright - apparently this happened in just the 18-20 years between
Escape &
Conquest, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me (of course, the real-world explanation is that they're all people in costumes). I guess it's possible that the virus that took out the cats/dogs somehow affected the apes by making them more intelligent & changing their physical appearance, but this was never even stated or implied in the films' plots/storylines (unless I missed something).
And, another issue I had with the original films was the idea that, sometime during the events of
Beneath, the scientist Apes were able to recover Taylor's ship from underwater, figure out how it worked, and somehow get it operational again so that it would be in space when the Earth was destroyed, thereby propelling them back in time. I'll buy the time-travel bit (since it had already been established that Taylor's & Brent's crew went forward in time in the first two films), but it is simply impossible that the Apes (whose primitive "technology" was on par with pre-Industrial Revolution Earth), even if they knew where Taylor's ship was, could get it out of the water and working again - no way. That being said, I'll suspend disbelief here since it makes for a good story, and since if that hadn't happened, the franchise would have ended with
Beneath.
Getting back to the new film, I think this has the potential to be better than the previous films in the franchise (I will reserve judgement until I actually see this, of course); Hopefully this new movie will do very well and will spawn numerous sequels, etc. It's interesting that these films have such longevity -though it's been ten years since the last film came out, the fact that there's this new one on the horizon shows that the franchise isn't gone for good, it's just been dormant for a while.
Re: the August release date, I'm not sure if this is good or bad (since most of the big summer blockbusters usually come out between May & July), but maybe it's good it's coming out so late in the summer, so there will be less competition.
Lastly, for the truly hardcore Ape fans, you may be interested to know that there will be a brand new POTA comic book coming out later in April 2011 - here is a link with more pictures & info. - it definitely looks like they'll be following at least some of the continuity from the original films here. I'm definitely onboard for this, and hope it lasts beyond the new film's release:
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2011/04/preview-planet-of-the-apes-1/
Side-note: I was one of the few Ape fans who actually liked the 2001 POTA re-boot - I saw it three times in the theatre, bought the soundtrack, the "Making of" HC book, etc. I felt that the make-up of the Apes in that was superb, and a lot better than the make-up in the original films. Plus, the 2001 ending was very close to the ending of the original Pierre Boulle POTA novel, so I felt it remained fairly true to the source material.