Trying to take hyper-modern, realistic approach to a human apocalypse brought on by the revolt of sentient monkeys brings with it a few challenges. There’s a delicate line to be tread between fun, fantasy, and outright goofiness but so far, with the exception of James Franco’s mush-mouthed scientist speech, it seems like the film has a decent handle on making a monkey revolution seem scary. This is largely due to the delicate work being done by WETA for Caesar’s performance and the skills of director Rupert Wyatt (who Brian Cox gushed over in our recent interview). That understanding of tone and craft is not always going to trickle down to every facet of the production though, and somebody in the international marketing department definitely swerved the campaign into laughably silly town with this one…

I just can’t wrap my head around fight-the-power fist-throwing apes. Can’t do it. Caesar looks menacing enough, but the monkey crowd mixed with the bad disaster photoshopping in the background, and the Bridge-climbing monkey swarm are just all too much to put in one image. I think they should probably be sticking to more singular pieces of imagery for this promotion. For example: perhaps this same poster (with a little bit better craftsmanship for the burning city), and instead of a monkey swarm uselessly gathered… how about just a view of Caesar’s back as he looks on and quietly contemplates what he’s wrought? Or maybe not.

Ape protest crowd is not scary, is all I’m saying.

UPDATE: A new international trailer also premiered from The Sun, and you can see where much  more care is being taken with these ads. There’s a focus on the growth of Caesar here that shows how this movie could very well work as an epic build up to a revolution. Take a look…

But what do you think?

Source | The Sun (thanks to Brian Henne!)

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