Rise of the Planet of the Apes/YMMV

• Award Snub It didn't win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
  • And many, including James Franco, feel Andy Serkis should have been nominated for Best Actor.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome:
  • The entire scene with Dodge fighting Caesar in the atrium of the ape shelter. Not only does Caesar take a few jabs from a stun baton and not back down, but he eventually evades the attacks, repeatedly throwing Dodge off balance. He finally stands up for himself and doesn't feel like taking any more Jerkass from then on. Then after the Shout-Out to the original with Dodge delivering Charlton Heston's famous line, Caesar stands up tall and straight and roars out an epic Big No. Followed by a slew of Oh Crap moments, and possibly, for Dodge, a Bring Me My Brown Pants moment.
  • Buck gets one by destroying a police car by ripping up a metal pole and throwing it like a tomahawk. Then a Dying Moment of Awesome by ramming Caesar out of a chopper's line of fire, JUMPING into said helicopter while being shot, and causing the chopper to crash.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Subverted. The film ends with an uplifting shot of Caesar and the apes looking out at the world from the redwoods, but a mid-credits scene brings things back down for humans.
• Genius Bonus: Caesar explains why the apes should work in teams by using a bundle of sticks. In ancient rome, from which Caesar owes his name, a bundle of sticks (or "fasces") was a symbol of authority.
  • Which in turn was where the word "fascism" comes from.
• Idiot Plot: Let's face it, nothing in this movie could have happened if it weren't for the vast majority of major characters acting like complete idiots.
• Jerkass Has a Point: The jerkass neighbor loses audience sympathy for two scenes. In the first, he finds a chimpanzee in his home, near his children, and has the nerve to fend off what he obviously believed was a dangerous wild animal. In the second, he gets angry because an old man smashed up his car. Yeah, he might have realized that Will's father wasn't all there, but in the heat of the moment a lot of people might have reacted the same way. Adding insult to injury, that same "perfectly harmless" chimp from the first scene then waltzes in and viciously attacks him. He does, however, cross the line in his confrontation with Franklin since one: it's not his house and two: Franklin was calling for Will making it obvious that it wasn't some random stranger trespassing.
• Memetic Mutation: "Why Cookie Rocket?" has apparently become a meme.
• Narm: Your Mileage May Vary if Caesar's Big No is Crowning Moment of Awesome or this.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Yeah, the neighbor was a Jerkass Victim, but consider this: Imagine being chased by a vicious chimpanzee hell bent on beating your ass to death for being angry your car's been smashed up. Or worse being the poor bastard getting beaten to death by a dozen of angry apes. At least Caesar steps in to save the latter before it's lethal, putting him in a cell for his own protection.
  • Koba himself. Out of all the apes, he's the most horribly scarred and demonic looking.
  • Caesar's first few moments in the primate center. Locked in a small cage, at the mercy of a threatening human "overseer" whom he can understand, and surrounded on all sides by angry chimps screaming and thrashing around violently.
  • Jacobs' death.
• Spiritual Licensee: Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game thinks so--he believes "Rise" to be "the first truly successful adaptation of my novel... to appear on the screen".
• Uncanny Valley: Caesar's facial expressions are decidedly not chimp-like and a little too human. Justified in that he can't really be considered a chimpanzee anymore and he was also raised by humans.
  • Subtle differences can be found between the film's apes and real ones to make them feel more human. Observe this image of Caesar here versus this photo of a real chimp here. The eyes have been made expressly human.
• What an Idiot!: Several moments in the film involve humans taking turns with the Idiot Ball.
  • Robert Franklin and all the other so-called ape experts fail to notice that a female is pregnant, and later that there's a baby ape in her cell. Thus a dozen apes are put down due to a misunderstanding and bad timing.
    • Also, it's going to take more than two not-that-physically-fit-looking scientists to restrain an angry chimpanzee.
  • Dodge Landon stepping out into the pen to confront Caesar alone, seemingly unaware of how dangerous chimpanzees can be despite working with them, then following it up by trying to electrocute a talking ape (again) while the ape's holding a water hose.
    • Dodge's treatment of the apes, period. Yes, mistreat, tease, and torment the animals that are intelligent, have long-term memories, and are physically much stronger than you. See if that doesn't bite you in the ass later.
  • Jacobs deciding to throw basic safety measures to the wind when testing out the new version of Will's drug. Apparently the thought of massive profits makes him lose all caution.
    • To be fair, Will's treatment up until that point had seemed like little more than a pipe dream. Even with all the data, Jacobs had never seen a successful test until Will broke protocol and treated his father. That turned Will's research from 'pet project' to 'wonder drug worth billions.'
    • It's still a severe Idiot Ball moment because he didn't even bother with making sure that were no potential nasty side-effects. The moment the possibility for lots of money became apparent, he gave into greed and discarded logic and common sense. And his idiocy is not only the reason Koba kills him, it's also partly the reason that practically no one sans a completely ignored researcher realized that Franklin died because of ALZ-113 (Jacob's would be moneymaker) and was thus unfit for human trial and mass production. The result? Apocalypse How, Class 3a.
    • Though even if they did contain him after the fact (it should've been before) how could they have possibly known he'd sneezed on a pilot? Apocalypse How? Not through Jacobs.
  • And also Franklin. Sure, he may have first tried to talk with Will by phone, but if he realized he was infected with a so-far deadly-looking disease, couldn't he have taken some precautions, like wearing a mask to block his sneezes? At least then perhaps the pilot wouldn't have contracted the disease, which in turn wouldn't have doomed mankind. Hell, Franklin should have said something the moment he noticed something was wrong, since he was completely fine until the accident in the testing room happened.