It is certainly possible to watch both Rise and Dawn (don’t try to make sequential sense of the inaugural title language) in this same spirit of nihilistic fantasy, if you’ve a mind to. In my 2011 review, I suggested the term “posthuman porn” for this kind of nihilistic fantasizing.
On the contrary, there was a troubling note of complacent blockbuster uplift as the rise of the apes dovetailed with the decline of man - a nihilistic enthusiasm for the prospect of a post-human future. It wasn’t even, like the pandemic thriller Contagion, about the practical side of what should or shouldn’t be done in such a crisis. Laboring under the plot mechanics of moving toward a world dominated by intelligent apes rather than humans - an intelligence-boosting drug intended to cure dementia, a deadly virus decimating human populations - it was all about the how, and not really about the why, or what it would reveal about us, or why it would matter. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a popcorn pre-apocalypse that devoted most of its brain power to mundane questions of sci-fi plausibility, a bit to character drama and virtually none to subtext or theme. Nothing in the well-made but prosaic 2011 reboot hinted at the power of this film, a worthy successor to the best of the original films, with their cautionary parables about man’s inhumanity to man set in a topsy-turvy Twilight Zone world of intelligent apes and animal-like humans.
