I saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes recently, partially because Draco Malfoy plays a villain yet again (way to stretch those acting chops, Tom, but decent American accent), and partially because I have seen all the previous Ape movies. I still need to watch the sketchy looking television show. Though, I have seen Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, which had a more believable premise than that abomination with Marky Mark.
The problem with the black guy dying in the movie is not that he was black, but that he was the only black guy in the story. He was the only black person with any lines. The producers couldn't find any other black people in San Francisco who wanted to participate in a movie about incarcerated individuals who have experiments performed on them against their will, develop a secret method of communication, and enact a revolution against their evil masters? I'm available for the role of Greedy Businessperson #1, and I can bring my own suit.
Ironically, almost every character in Rise of the Planet of the Apes--which was cribbed from the black power influenced Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (my favorite of the Apes)--is white and male. The exceptions were the black guy, the South Asian love interest who had no motivation besides hanging out with James Franco, the frightened nurse, and the apes. Again, the setting was San Francisco. Were there no Hispanic people, or other Asian people, or women of any color who could read a line or two in front of a camera?
Onto my favorite characters: the circus orangutan and John Lithgow, in that order, even though I have seen every episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, and I cried when it went off the air.
More qualms: if the apes were so smart, Caesar especially, why didn't they hijack a plane and fly themselves back to the places they were captured from in generic Africa? Also, that Gen-Sys laboratory has terrible security.
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