'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' (2011) BLU-Ray Special Features Review

The film Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) has some amazing concept art attached to it, so I was really looking forward to the Blu-Ray special features. I was pretty disappointed.

The Details
Actors: James Franco, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto

Directors: Rupert Wyatt
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Language: English
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Region: Region A/1 (Read more about DVD/Blu-ray formats.)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number of discs: 2
Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Release Date: December 13, 2011
Run Time: 105 minutes

Special Features
Disc 1: Theatrical Feature Blu-ray
  • Deleted Scenes
  • Mythology of the Apes
  • The Genius of Andy Serkis
  • A New Generation of Apes
  • Scene Breakdown
  • Character Concept Art Gallery
  • Breaking Motion Capture Boundaries
  • Composing the Score with Patrick Doyle
  • The Great Apes
  • Audio Commentary by Director Rupert Wyatt
  • Audio Commentary by Writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver
  • Theatrical Trailers
 Disc 2: DVD + Digital Copy

The Review
The sections on how they did the special effects are pretty cool. The "Scene Breakdown" and "The Genius of Andy Serkis" were really good at explaining how they did the motion capture. It's pretty jarring to watch men act like apes sitting in cages. Pretty cool.


The key section for me is the "Conceptual Art Gallery". The interface has a series of images divided into seven main ape characters (Rocket, Maurice, Koba, Caesar, Bright Eyes, Buck and Lucky) from the film. You click on the character to see the artwork.

The images are high quality, but sparse. Maybe less than twenty. You can get better concept art.from google. I'm pretty sure some of them are reference photographs, unless they have an incredibly high resolution.

Here's the breakdown:
Artist credits: No
Still images: Yes
Resolution: High
Number of images: Low (less than 20)
Zoom: No

So, the disc gets three out of a possible five stars.

Buy it here at amazon.

What did you think of the movie and the Blu-Ray disc?

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