"Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" is a highly entertaining movie, one of the best of Summer 2014. Those who've seen it, and even those who haven't, probably doubt the scenario it presents could ever really happen. After all, "intelligent apes taking over the world when humans die off" isn't exactly a plausible notion. Right?
A zookeeper in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina took two young chimps to a local movie theater on the film's opening night and sat through the entire movie with them. More out of curiosity than anything else, he wanted to see how actual apes would react to he movie. The zookeeper, Dr. Bhagavan Antle, regularly lets his chimps watch television as entertainment, and he says that they were already big fans of the first movie, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."
Vali and Sugriva are their names, and they're both two years old. They live at the Myrtle Beach Safari, a wildlife reserve that offers private tours, where Dr. Antle looks after them. He took them to Myrtle Beach's Carmike Cinema, located at the popular Broadway on the Beach attraction, where an IMAX screen was showing the film. After they arrived, they even got to buy their own popcorn and juice before the movie. Apparently the two chimps are extremely smart; they knew how to handle money and pay for their snacks.
Once inside the packed IMAX theater, which boasted more than 1,000 attendees, the lights went down and they settled right in with Dr. Antle. He later reported that the chimps are smart enough to recognize and judge the facial expressions and actions of the on-screen characters. They could tell exactly who the protagonists were, and likewise, who the antagonists were.
"The older one, Vali, is a very bright guy," said Dr. Antle. "He's watched 'The Lord of the Rings' many times, and he could follow the whole plot of the movie... He loves to clap. When he likes something, he claps. So he clapped for the good guys. And when chimps don't like what's happening they hoot or bark, so when the bad guy came on, [Vali] was barking."
Antle later reported that during the show, several people in the theater were genuinely concerned about the chimps' presence -- though not because they were worried about them disrupting the screening.
"A couple of people said very clearly, 'Are you sure they should watch this movie? Won't they learn to take over the world?' There were several people actually concerned about that."
That's impossible. Right?
