That title! Its laboriously long winded. The film is too. I guess I was expecting something rather different. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (I actually copied and pasted that) is hereafter referred to as ROTPOTA which sounds more exciting but is still rather too long winded. In my brain ROTPOTA was a little like an zombie movie with apes. Some idiot would do some animal testing (this part happens), apes would gain intelligence and go…well…ape shit. Then James Fanco was going to step in and look all handsome and try to stop them from killing some family members or something, before maybe forging some sort of bipartisan agreement with the newly founded nation of Apemerica whereby they will meet demands in exchange for relaxation of some, but not all, of the economic sanctions currently imposed on them. Apemerica is oil rich you see, but has been crippled by U.N. … er Unapeted Nations … sanctions which keep its ability to export extremely low. Franco, in the face of crumbling support would have to argue that the concessions were for the greater good, and were only for six months anyway, and that really the face to face meetings alone are a historical first … wait a second. We already know that, given that this is technically a prequel, that the whole world falls to the apes (damn stinking ones I heard) so this story does not end so well. Anyway what I am getting at via this admittedly circuitous route is that the film assumes a historical distrust of apes. The problem is that this arises from the fact that they are treated like crap at the start of the film, so when they do eventually gain enough intelligence to escape they clearly just go and kill everyone they see. That is, except the one man who was nice to them. He is allowed to live. In reality the film takes about ten years to get to the part where the monkies escape and go crazy, thus finally sealing its woefully predictable “dont do animal testing” warning with a big “because your face will get eaten off”. A sentiment which really is overshadowed by the blindingly obvious “dont be a dick, and generally people, er, monkies, wont be a dick to you”. Anybody learning any lessons here, or do we need monkies to tell us everything.