So, James Franco is a criminally irresponsible scientist who tortures animals so he can cure his father's Alzheimer's which is the exact same plot as the far superior Deep Blue Sea, except with chimps instead of sharks. And that's not an insignificant difference, either, as nobody cares about sharks. Anyway, he works at one of these high tech labs that movies like this always feature and that always place such a high value on "profits" that they will back an experimental drug based on the handsome scientist's assurance that it basically works. Here that means until a chimp goes nuts and wrecks the place. Fair enough.
Except that the chimp went nuts not because of the drug but because she was trying to protect her newborn baby that no one in the lab seemed to know existed. They didn't even know she was pregnant. This chimp they spent millions of dollars testing and observing. Then again, this is the same lab that hired James Franco as its lead researcher.
But leave it to our boy James not to be discouraged. Not only does he take the baby chimp home to live with him, but he decided that the father he cares so much for would make the perfect subject on which to test his untested drug. Not only does it work--his dad can act like John Lithgow again--but the baby chimp, Caesar, is really freaking smart. Like, its mother genetically passed down the drug smart.
So a few years go by and Caesar is really smart now, for a chimp, and everything is sweet and rosy until one day Caesar gets out (yes, he's still living with Franco and dad) and bites the finger off a neighbor. Not good. So Caesar is taken to an ape sanctuary outside of town (the town being San Francisco). Even though we are led to believe the sanctuary is either government-run, or at least sanctioned, it is run by Bryan Cox and his evil twerp son, Draco Malfoy, as a mini primate prison. It's like Midnight Express for monkeys. But James Franco is too heartbroken to check out the facility and so leaves poor Caesar alone in the big house. There's a brief scene where Franco acts like a dick to a city clerk by trying to get his court date moved up, though why he isn't in jail for illegally housing a vicious animal is never explained. Or why his neighbor chose not to sue him for everything he had. Also, his dad dies, though we're not sure if it's from years of injections of the drug. Also, his lab assistant dies, though we are sure it is from minor exposure to the drug. It's a finicky drug.
Inside monkey hell, Caesar eventually gets even smarter somehow and manages to escape back to Franco's house to steal two canisters of the super drug out of the fridge and expose all his other inmates to their Brainiac effects. Instantly, all the other apes, including an orangutan and a gorilla, are people smart and they go Attica on the place. They escape and invade San Fran because why wouldn't they. I should also mention that Caesar can now speak. I'm not a scientist but I don't think that's how biology works.
Anyway, the number of escapees somehow triples and they all descend on the city to go apeshit. They even spring their cousins from the zoo and, despite not having been exposed to the drug in any way, the zoo chimps join right in. There are also more orangutans and gorillas for no explained reason.
Allow me to pause here and link to this article that points out that there are only 23 known apes in the Bay area at the present time.
Back to the movie, the apes are rampaging across the Golden Gate and they overrun the comically inept SFPD who can't shoot straight and are really good at running in fear. Caesar them leads his army to their new life among the Redwoods. The end.
This, of course, is supposed to lead to this small band of apes evolving beyond humanity and taking over the entire world. I can't wait for the sequel. MINUS
