KING

Gave Rise of the Planet of the Apes a rewatch this evening, I'd quite forgotten how much I enjoyed it. As soon as the first act is out the way (and James Franco is tidied off to the edges), the film is one long smile prompt for me. It's a creature film in which the monster is allowed to be the dramatic centre. It's like an Alien film in which we dispense with all the boring humans and spend time tracking the beast, seeing his moves, getting to know him. Andy Serkis and WETA's Caesar is the high-water mark in CG acting and character building - the organic rise of a king tracked through a furrowing brow and how he holds his body.

JUNGLE BEAST

Aside from the dearth of melt-faced mutants, I'm a little disappointed to see Caesar painted up like a Cambodian river savage in this tease for another Planet of the Apes sequel. While I'm sure Dawn of the Planet of the Apes will deliver an ample amount of cowering human scum, I would have liked to have seen Caesar's tribe filling the mankind gap while we were off in disease control facilities feeling sorry for ourselves. With this in mind, we could've had vacant buildings tweaked and customised for the oversized chimps and their gorilla neighbours. Fanciful new technologies crafted around the ape's needs and desires. Finally we could've caught a glimpse of Pierre Boulle's original idea of a settled, civilised ape race, with massed humans as the primitive, bestial aggressors.

Vid on the blink?

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Caught somewhere between a rethink of Black Panther fav Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and a blank slate junction for further simian sequels, Rise of the Planet of the Apes charts the captivity of wunderkind chimp, Caesar. Born to the star test subject of a glossy neuroscience conglomerate that specialises in pumping violence gas into higher primates, Caesar narrowly escapes a post-riot cull, becoming the surrogate infant in a household dealing with Alzheimer's. Although a human cast circles the edges, they never amount to anything more than gears and cogs. Who cares about soppy vets or greedy business buddies when you've got the King of the Apes spoiling for a scrap?

Andy Serkis's performance as Caesar is beguiling. Ostensibly mute, Serkis and Weta Digital communicate the chimp's ideas and mental state through expression; beginning as a fluid mix of movement and wide-eyed mooning, eventually developing into a regal frowner with a fixed, biped, posture. Caesar incessantly registers as intelligent, equally capable of mercy and malice. This is Rise's coup, it's Caesar's story. He is the centre. With Caesar estranged from his human family, the film's focus narrows to a mime acted prison break, with Caesar demolishing his rivals then conceptualising visual metaphors for collective action. He is the hero - Spartacus in a zoo - and you root for his victory. You want him to pulverise all the boring humans.