In a world of Superhero movie franchises it’s probably easy to forget that the rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise was one of the most critically and financially successful franchise properties of the last 10 years. That said, it’s no surprise that Disney has marked ‘Apes’ for development to try and keep that money train rolling. Of course, there’s no word if they will keep the train rolling or build a whole new train. That’s my lousy analogy for saying that there’s been no announcement if this will be a sequel or reboot. All we know at this point is that they’ve hired Wes Ball (Maze Runner) to lead the project.
Personally, I’m not sure which way I want them to go. On one hand I thoroughly enjoyed the Rise of the Planet of the Apes run, which had an amazing film arc starting in a world just like ours, introducing the virus that wipes us out and makes the apes smart all the way through the apocalypse and to a world run by super smart apes. The film series covers the entire life of Caesar making us really identify with the simian hero. That’s just on the story side, from a technical angle the series was absolutely groundbreaking. While the LOTR series introduced us to Andy Serkis and the impressive novelty of MOCAP performance, the Apes series showed us that it’s far from a novelty and legitimized what Serkis does so far as to have his performance rumored for Academy Awards recognition, and while he was never nominated, at least the Washington Area Film Critics Association was enlightened enough to nominate the actor twice for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ awards for his portrayal of Caesar (Shameless Plug: The WAFCA awards are just around the corner! Nominees are announced this weekend and winners will be announced Monday morning Bookmark It!)
What do you guys think? Continue the story or start anew?
