Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a damn fine film and the only note that rang hollow was forcing in the “Damn dirty apes!” line. While that line sadly made it into the final cut, the film’s original ending did not. I know there are plenty of folks who missed the movie while it was in theaters, and since I have to talk about the current ending to compare it to the original one, I’m going to put this story after the jump because I don’t want to spoil the movie for folks.
Hit the jump to find out how Rise of the Planet of the Apes originally ended.
Spoilers ahead.
In the theatrical cut, Franco’s character, Will, and Caesar have a final conversation where Will accepts Caesar as an equal. But Fox’s president of post-production Ted Gagliano told THR that Will died in the original ending. The ending was changed a month before the movie was due out in theaters. Normally, re-shooting a new ending wouldn’t be a huge deal, but the ending of Apes features loads of digital apes and it’s not like WETA could just hit Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V to put the apes into new scenes. The new ending was shot on July 4th, the scene took three hours to film, and it put a serious crunch on the post-production teams for a movie that had to open by August 5th.
Devin over at Badass Digest provides specifics on how Will was gonna go:
The original ending had Franco’s character being shot to death by armed humans who have chased the apes into the forest. The ape horde descends on the people and tears them to pieces, a reversal of the opening scene where Bright Eyes is captured in the jungle.
I suppose it may have been too much to hit audiences with Caesar losing his friend and then close out with a plague wiping out humanity. But there could be plenty of other reasons why Fox chose to change the ending. Badass adds that the original ending will be available on the Blu-ray and DVD release. I’ll be interested to see how it plays.
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Certainly a much darker and more dramatic ending, although the re-filmed one was still plenty effective. It’s not like you can be sad at the prospect of Franco’s character dying when the whole of humanity is on the verge of being wiped out. I’ll be interested to watch it come the dvd release.
Well, considering that the ending we have STILL means that Franco’s character dies, and dies a more slow and horrible death, thanks to knowing exactly what he has unleashed upon the world, I don’t see how the theatrical version is less dark or more commercial.
I had no problem with the line being in, because then Caesar spoke for the first time. OMG
Haven’t seen the new ending yet, but I thought the current final moments between the two were just about perfect.
I don’t think we can say an audience wouldn’t care if Franco’s character was killed because he’s going to die anyway via virus. The entire human race WON’T be wiped out according to the other movies, right? Also, that idea is based on this faulty premise: because someone might eventually die via virus the rest of that person’s life is not something we should care about. :rolleyes:
You speak the truth sir!
CtrlC + Ctrl V
well used hahahah