Fox Not Done Throwing Its Feces at the Planet of the Apes Franchise

I’m of the opinion that the Planet of the Apes franchise produced two truly great movies — the original, of course, with Charlton Heston, and then Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the fourth movie, about Cornelius’ son Caesar leading the genetically altered apes of the near future in a revolution against their oppressors. Much has been made of the film being a metaphor for the Kent State riots, but the fact is the movie portrayed the ape revolution as understandable, sympathetic, and still horribly brutal. Fox obviously fucked up their remake of the original PotA, but when they announced they’d be remaking Conquest as Rise of the Apes, will premiere in summer of 2001 2011 free of any real ties to the Marky Mark vehicle, I held out some hope… because I am an idiot. From /Film:

The Apes will be created using CGI by the wonderful tram at WETA
Digital, rather than the costumed actors we’ve seen in past installments
of the franchise. The press release says that they will employ “certain
of the groundbreaking technologies developed for AVATAR” and “will
render, for the first time ever in the film series, photo-realistic apes
rather than costumed actors.”A lot of the charm of the series was the
costumed apes, but yes, they did always look fake. And with a story set
in a experimental lab, it makes sense to have CG apes.

Blech. You know, I might be okay with the CG apes —might be — if I thought Fox would include even a smidgen of the social commentary of the original, and not some dumb action movie. I swear, if this movie doesn’t star Scarlet Johansson as a sexy scientist who ‘s teaching the apes to talk, I’ll eat my hat.