Every Planet Of The Apes Movie Ranked Worst To Best

It's safe to say that expectations were high for Rise of the Planet of the Apes. After years in development hell following the travesty that was Tim Burton's franchise input, screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silva, working with director Rupert Wyatt and star Andy Serkis, decided to prove the series still had some juice left in it.

And, boy, did they.

Rise follows a chemist (James Franco) and his relationship with a young Caesar (Serkis), who's been given superior intelligence by an experimental drug used to combat Alzheimer's.

A brilliantly constructed character study in which Caesar grapples with the fact that he's neither a pet nor really human, but is treated like a feral animal, Rise is a deeply affecting tale of identity and oppression that never misses out on saying what it came to say.

Add to the deeply affecting plot the film's revolutionary motion capture animation - and Serkis' never-better performance - and what you have is a film that is as visually beautiful as it is devastatingly human and gloriously clever.