Science Fiction | Movies | Revolution

‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ is a Revolutionary start to a Revolutionary Trilogy

The Planet of the Apes Trilogy rebooted the original Planet of the Apes films, exploring how the eponymous planet of the apes actually happened. It began in 2011 with “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, directed by Rubert Wyatt and written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.

I have had my eyes on this series for a while. The idea of an ape uprising that eventually takes over the whole world was striking and rich for a lot of radical political reasons.

A lot of movies from this area of the world tend to center around the narrative of stopping the revolution, stopping the uprising of the bad people. Those who want to tear down the system and the status quo are usually framed as radicals who simply want chaos for chaos’ sake. Filmmakers usually label them as anarchists and completely misunderstand what that term or ideology even means.

Hearing that there is a series that explores an anarchist uprising and frames it from a positive perspective and always frames the anarchists as the unequivocal good guys and the humans who want to maintain the status quo as the bad guys was shocking to me. I wanted to see how they would actually do this, and whether or not they would shy…