The current trend for rebooting films has finally come full circle and we’re now treated to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a film that will mark the second time the Planet of the Apes series has been done over. The first attempt was the notoriously bad Tim Burton remake of the original which, although financially successful was critically panned. This put the planned sequel on the backburner and the franchise has remained in something of a limbo and now the whole cycle has started again with a film that seems to have created a whole new set of continuity, ignoring almost all the plot points from the late Apes films and just keeping the bare bones of the original.

The plot here is that James Franco is a scientist working for the Gensys Corporation and attempting to develop a cure to Alzheimer’s, a disease which is currently in the process of taking his father (John Lithgow) away from him. He eventually successfully develops a virus which repairs...