Hoo-grah

Lovely win for City yesterday. Smashing match and all.

Stop me if you've heard this one before. It's been a while, so apologies to those in my readership who are fans, but I am at last able to return to the Planet of the Apes theme, having watched the latest Hollywood offering over the weekend. I speak of course of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which explores the question of: how did it happen? How did Charlton Heston (my spellchecker returned 'charlatan' and 'festoon' for the great man's [irony btw] name, amusingly enough) return from his space trip to find the primates in charge?

I have checked the canon (as some of my readers will be well aware) and the original French novel posits that the ape-dominated society of the films was actually on a planet (near Betelgeuse) called Soror. There, the ancient human inhabitants used primates to carry out menial tasks for them, being eventually overthrown due to their greed and cruelty. A further twist then has it that the human who had discovered the Soror ape-controlled planet escapes to Earth, 700 years in his own future, only to find that the same thing has happened there and the primates reign supreme. As far as I can tell, not having actually read the novel, there is no attempt to explain how the apes could have risen up and defeated the superior humans. The latest 'reboot', as I have heard it tiresomely described, attempts to address this glaring gap.

Warning! There are spoilers after the picture, so don't read on if you want to watch the film.

The premise of RotPotA is that a brilliant young scientist is developing a cure for Alzheimer's Disease (ALZ-112), which he is testing on chimps. A terrible mishap with a rampaging super ape during his big presentation to the board means that he is fortunate to keep his job, but he nevertheless has his project stopped, and all of his lab chimps are ordered to be destroyed. However, one baby chimp (Caesar - son of the aforementioned super ape) survives and is smuggled out by the scientist, to live with him and his (Alzheimer's afflicted) father in suburbia.

At the same time, with his father's illness worsening by the moment (he at one point - shock horror! - shouts at his carer) the scientist decides to secretly give him the ALZ-112, with immediate and startling results. His faculties not only return, they actually greatly improve, in tandem with Caesar starting to display the cognitive abilities of a human child some years his senior, even though he is kept shut in the loft at all times (the chimp, not the father). The crucial moment comes when the power of ALZ-112 wanes, and the old man begins to deteriorate at an alarming rate. This forces the scientist to try a risky development of his formula, coming up with... ALZ-113! in order to circumvent the immune system attacks which are rendering the original drug ineffective. With yet-to-be-revealed dreadful consequences...

Then, during an episode of dementia confusion (handled with a slightly uncomfortable, almost slapstick touch) Caesar loses his rag in defence of dear old dad, and attacks the next-door neighbour, biting the tip of his finger off. Despite the lipstick-y effect on his muzzle, it's never clear whether he swallows the tip or spits it out, but the neighbour is shown at the end of the film with a bandage on his digit. Caesar is not shot, but is taken to the animal refuge, and I am surprised that the state of California hasn't sued News Corporation for the ridiculous way in which the facility is portrayed. It is run by a sly and sadistic father (phoned in by Brian Cox) and sons group and houses about 300 chimps, one gorilla called Buck and an orangutan who is able to sign fluently thanks to his circus past (?!).

The upshot of it all is that Caesar nicks loads of ALZ-113 from the Gen-Sys lab (the brain-building effects of which can be passed on 'vertically') and up-skills his simian crew, while humans (notably, the next-door neighbour) exposed to the drug (now in handy smoke form!) start sneezing blood and dying horribly. Primate world domination, we can see, is not far away, requiring only a trip to New York, and a similar leap of faith in the audience's credulity, to close the circle.

The film is s-fx heavy, and some of the set pieces (especially the scene on the Golden Gate bridge) are quite entertaining - if more than faintly ludicrous, while the movement of the apes, as if they are superheroes or supernatural, rather grates. Caesar's face is too CGI, and he is less believable for that, although there was some genuine power in the moment of his first word - appropriately enough - NO! All in all, not a bad effort, even if not canon.

Bono bo boss

I have just read the latest article by George Monbiot, which outlines his action in attempting to perform a citizen's arrest on John Bolton at the Hay Festival. More power to his elbow, I say, and it's just a shame that he didn't succeed, though I am amazed that there are some people out there still attempting to justify the invasion of Iraq.

However, the serious political issues aside, my attention was grabbed by GM's reference to gorillas in the piece. I read the article in hard copy last night and have been haunted by the phrase till now, which is the first opportunity I have had to go online and read the comments posted by the loonies on CiF. These are his words:

"I had almost reached the stage when two of the biggest gorillas I have ever seen swept me up and carried me out of the tent..."

It comes hard on the heels of watching Escape From The Planet of The Apes the other day, which is a mildly absorbing and mildly amusing movie. A bit too clunky perhaps in its attempts to raise social issues. You will be familiar with it, I'm sure, or at least familiar with the whole POTA schtick, as I thought I was. I had always thought that the story went like this:

In a future Earth, due to some catastrophic nuclear event caused by humans, apes will have become the dominant species (or would that be race?) and us people have become subjugated to their will and hunted like animals. What I have discovered (from Wikipedia) is that the story was originally a novel written by a Frenchman called Pierre Boulle. What really happened was:

"In the distant past, the planet was ruled by human beings, who built a technological society, and enslaved apes to perform their manual labour. Over time the humans became more and more dependent upon the apes, until eventually they became so lazy and degenerate that they were overthrown by their ape servants and fell into the primitive state..."

(From the Wikipedia link highlighted above)

The problems obviously start with the premise that the most belligerent group on this hellish future world are the gorillas, while the chimps are the gentler, more cerebral ones. Orangs (in the films at least) are cast as spiritual guides, holders of the sacred word, etc. This is clearly not correct, as anyone who has watched either (or especially both) of the David Attenborough programmes on gorillas or chimps will concur. Chimps (and to a certain extent bonobos, though there is some debate as to whether the influence of humans, direct or otherwise, is causing a shift in bonobo behaviour, making them more aggressive. Which could be a possible explanation for the total shift in ape behaviour in the POTA) are immeasurably more violent than gorillas, who are, as someone on the CiF board pointed out, peace-loving vegans. They go on to point out that the gorillas GM refers to are actually serving the top chimp - GW Bush - but my issue is with the whole idea of gorillas being misrepresented. This is, I suspect, partly the result of ignorance, in that M Boulle wrote his novel in 1963 and detailed knowledge of wild ape behaviour would not have been available at that time. We all, even the esteemed Mr Monbiot, carry the stereotype of the 'big gorilla' as a terrifying monster. But more than this, I believe there is a strong whiff of racism in the classification.

Anyway, 'two of the biggest gorillas [he had] ever seen' is surely a wild exaggeration? Has he never watched King Kong?