Rise of the Planet of the Apes/Headscratchers

Will's neighbor. Why does the film insists on presenting him as some sort of ultimate asshole? First his daughter comes to him afraid that there is a friggin' chimp in the house. Then there is Will's dad wrecking his car. And finally, he finds a crazy looking guy near his home, yelling at the top of his lungs and spitting diseased blood on him. Him being upset is completely understandble. The post-credits scene even puts the blame of the impending destruction of humankind on him, not Will, the guy who actually created the supervirus that won't be beaten by human antibodies. No respect for the butt-monkey!
- Because he is an asshole. He treats everybody like crap, regardless of what they're doing. He beats up an old man out of anger, threatens people, hates everybody, etc. etc. His anger may have been justified in a few cases but, hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Plus, there was that minor incident where he decided it would be a good idea to fly around the world even though he knew he was sick. Basically, he's the type of person who does whatever he wants and expects the world to conform. AKA, an asshole.
  - Also: fending off a chimp near your kids, fine. Persuing said chimp when it instantly leaves and trying to beat it with a baseball bat? Asshole.
  - Not to mention confronting and threatening Franklin outside Will's house. It's not his property and Franklin was calling for Will. It's not just some random stranger and it is not his house, He doesn't get to jump on the guy like that.
Big one: ALZ-112 should be the perfect drug. This is because it's gene therapy; you ONLY NEED ONE successful dose and BAM! into your genome it goes and it's there to stay. Will's dad making antibodies would a) have happened sooner and b) be a good thing as the virus is now utterly unnecessary. Finally, even if this kind of gene therapy is transient (mentioned below), how about immunosuppressants?
- And if the virus is doing all the work (as inferred with the antibody thing), then Bright Eyes should not have been able to pass her enhanced brain function on to Caesar. Granted, she could've simply passed the ALZ-112 along, but that's not what Will said.
- Many gene therapies are transient treatments as many viruses used don't integrate their genomes into the host. If the virus integrates into the host genome it can still produce viral products(but not viable virus) that over time increase the chance the immune system will recognise and destroy the infected cells.
- So why didn't the apes develop antibodies to it, if it is that kind of gene therapy?
  - They may well have -- the only ape we see exposed to ALZ-112 as an adult died not long after initial exposure. It's only Caesar who had long-term benefits from the gene therapy, and that may well be a result of him being exposed to the drug when a fetus (either bypassing the typical methods of forming immunity, or simply having the drug form a lot of new neurons before being attacked by the immune system or Alzheimer's).
  - You also have to realise that integrating into a host's genome is not as easy as all that -- if you do it at the unicellular fertilised embryo stage, you can achieve complete integration into every cell of the subsequent organism. However, at any time thereafter (e.g. an adult), the cells may share the genome through common descent, but they are independent of each other, so the virus has to infect each and every target cell in turn to "work". Of course, Caesar was well past unicellular stage when his mother was given the 112, so this doesn't hang together 100%. But he would have had a lot of early stem cells to be infected and pass down the viral traits to large parts of his adult self.
Aren't the apes going to be epically curbstomped? I mean, they're on the rampage through San Francisco! All the Government has to do is bomb the forest or send in the Army (with GUNS this time, rather than sticks) and bye bye apes. As for the virus - which shouldn't have been necessary in the first place (see point above) - antiviral drugs much? My money's on the humans here.
- Antiviral drugs might not be as effective against a new virus, and it takes time to create a cure against it, time they might not have if the virus moves quickly.
- This would happen if Caesar and his apes decide to go back to San Francisco to cause more damage. As long as they stay in the forest, the authorities will not bother to go after them. And due to the ALZ-113 plague, they will soon lose the capacity to do so.
  - Not bother to go after them!!?? Super intelligent, aggressive apes who murdered dozens of the police and carry a deadly disease? Also, in the original film there are still humans so presumably the plague is combated.
  - Dozens of the police? I counted four police and one civilian (the guy thrown of the bridge, the helicopter crew and Jacobs), all due to the gorilla who is dead already. As to surviving humans, no known disease is 100% communicable or fatal. Some humans will survive even if there is no cure.
  - Nobody knows about the (still-impending) plague yet. And folks might be reluctant to destroy an entire national park just to get "a few monkeys."
- Even if those apes are wiped out, the virus is airborne. Intelligent apes are going to pop up all over the world soon enough.
- Also, there's a virus threatening to wipe out the entire human race which will soon become apparent. Which would you give priority to: a few pissed off primates in a neck of the woods, or a global fatal pandemic?
  - Pretty much
- Not to mention the fact that, when you think about it, what exactly puts Humanity on the top spot of the planet and seperated us from our ape brethren? Our lack of speed and strength were off-set by our intelligence and our ability to create tools to augment our own power. Humans created a virus that gave Apes who prosessed 10 times our strength... the same mental prowess as humans and the ability to creatively think... and then we gave them a rather large chip on their shoulder. Who do think is naturally going to win? The Human Race effectively signed its own extinction warrant.
- Let's take the virus out of the picture for a second. True, apes have the strength, and now intelligence, but human beings have guns, airplanes, and NUKES. If humanity wanted to, they could wipe out the apes, even super intelligent apes, with a few well placed rockets and helicopters. There really isn't any way for the apes to build tanks, guns, and jets in the time it would take the military to mobilize a strong attack.
  - The Us goverment is not going to use tanks and bombers, much less NUKES (were you even serious about that?) on American soil. And you can't really take the virus out of the, once shit hits the proverbial fan the whole world is going to be much more worried about surviving the fatal plage, and nobody is going to give a hoot about some damn dirty apes. Caesar and friend are going to inherit the world, not really take it by force, much like in the original.
Where did that many apes come from? Chimp, Orangutan, and especially Gorilla populations, aren't exactly thrieving.
- The first bunch came from the shelter. Then they went to the labs and busted those chimps out. And then they went to the zoo and broke all those apes out.
How did the gorilla take down that helicopter? Gorillas are not bulletproof. Come to think of it, why take the helicopter so low and not just rain down fiery death from above?
- Gorillas are certainly not bulletproof but an angry 800-pound gorilla with gallons of adrenaline in his veins is definitely painproof. Besides, just using physics, a half-dozen bullets from a wimpy handgun are not going to prevent a massive gorilla from reaching you. No excuse for the helicopter pilot, who probably should have flown away or something, instead of letting an 800-pound gorilla jump on his helicopter.
  - By that point he couldn't fly away, Caesar had chained the helicopter to the bridge. Shouldn't have got that close in the first place though. Chalk that one up to overconfidence.
  - Or just not realizing that the apes could wield chains intelligently against a helicopter, which would be perfectly true if they'd been a normal bunch of apes.
How could no one in Gen-sys figure out that Bright Eyes was pregnant when she came in? Didn't anyone do a physical exam on her? I thought that a scientist would want to know everything about the experiment subject before he starts experimenting?
- The boss of this company cared more about the money than the chimps, so the scientists were only ordered to test the subjects. No one even cared when a human was exposed to ALZ 113. Not a very safe workplace in general.
  - Simple neglect cannot explain this: an ape was pregnant, as in a baby came out of her vagina. That's something people notice.
    - That one could be explained away as her giving birth during the night-shift on the evening before the presentation, and she'd kept the baby hidden away until she busted out.
  - Usually when people preform medical experiments, they pay close attention to all medical conditions that the patient has. Being pregnant would be one of the easiest things to notice.
  - How do you not notice a second living thing in the cage? Did they not monitor the apes at all when they weren't running tests?
When Franklin got hit with the virus, why didn't anyone quarantine him or at least keep an eye on his health? Didn't anyone think that having a guy running around with an experimental virus is a bad idea?
- He seemed to be saying "I'm okay", meaning that he didn't actually inhale the viral gas. Nevermind that he was visibly gasping after getting clocked in the face by a grumpy old chimp, and that the "gas" got in under his mask before he put it on, and that even if it hadn't he still got sprayed with it over his mouth and nose anyway. The Rule of Drama is about the only way that whole thing went down the way it did.
- And that brings up the biggest headscratcher - why on earth would you develop an air-borne virus if it's intended to treat only certain people? That's just an accident waiting to happen, as the end of the movie shows us!
How did the zoo apes get smart? Caesar exposed the shelter apes to the drug, and presumably the lab chimps were already exposed to it by being tested on. But they broke apes out of a zoo without making them hyperintelligent, yet they still seemed to organize with the best of them. How?
- They're not that stupid. They recognized who broke them out and followed.
  - When Caesar first came to the zoo, the apes were staring at him.
  - Except animal mentality doesn't work that way. The zoo chimps never saw the intelligent chimps. They wouldn't just organize with random apes they'd never met, they'd just freak out and scatter. Especially when the cops started shooting at them.
  - They got exposed to the virus offscreen?
  - The virus can spread to humans, so surely it can spread to other apes too.
  - As was already said, the virus was designed as an air-borne pathogen. Caesar's apes carried the virus within themselves. Once they were in proximity to the zoo apes, they were infected.
On the topic of the zoo apes, they were broken out of their habitat by a fully-grown gorilla. The gate surrounding the habitat probably required the strength of a gorilla to even give way. So, how were the regular apes able to pull the bars off of the gate to use as weapons? If the apes did have the strength to dismantle the gate, why hadn't they sooner?
- Maybe the impact loosened them?
  - I'm not sure. The gorilla didn't break thorough the gate, he bent it. If anything, that would make the bars harder to take off, because the bars would be all bent and misshapen.
    - He could have broken the bars holding them in place.
Why were there cops on horseback charging at the apes with clubs? Even if it was effective on some chimps, they still charged at gorillas and tried to beat them with sticks!
- Riot gear?
Why didn't they just sell the 112 version of the drug? they got eight years of good health, I know people who would kill for that kind time with relatives who have Alzheimer's, even though its not the be all end all permanent cure it would still sell like hotcakes.
- Because stupid selfish will only told his boss about it after his father already developed antibodies and he neglected to mention how long it took. From his boss POV it sounds like the treatment doesn't work
- Hell, for that matter, we don't know if EVERYONE would develop antibodies for the stuff or if Will's dad was unique. Not all medicine works for everyone, after all. For all of their intelligence, no human character in this movie seems very good at thinking past their immediate goal (or at scientific rigor, for that matter).
Why didn't Will and Franklin just tell Jacobs that Bright Eyes' rampage wasn't caused by 112?
- Either they didn't know or wasn't 100% sure. But it was too late.
  - Plus Jacobs is a dick. They probably did tell him and he blew them off.
Just what are we meant to suspect that an army of apes is meant to be subsisting off in the Redwoods, a continent removed from any of their native habitats.
- They are smart. they can improvise. And soon, there will be plenty of real estate available for them.
Apes are wild animals. There have been cases where chimps, even after being around humans for years with no problems, suddenly attacked someone. Why did the scientists just assume that the sudden aggression was caused by A112?
- The ape went on a rampage right in front of the investors. It may not be a scientific problem so much as a PR issue.
I just put this under the What an Idiot! entry, but I almost blurted it out in the theater when I saw the film: who the crap thought that just two scientists would be enough to restrain an angry chimp? Shouldn't they know that chimps are stronger than the average human?
- It was a female used to them that they had worked with with no problem till then.
  - It would be trivial to find a set of humans where a single female can overpower two males (try a female athlete or soldier and two sedentary male scientists). And chimps are five to eight times stronger than humans. This article even provides some real numbers as it explains, "a female chimp, weighing a mere 135 pounds and going by the name of Suzette, checked in with a one-handed pull of 1,260 pounds." And, of course, scientists who work regularly with chimps, or any potentially dangerous animal, understand that even animals who have displayed no previous aggression are apt to do so as they get older and are under stress. They routinely take precautions.
Caesar explains why he needs every ape, even the troublemakers, by snapping a twig, and then demonstrating how much harder this is to do when you have many twigs. This is a clear allusion to the fasces -- the Roman symbol of strength through unity, which is a bundle of rods. It suits Caesar's name. On the other hand, it is the basis for the word "fascism," which the Italian Fascists founded based on their vision of a new Roman Empire. Is this a hint that Caesar, for however good his intentions may be, will ultimately found a new Third Reich?
- No it was an allusion to The Sons and the Spears which is a symbol far older than fascism. It states that a people united are stronger than a people separated and has existed in most cultures across the world from Rome to Japan. There where various versions (in the Roman case sticks, for the mongol one spears and the Japanese version arrows). It was just another symbol that fascists stole along with swastikas and the roman eagle.
  - How can it be said that the fascists "stole" these symbols? Symbols cannot be owned (copyright law notwithstanding) -- the fascists adapted them to their purposes, as a great many other factions had over time. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that the Roman reference is the one intended, considering Caesar's name. Regardless of the origins of the fable, its use in this story may be go beyond a message of "strenght in unity". The link between the Fasces concept and fascism cannot be erased or ignored. The future seen in Planet of the Apes does indeed have some strong fascist parallels to it, and this moment may be interpreted as foreshadowing that fact. Or is this giving the screenwriters too much credit?
    - I thought the reference to fascism was very clear and intentional. Throughout the film, Caesar makes some hard decisions and tends to fall on the ruthless side, setting up a sequel to play out this characterization. For the record, though, Italian fascists =/= German Nazis.
    - Do note that there's a huge gap between "tough decision-making" or "not being a goody-two-shoes" and fascism. Philosophy and politics are rarely as black and white as many would like to believe, and pigeonholing people's ideas because they share some characteristics with others is a case of Hitler Ate Sugar.
    - Surely this is true in real life, but in fiction, drawing such parallels is a useful shorthand (which in the wrong hands can make for lazy writing). Is it not the film itself that associates Caesar and his rebellion with fascism?
      - The chimp's called Caesar. The Roman reference is far more likely. Also a charitable interpretation of Julius Caesar's actions would be that he rebelled against an authority that he had been part of but that turned on him, which fits.
        I expect most people have been exposed to one version or another of the The Sons and the Spears parable, but - while I complement you on your history - I doubt very many people know that a Roman bundle of rods was called "fasces", or that Mussolini's party derived their name from it. As a previous troper pointed out, the parable is in many cultures and need not have ominous overtones. The chimp's name, Caesar, is a continuity nod to the original franchise, which only imbued the name with the qualities of leadership and strength, not dictatorship (the chimp picked his own name in that franchise). So we know that the more recent screenwriter didn't sit down and think, "I'll name him Caesar, to imply that he'll one day become a dictator." The screenwriter may have used the bundle of sticks parable to imply fascism, but since the chimps are meant to be the protagonists, I would think that the simpler explanation is more likely: it only illustrates the parable every child hears about unity.
- Actually, this troper had a problem with Caesar's metaphor too ... but only because an ape ought to be able to break the bundle of sticks he'd used in his demonstration, with scarcely any more effort than what one stick would've required. To get the point across to an equally super-strong orangutan, he should've needed a bundle of branches, not flimsy twigs.
So, the apes rip off some pointed bars from a fence at the zoo, then use them as javelins...zuh? I mean, how does that work? Javelins are specifically weighted to fly straight. You're telling me that these random bars from a fence were perfectly aerodynamic?
- Well, the only scene they were used in was when the apes rained the pikes down on the Animal Control van - so they just threw them and let gravity do the rest.
- As usual, reality is stranger than fiction.
How come the police had only one attack helicopter available to them, rather than several to contain the apes? And also, how come none of the civilians fleeing the city seemed to own their own gun? The police even seemed adverse to using them, not firing at all at the fog and hopefully getting a few blind hits, and at one point running away from the apes and passing guns on the ground. Why the lack of militant response?
- The ape attack (or rather, exodus) took most by surprise and there's very little that can slow down a group of fast and agile parkouring apes. The police blockade with cavalry support was presumably the best they could come up with on short notice. As for firing blindly into the fog... no. Just no. For one, the cavalry troops were coming from the other side (!), and there may have been civilian stragglers still on the bridge anyway.
  - True, but couldn't the helicopter still have still fired at the apes climbing to the top of the bridge? There's no civilians there and given as the tops of the bridge are pretty narrow guessing where to fire at shouldn't be very hard.
    - There is a scene with Jacob urging the helicopter to reach them before the mist covered them. They tried, but the chimps climbed faster than they could react. Even if they blindly shooted into the mist, the helicopter can't risk getting too closer due to the mist, and the apes have been long gone, they have proved they are quite apt at evasion tactics.
- This is California. There's not exactly a surfeit of CCW permits, at least not to people who have to drive themselves to work. Attack helicopters also aren't a common thing for police to have or need, and they're expensive enough that you don't typically go sending spares around.
Why didn't they do the research, here? Jacob's motivation as an evil capitalist isn't just cliche, it actively doesn't make sense. The costs of getting a drug to the late stages of animal testing is extreme; they're willing to drop it back to basic molecular chemistry over one aggressive animal, especially in a species that can be kind of aggressive to start with? But he's willing to take even bigger risks and then personally run accelerated animal testing because it might be a nootropic? You can't even sell nootropics; the FDA has no method to approve them or even understand them in conventional terms.
- Can't speak as to the second point, but he actually says in the film about the first; the reality of the first drug doesn't enter into it, the investors had a maddened ape jump at them and then get shot on their table. There's no way they're going to invest and news like that gets around. PR disaster doesn't cover it.
- I had the same reaction during the scene just after Bright Eyes was shot. It makes no sense. Jacobs could never have risen to a position of leadership in an R&D company if his reaction to a mishap, even a catastrophic one, is "Destroy everything that we could analyze to figure out what went wrong, and start from square one." Even if those investors were traumatized, a reasonable executive wouldn't make a snap decision to destroy all research material seconds after the incident. They would launch an internal investigation into the catalyst of the chimp's rampage, and whether or not the drug was a factor, and they'd probably bring in another set of investors after a dispassionate report explained what happened as weighed against the potential benefits of continuing research. If every scientific organization trashed their research and went back to square one after every failure, we'd still be drinking snake oil to cure dropsy and consumption.
Why couldn't Franklin get in contact with Will about the deadly side effects of 113? Never heard of email? Text messages? Voice mail? The film basically makes a series of contrived coincidences to explain how Franklin fails to make contact with Will over the course of a week. This does not make sense in 2011 unless they made some kind of justification for Will wanting to actively avoid Franklin.
- If I recall it happened the same week his father died. It was clear how attached he was to him, and it's not rare on people on severe stages of depression to withdraw from all human contact, not answering calls or emails.
- Not to mention that Will was also very occupied with trying to get Caesar back.
Why did the drug made the apes able to talk and stand erect? I get that the drug makes them smarter by repairing brain cells, but how does it modifies their bone and muscle structure so they can speak and stand like a human? It's not like that is in any way related to being of smarter than a regular ape. Hell, if I recall correctly, a chimp was taught to say "up" and "cup". It could easily say those words with sign lenguage, but they happen to be something that can be articulated with "chimp voice."
- To answer this we have to consider Caesar apart of the other apes. All apes can stand and walk upright. Their anatomy only makes this slower and more costly than in us, so they resort to walking on four legs most of the time, and this is what all the "normal" apes do in the movie even after they are exposed to the drug. Caesar, on the other hand, was exposed to the drug whyle in embryonic state, in the womb. Since the drug is a retrovirus and was engineered to cure a human disease, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to think that it contains genes that are human in origin. Thus, an ape exposed during fetal development could acquire human-like characteristics and this translates in Caesar having a slight human-like appearance in the movie, as evidenced by his smaller jaw, visible sclerae, more upright stance and hability to articulate words. As long as the sequel doesn't contradict this, we can conclude that only apes exposed to ALZ-11X before birth can learn to talk.
Why did they make the virus airborne in the first place? Having it be transmitted by fluids only would make it far more easy to control, and Franklin wouldn't have had his incident--nor would Caesar have been able to dose the other apes with it so easily.
- Speed of delivery.
- Because speed of delivery is the primary consideration in clinical trials of virus-delivered drugs? Above things like closely monitoring the exact dosage delivered and accident prevention?
I'm really surprised I haven't seen this already, and that makes me think I must've missed something, but I'll ask anyway: why did Will never just ASK Caesar what was going on? They establish that the two can actually have conversations, and while I'm sure Caesar has some limitations with sign language, he'd certainly be able to get across, say, the horrible treatment by the animal control people, or his own feelings of abandonment and anger at the human race. Was Will meant to be just another bigoted human, even if he is more accepting of apes, and thus simply not think Caesar can express himself? Which would be insanely stupid of him having personally measured Caesar's level of intelligence, but I suppose is a possibility?
- He never had time. Caesar saw Will exactly once after being put in there and miscommunications in that meeting meant Caesar sulked before he could say.
  - As soon as Caesar turned his back on Will, Will should've said, "What's wrong, Caesar? Why don't you want to come with me?" It seems like a perfectly natural thing to ask. It's certainly what immediately came to my mind during that scene.
How did Caesar learn the submissive hand gesture if he had never come into contact with other apes? Behavioral/pack body language like that is learned.
- Maybe he read about it or saw it on TV and learned what it meant?
- From his mother?
Why does Gen Sys keep their animals behind just a few panes of brittle glass? Every animal facility I've ever seen has multiple levels of steel doors with electronic locks, hand scans, etc., and I've never seen one with chimps (mostly the goal is to keep out people who have no business there).
How accurate is the depiction of the intelligence of the non-virused apes in the shelter? Can they really have conversations like the gorilla and the other apes like that?
- Animals don't have languages like humans do, but they can use sign language with each other after having it taught to them. But they'll communicate just as often by non-language communication like they usually do.
Given the way the Earth is heading at the end, why would humanity or the apes destroy the Statue of Liberty?
- Considering the attitude Apes have towards Humans near the end, it doesn't seem too far fetched that they would take down a statue associated with the oppressive past rulers of the planet. Plus, it's never clearly stated when it gets blown up, so it could have been some war in the far ape-future that took it down.
- It's not necessary for anyone to actually blow it up. Leave it alone for awhile and it'll collapse on itself. Like most of the modern architecture, it requires constant maintenance to stay up. When the human infrastructure breaks down there's not nearly enough apes to step in and take their place. It'll take generations before their civilization can be anywhere in the magnitude of the humanity due to the numbers alone.
- We don't even know if the Statue of Liberty is destroyed in this continunity. Remember, this film is a reboot, not a prequel.
- Think of how events might play out over the next decade. The ALZ virus spreads around the world, killing billions, unleashing chaos and causing the governments to declare martial law. Meanwhile, the apes are forming their own society and soon the rising ape civilization comes into conflict with the declining human civilization. At some point, a General Ripper type decides that he'll be damned if he's going to let the apes take over and so launches the nukes at all the major cities. Human civilization's wiped out completely and the ape civilization, while not as badly damaged, loses almost all its pre-nuclear history, leading to Caesar and the world before the apes becoming a vague legend. Thousands of years later, the apes rule the world, the few surviving humans have reverted to the stone age, and the theocracy's deliberately buried all evidence that humans were ever in charge.
Chimpanzees and humans are each other's closest relatives on the evolutionary tree, so why would all the great apes (except humans) have solely beneficial effects from the drug, but humans get almost whipped out from it?
- Perhaps the beneficial effect appears in every ape species, including humans (note that Will's dad got better in the beginning), but the mortal effect appears in only one ape species, Homo sapiens - possibly due to incompatibility with some gene appearing relatively late in human evolution.
- It's mentioned in passing when testing on Koba that apes have stronger immune systems than humans. Presumably that's what keeps the virus from killing them.
If Caesar had his pants on all the time, how did he get rid of his waste? Did Will train him to take them off when necessary, and put them back on when he's done? Or Nobody Poops?
- Will could have easily taught him. Caesar is the smartest chimpanzee to ever live, you know.