Animal rights group PETA has awarded the upcoming film Rise of The Planet of The Apes a Proggy Award for “Most Animal-Friendly Feature Film”. The Proggy or ‘progress’ Awards celebrate “animal-friendly achievements in commerce and culture”, and Apes qualifies not only because of its message of compassion towards animals, but also because of director Rupert Wyatt’s decision to use CGI apes instead of real ones. Ape ‘actors’ are taken from their mothers as babies and often abused psychologically and physically during training; they usually become too strong to be controlled after the age of 8 and are often abandoned at substandard zoos and facilities.
As Wyatt explained at Comic-Con, “It would be a cruel irony to tell the story of the exploited and repressed and use live apes to do so.” Kudos to Rupert Wyatt for making the right decision. Read more at PETA.org.
Also, this is the badass kind of CGI that uses motion capture, thanks to Andy Serkin, a la Gollum in Lord of The Rings. Should be good!
Image via PETA.org
