Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Impressions before seeing it
Except for the last one, I enjoyed the original five films in the series. The trailer looked like this one sort of takes place between the third and fourth ones. Plus, any movie where Andy Serkis does mo-cap creature performance is usually gold.

How was it?
As it turns out, Rise is more of a series reboot. Except for a few minor things, there isn't really anything connecting it to the original series. Thematically, it's the same: intelligent apes growing increasingly aggravated at being treated like dumb, inferior animals, and the leader of the ape revolt is still named Caesar. They even threw in Heston's famous line from the first movie ("Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"). I didn't really like that idea for about half a second, because even though it was a callback, it also felt outdated (it is a 43 year-old line of dialogue, after all), but then they cleverly set it up so that the response to that line created the same reaction as in the first movie, and it magically worked.

The biggest difference to note is that the apes were nowhere near as humanoid here, though this is the movie where they only begin to become abnormally intelligent so there's no need for dudes in ape suits yet. But being more animal than human, I actually found them more sympathetic than the full-on sapient apes from the original films. I guess because animals have a certain innocence or naivety to them, not fully understanding that their actions might have consequences, so to oppress them for it is not right. Caesar was a good monkey; he only started doing bad things after being treated poorly, and therein lies the problem with positions of power. As spoiled humans, we sometimes like to be douchebags and provoke the less fortunate (both humans and animals), and then when they fight back we act like they're the bad guys. This is one of the biggest dick moves anyone could make, but it does happen in real life.

Recommendation
It helps your enjoyment just a little if you've already seen the others in the series, but it's not a requirement since this is not a direct sequel or prequel. However, if you're curious to see how the apes started talking and how that progression came about, this is the movie that explains it, because I don't think the old ones ever did. And it's a good piece of action-drama, which will hopefully lead to a better war than Battle for the Planet of the Apes.