The recent blockbuster movie "Rise of the Planet of the Apes 3: The Ultimate Battle" is about the battle for survival between orangutans and humans.
Two hostile camps, either you die or I die. As a human, where do you stand?
The film puts both perspective and focus on the orangutan. The emotions of the audience are naturally affected by the fate of the orangutans, and shift with their joys and sorrows.
——Of course, without hesitation, he abandoned the humans and stood for the orangutans.
In addition, as the final chapter of the "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" series, some people think that this film is slow-paced, not as good-looking as the first two, and is a pseudo-blockbuster lacking a climax.
I also want to express my position here. I think this film is calm, bold, ambitious, and ambitious.
"Spider-Man: Homecoming", which was released at the same time, is, in my opinion, a pseudo-blockbuster movie with little trouble.
In "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes 3", the orangutan family led by Caesar is in a desperate situation. Caesar completed the transformation from animal nature to human nature, and even divinity, and the ape family also opened a new first year.
This is an atmospheric and bright final chapter linking the previous and the next.
The "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" trilogy is a technical stream of films, technically epic.
The biggest topic of the movie is motion capture technology. Motion capture technology is not the first of the "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" series, but "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" has made extensive use of it and reached a new level of production.
When dealing with similar themes in previous films, it was inevitable to use some shots of real animals, or to use some special makeup techniques. For example, the 1968 sci-fi film "Planet of the Apes" is a classic of the same genre. The orangutan in the movie is played by a person wearing clothes and a headgear.
The "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" series did not use an animal to star. People also hid behind the scenes and no longer really appeared on the movie screen. Outside the movie, we can see a lot of such pictures, the protagonist Caesar's actor, Andy Serkis, wearing a tight-fitting sensory suit, with many patches on his face, captured and accurate by computer Recording, and then through CG technology, human movements and facial expressions are transformed into orangutan performances.
Once had a face-to-face communication with Andrew Langland, the director of the film's special effects production team, the famous Weta Digital Company. Langland said that in order to film the film, they often got close to the zoo, obtained MRI images of the gorilla, built a model of the gorilla, and studied its muscle density, ligament connections and other details.
Actors have a different body structure, and the performance has to be adjusted accordingly based on these scientific calculations.
Each orangutan has about 5 million hairs, and they used computer software to model each hair to establish their density, length, curvature, etc.
What is more difficult is some dynamic changes, such as the shaking of the fur caused by the wind, and the rain and snow on the fur. There are also such as muscle contractions, changes in skin color and so on.
In addition to Serkis's Caesar, the "Bad Monkey" and the orangutan Maurice in this film, the Langland team also put a lot of effort into it.
It is not easy to describe the eyes of "Bad Monkey" alone. Lang Rand hopes that his eyes are shining with wisdom, world-weariness, and childlike innocence and romance.
Their kung fu is not in vain, and the character of "Bad Monkey" adds a touch of lighthearted comedy to the overall somber tone. Maurice also vividly conveys the expression of the orangutan.
There were also questions at the exchange scene. Since Serkis can play so well, can he play the role of the orangutan, and the actor's face will not be shown anyway. Lang Lande was stunned for a moment, and said that this is a good idea, you can try it...
At that time, I felt that the foreigners were very kind, and the Chinese were good chicken thieves. We have all kinds of cleverness, and we will cut corners in various ways, but when it comes to creation, is it good?
95% of the shots of this "Rise of the Planet of the Apes 3" are processed by computer CG. But when you watch the finished film, it feels very realistic.
In film history, 1988's "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is known as the first live-action and animated character in the same frame.
In the "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" series, avatars based on real people appeared at the same time as actors and the real environment, and there seemed to be no traces of them in the picture.
Is this realistic looking film actually a cartoon? Will actors really be replaced by computer effects one day?
In the face of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes 3", these questions popped up in my mind again.
"Rise of the Planet of the Apes 3" is a movie with technical flow. What is valuable is that the topics and thinking it provides are not only at the technical level.
It is framed by a biblical story in which Caesar corresponds to the Jewish leader Moses. Moses was ordered by God, Jehovah, to lead the enslaved Hebrews to escape from ancient Egypt and reach the Promised Land of Israel.
And Caesar also led his tribe, going through all kinds of difficulties and dangers, to the Monument Valley in the western United States and began to pioneer the new homeland.
There are many correspondences with the stories in the Bible. For example, when the Egyptians chased the Red Sea, God caused the sea to merge and drown them, allowing Moses and his party to escape smoothly.
In the movie, when humans found the orangutans and were about to chase them, a "miracle" also happened. The avalanche buried the humans, and the orangutans who were clinging to the tree survived.
In the "Bible", Moses set the "Ten Commandments" and finally died, and Caesar finally retired and died.
Why did he have to die? One of them, known as "gorillas don't kill orangutans", he once killed a fellow and committed the commandment to kill.
In addition to the deep-rooted religious complex of Westerners, there are many historical references in the film.
For example, orangutans were held by humans, pointing to Nazi concentration camps. There's also the Civil War of humanity, the merging of southern armies with northern armies, and the constant appearance of the Stars and Stripes, reminiscent of the American Civil War.
The movie also has a very deep "fantasy" complex, paying tribute to some classic movies. For example, the Colonel's madness, fans will think of "Apocalypse Now" and "Pure Metal Jacket"; Woody Harrelson's addiction to killing orangutans reminds people of his classic "Born to Kill"; and the little girl's The name Nova is taken directly from the character's name in 1968's "Planet of the Apes".
So this is a film that can stand up to careful interpretation. As far as I know, it's probably just the skin.
But some critics were unhappy, saying it lost the depth and intensity of the reflective 1968 film.
All I can say is that, in a horizontal comparison, for a work with such a large investment in this era, it has done an excellent job. It's already quite risky in many ways.
For example, rather than lively external stimuli, visual bombardment similar to action scenes, it is more inclined to an internal narrative.
In the film, there is a huge disparity between the strength of the orangutan and the human being, and the leader Caesar has been performing an impossible task. From the very beginning, he bore the family feud of losing his wife and son, but beyond the family feud, he had to undertake the mission of survival as a group. The head of the family and the leader of the ethnic group are often contradictory.
In addition to the physical torture of human beings, his heart is constantly encountering demons - the orangutan Koba, who broke the peace of the orangutan for personal revenge in the previous movie, flashed in his mind like a nightmare.
So this part is about the process of Caesar's body and soul suffering and sublimation. This kind of process is not lively, but also has some literary style.
In addition, I think this film also has the courage to pursue the ultimate, showing that crazy energy. Its representative, the colonel played by Woody Harrelson, kills his own son for race, in stark contrast to Caesar.
When faced with the life and death of race, are the ethics and morals we have always pursued still valid? In fact, I doubt it too.
However, in this film, the ethical value of the family is still defended. It is manifested in the fact that human nature has been lost; in the "beast", human nature has been preserved and deepened.
It is precisely because of this that we stand with the orangutan.
The reason why people are human is not because they look like a person, but because they walk upright and have something that can be identified.
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