[Anonymouse]

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - a lot better than I was expecting. There were a number of nods to the original - though I'd rather they hadn't put in the most obvious one, precisely because it was so obvious. A couple of criticisms, one of character and one of science:

Tom Felton's character, ignorant lout that he was, would surely not pass any sort of inspection, his relationship with the facility's owner notwithstanding. Apes are neither monkeys nor baboons, and such cruelty as he showed would be obvious to inspectors who knew their stuff. Apes, especially chimps, are so very like us, in that they suffer trauma as we do, and they react to cruelty as we do. It would show. Mind you, Caesar's payback was not a little satisfying.

As for the science - sorry, but giving apes increased IQ and cognitive ability is simply not enough to give them the power of speech beyond the very simplest sounds. Possibly even untreated chimps could speak, if they had the correct anatomy, i.e. a different shape to their skulls and jaws. As it is, they are literally incapable of it no matter how intelligent they are, and I was rather hoping this would be addressed. It could be argued that the genetic changes wrought in Caesar's DNA might have brought him part of the way there, but our mouths and jaws have, it is believed, changed gradually over several tens of thousands of years, after we invented tools and reduced our dependence on our own teeth to eat, resulting in the aforementioned changes to our jaws. This couldn't be done in one generation, by a few tweaks in DNA, even if the apes are, as Sir Terry Pratchett put it, only a few chromosomes away from wearing a vest.

But one thing they did get right was that Caesar retained the compassion he was taught as a baby by Will, from whom he'd never known anything but kindness. On numerous occasions during the battle, the apes had plenty of opportunities to kill people - they certainly had cause - but didn't take them. Well, except one or twice.

"We, who are not human, can afford to be humane." - the original Caesar, in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

The sequel - for they've clearly set one up - should be interesting.