Comic-Con 2011: Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes footage debuts

Comic-Con gave us our first look at two key scenes from Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes today.

A prequel to the beloved Apes film franchise, Rise… follows the first ever sentient ape Caesar (played by Andy Serkis via mo-cap), and what happens when he and his hairy brethren rebel against captivity.

The first scene, which aired in the Con’s infamous Hall H, was from near the beginning of the film, and focussed primarily on John Lithgow (he’s James Franco’s pa in the flick).

Suffering from Alzheimer’s, Lithgow’s confused gent wanders out of his house in his dressing down and gets into his neighbour’s car.

Ramming the car back and forward into the cars parked either side, his actions attract the attention of his irate neighbour, who emerges from his house, drags Lithgow from the vehicle and brawls with the defenceless man.

Lithgow’s antics have also garnered the attention of family pet Caesar, though, who comes to Lithgow’s rescue.

Beating the living crap out of their neighbour, Caesar only stops when he almost bites off the man’s finger – to the horror of both Lithgow and an assembled audience of onlookers.

Clip two was less action-packed, but revealed how the marauding apes shown in the trailer all come to rebel against their captors.

Caesar, now an inmate at Franco’s lab, steals the Alzheimer’s drug that Franco’s been working on and disseminates it throughout the lab, nudging his brothers into sentient thinking.

The clips were well-received in Hall H, though they failed to fully ignite our ardour. No doubt the CGI looks very expensive, but it still can’t quite get close enough to photo real to completely convince.

Not helping matters is the fact that talk surrounding Rise… has almost exclusively centred on the mo-capping, meaning we’re now super-aware from the get go that we’re being duped by fake apes.

We’ll have to wait and see how this one plays out in cinemas…