Hooray for Hollywood reboots/remakes! Are you as sick of them as I am? Normally, I’m not a big fan of reboots and remakes, especially if they involve changing the details of an origins story (see my X-Men: First Class review). But there are exceptions to every rule. Case in point: Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes completely rewrites the origins for Planet of the Apes that was depicted in the third film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. The original story involved survivors from the future, ape-run world being sent back in time to 1970’s earth and giving birth to an ape named Caesar who would eventually lead other apes in a violent revolution against humanity. In the original origin story, all the cats and dogs of humanity were killed by a plague, and humans started taking in apes and chimps as household pets. Eventually, those apes would be trained to serve as a subservient laborer class before revolting under the leadership of Caesar.
In some ways, Rise of the Planet of the Apes could be considered a “remake” of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, in that it tells a different story for the origins of the ape-run world.
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