Writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver pitched a story to Fox that would reboot their dormant franchise. Rupert Wyatt eventually helmed the picture, released in summer of 2011. "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" tells the origin story of the apes, when an experimental drug to treat Alzheimers is tested on apes, inadvertently speeding up their cognitive evolution, and we witness the rise of Caesar, the first chimp to develop human-like consciousness as he starts a revolution against their human captors. The film was a breakout success, and it brought the technique of 'performance capture' to the screen in a big way. The film has a bit of a rough start, and the human characters are never particularly deep, but film rests squarely Andy Serkis' brilliant performance as Caesar, and once his character matures and the break-out plot develops, the film becomes magnetically engrossing.
Joining the venture was Scotsman Patrick Doyle. Known primarily for his British dramas, especially his Shakespearian collaborations with Kenneth Branagh, 2011 was an interesting year for Doyle with both this score and this score for "Thor" seeing the composer trying to update his sound for a modern Hollywood blockbuster. Known for his lyrical orchestral style, for this film Doyle introduces more percussion, and a much beefier ostinato-led style for the ape mayhem. Though his score here isn't heavily lyrical, there still are a number of melodic ideas developed--a rising motif for Caesar himself (starting on ocarina to evoke his primal origins, then developed to bold brass by the end), a more emotional theme for Caesar's relationship with his human foster family, and then a number of sinewy motifs that develop as the ape revolution takes shape. These moments have a snarling and hypnotic momentum that is addicting, all building to a powerful new sound for Doyle, one which really elevates the narrative and gives these mostly silent apes a real sense of intelligence and heart.
Varèse Sarabande's soundtrack album contains just over an hour of music, with another half hour or so still unreleased. It was fun to revisit this trilogy of movies, in anticipation of "Kingdom", and I wanted to provide some more dynamic cover options worthy of the story. In the end, I created twelve new covers. Adding an extra headache for a project like this is trying to keep a forward-view to the rest of the trilogy, which is difficult when a lot of the art created for the film didn't have matching sets consistently created across the series. The title logo proved challenging, I didn't find a lot of variants in good quality, but there seem to be tons of variants in terms of how the text is sized and balanced. In the end, I edited my own custom version and tried to match the overall look, this way I could edit the title style to match my needs.
Cover 1-7 all use official marketing material, either theatrical posters, or home video artwork. For Cover 5, I had to majorly edit the bottom of the image, comping together several images to try to clean up and expand the apes and city. Cover 6 required some heavy color and curves manipulation compared to the source image.
Cover 8 uses a piece of concept art, and I had to slide things around a bit (bringing Caesar and the left of the image closer to the Golden Gate on the right). Cover 9 uses a piece of fan art by Barbeanicolas. Cover 10 was a very last-minute addition, just stumbled on it from a Google search. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything about who created it, not sure if it's a fan creation, or something created for film merch, anyways, I thought it was a nice addition to the set, capturing a pivotal moment in the film. Cover 11 uses an incredible painting by an amazing artist I just discovered, Hans Woody.
Finally, Cover 11 uses a piece by Matt Ferguson, he's done a similar piece for every new film in the "Apes" series, so it'll be nice to have a set of fully matching covers for the franchise.
Hope you enjoy and let me know your favorites.
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