It is inevitable that one day mankind will be superseded by ape-kind and I will be at the front of the crowd, waving my flag and cheering on our new simian overlords.
With that bias in mind, my predisposition was to expect greatness from Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (hoping it would wipe, forever, from our collective consciousnesses Tim Burton's ill-conceived abomination of 2001).
What I wasn't expecting was just how damn awesome it was!
The plot pacing was superb, the foreshadowing excellent, and the beautiful little Easter eggs for fans of the original ape films (from Caesar's model of the Statue of Liberty and the name "Bright Eyes" through to line-lifts such as "it's a madhouse", "get your hands off me..." and a certain other key line delivered by a key character) simply showed how much care and attention had gone into this movie, and its respect for its cinematic predecessors.
James Franco plays research scientist Will Rodman, working on a cure for Alzheimer's, but a catastrophic accident during final testing makes his boss order him to have all their test subjects - chimpanzees - put down.
Will takes pity on a baby chimp and takes him home to be a companion to his father Charles Rodman (John Lithgow), a former music teacher and scholar now in the grip of Alzheimer's.
The chimp, who they name Caesar, soon becomes a central part of the family unit, especially when Will tests his gene-therapy on his father and it works.
Unfortunately, years later, the therapy starts to wear off for Charles and he finds himself in an altercation with his obnoxious neighbour, a pilot called Hunsiker (Stargate's David Hewlett).
Caesar jumps in to save his friend and ends up being taken in by the authorities and handed over to an animal control centre run by John Landon (Brian Cox) and his obnoxious son Dodge (Tom Felton).
It is here, eventually, that Caesar hatches his plan to liberate his fellow apes and take revenge on mankind.
That brief summation of the early scenes of the movie doesn't even begin to do it justice.
As well-rounded as the human characters are, the film truly belongs to Caesar - the CGI ape created by motion-capture technology and based upon the performance of the incredible Andy Serkis (already renowned for brining life to such diverse characters as Gollum and King Kong).
Given that the bulk of his feelings and emotions are expressed through sign language, gestures or facial expressions, Serkis has made Caesar an incredibly complex and well-rounded character.
If he doesn't get some mighty gong for his performance here then there truly is no justice in the world.
You also have to feel slightly sorry for Tom Felton, having played the 'bad boy' of Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy, for all these years, his first post-Harry Potter role is just as objectionable. But he suitably slimy as Dodge and gets his just desserts at the hands of the apes he loves tormenting.
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is a classic 'science-experiment-gone-wrong' movie and naturally ends with a breath-taking action sequence that makes great use of the streets of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.
However, that's not the end of things because as the closing credits hint, and picking up on clues sown throughout the movie (man's first manned mission to Mars, spacecraft disappearing etc), the groundwork was been laid seamlessly for the inevitable sequel.
And it couldn't come soon enough...
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