One*2

 Planet of the Apes notes

The film-watching/research continues. After my big post on Alice in Wonderland/Tim Burton I figured I should invest some time into watching Planet of the Apes seeing as I've never seen anything but the beginning and a scene somewhere around the middle. The thing that struck me about the film was that very similar to Alice, Burton's take on Planet of Apes had its own visual style which did not necessarily reflect Burton's unique style. Surprisingly enough I quite enjoyed the film - their use of visual effects was interesting; only appearing to be used when absolutely necessary and otherwise relying upon prosthetics and animatronics which in this case I felt were more effective than CGI would have been in their place.

This opens the point of when CGI is necessary and unnecessary to tell a story in a film. I think I will save this particular argument for an entire post on it's own but I will state this - I do believe that more often than not CGI is incorporated unnecessarily when attempting to do something that an older technique could easily achieve for a lesser cost.

I enjoyed the story; relatively simple and straight-forward with a more complex twist later in the story. The ending felt at odds with the rest of the film, not so much setting up an alternate reality which was a result of Leo's (Mark Wahlberg) alteration (presence in) of the 'past' - but creating a reason for a sequel which was obviously never going to occur. Oh well.