Before Planet of the Apes Evolves Again Revisit the Rise of Caesar on Tubi
With another Planet of the Apes movie in development, rewind to the beginning of Caesar’s story with Rise and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on Tubi.
Before Caesar became a leader, a legend, and one of the most recognizable apes in movie history, he was just trying to figure out where he belonged.
More than a decade later, the modern Planet of the Apes saga is still evolving. Another movie is officially in development, adding a new branch to a franchise that has made reinvention practically part of its DNA. The upcoming film is set to tell a new original story rather than continue Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, making the franchise’s next evolution even more of a mystery. But before we start wondering where the apes are headed next, there’s something satisfying about going back to the moment everything changed. And change starts with Caesar.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes are now on Tubi, giving you the first two chapters of a story that turns one genetically enhanced chimpanzee into the beating heart of an entire civilization. There are experiments gone wrong, uneasy alliances, a revolution brewing, and one performance-capture masterclass from Andy Serkis tying it all together. The apes may be evolving, but Tubi's Sci-Fi collection has plenty more futures worth getting lost in once the credits roll.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Every revolution has a beginning. Caesar's starts in a laboratory.
James Franco stars as Will Rodman, a scientist developing an experimental Alzheimer's treatment in hopes of helping his father, Charles. When the drug is tested on chimpanzees, its effects lead to something nobody quite planned for: Caesar, a chimp born with heightened intelligence who Will eventually brings home and raises as family.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes works because it doesn't rush him toward becoming the revolutionary audiences know is coming. Serkis gives Caesar curiosity, affection, confusion, anger, and an increasingly complicated understanding of the humans around him, turning small glances and movements into parts of a character who is constantly learning. Watching Caesar slowly recognize both what makes him different and how the world intends to treat that difference gives the eventual uprising considerably more weight.
Once Caesar's world gets bigger, so does the question at the center of Rise: where does he actually belong? The answer changes everything.
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Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Ten years can do a lot.
Human civilization has been devastated by the Simian Flu, while Caesar has spent those years building something humans never expected: a thriving ape community with families, rules, language, and a leader who remembers exactly what happened the last time the two species shared a world. Then humans show up at the door.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes trades the origin-story momentum of Rise for something more complicated. Jason Clarke's Malcolm needs access to a hydroelectric dam inside ape territory to help a struggling human settlement survive, putting him directly in Caesar's path. Neither side necessarily wants a war. Neither side particularly trusts the other, either.
Caesar is no longer discovering what he's capable of; he's responsible for an entire community and trying to reconcile what he remembers about humanity with what other apes have endured at human hands. Caesar's belief that peace might still be possible makes him a leader, but it also puts him at odds with Koba, whose own history with humans has taught him a very different lesson. The conflict here isn't simply humans versus apes. Fear, loyalty, resentment, family, and old wounds start pulling at both sides until keeping the peace becomes much harder than declaring war.
Rise showed us how Caesar became Caesar. Dawn asks what happens when everyone else starts looking to him for what comes next.
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