“No!” A simple word transformed an ape character into a human being worthy of respect, the way an ape’s simple grasp of a bone signaled “evolution” in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came out the same year as the original Planet–during a time of racial, political, and social unrest. And slowly, ripples of applause made their way through the theater. The audience (myself included) reacted in stunned silence, give or take a few audible gasps. However, the campy line was soon followed by an impressive pause, in which our hero Caesar (a CGI ape humanized by Andy Serkis) stood upright, stared defiantly at his oppressor, and then spoke his very first words in the film while tightening his grip:Īnd just like that, the giggling came to an abrupt end. Sure enough, the recognizable line drew guffaws in the movie theater where I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Rupert Wyatt’s loose prequel to the sci-fi classic, which imagines how humans’ scientific experimentation on apes led to their world takeover. It occurred right after the prison guard Dodge Landon (played by Tom Felton) delivered the iconic phrase from the original Planet of the Apes, immortalized by Charlton Heston: “Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” A chill-inducing moment turned Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a potentially campy summer action movie, into serious drama.
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