While everyone else on the web continues to lose their marbles over the new Harry Potter trailer, which I still haven’t seen, a far more surprising and interesting trailer has hit the web: a 60-second international ad for Rise of the Planet of the Apes. What’s so damn cool about this trailer is that it mostly focuses on Caesar’s perspective. You’d think Fox would stick to James Franco’s point of view, but thankfully they’ve put out something a little more ambitious.
The first two trailers were excellent, but this one takes the cake. For starters, Weta’s and Serkis’ work on Caesar looks near-perfect. At first I thought the Apes were going to come off like Na’vi – where they’re clearly not photo real, but you buy them anyway – but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Caesar is incredibly expressive here. Andy Serkis looks to have brought over that powerful emotion he showed off in Kong.
One other interesting tidbit from this trailer: James Franco’s dialog. The other trailers obviously edited out a few bits of Franco’s lines, which made some of the delivery sound off, but here none of his lines sound butchered and are spoken naturally. Franco looks to be delivering more strong work, and the same goes for Jon Lithgow. With those two actors and a helluva an emotional looking Caesar, there may be a real heart in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. If this reboot is as good as it looks and matches director director Rupert Wyatt’s intentions, this this is going to make for one excellent film.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes hits theaters on August 5th.
