James Franco Dooms Us All in the ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ Trailer

I wanted to be excited for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the prequel to the well-known franchise starring James Franco, Freida Pinto, and Andy Serkis, but after seeing the trailer, I’m not as thrilled as I thought I’d be. Maybe it’s because this prequel reboots the franchise, and we already know how it’s all going to end.

The story is that Dr. Will Rodman (Franco) develops a cure for Alzheimer’s and tests it on an ape named Caesar (Serkis). But when Caesar starts to develop unprecedented intelligence, he becomes the subject of a tug-of-war between Rodman, who wants to protect him, and the other scientists, who want to experiment on him. As you can see, Caesar decides to mutate the other apes and bust them out, which leads to human-ape war.

But where’s the surprise? The shock of the two Planet of the Apes movies (the original and Tim Burton‘s 2001 remake) was that the astronaut discovers that the strange planet is actually Earth, in the future. If you show us the prequel before the film — because we have to assume they’ll be making yet another Planet of the Apes — then there’s no mystery to be unraveled. That’s why prequels are termed as such: The producers of a franchise work backwards, giving you one story and then setting up the backstory.

I’ll go into this more in today’s Fan Service when discussing X-Men: First Class, but it was worth pointing out in regards to this trailer. I’d be interested to hear if someone has a more positive response than I did. What I will say is that they need to keep Andy Serkis for the Planet movie, because he’s the perfect choice to play the brooding, calculating apes — moreso than Burton’s creepy bodysuits.