Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, here with the Slate Spoiler Special podcast on Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

With me in the Slate Studios is Seth Coulter Walls.

Hello, Seth.

Hey, Dan.

And you are now an occasional Slate contributor.

I don't think you had written for Slate when last we podcasted, but now you have.

Village Voice, other places, you write on music, film, culture, what have you. And now you're talking about

Rises and the Planet of the Apes. Oh, not monkeys. Apes. Only the bad guys in this movie call them monkeys. I just

identified myself with the egg haters. No, you're, yeah, you're part of the problem.

All right. So first of all, I want to know, why did you want to come see this movie with me?

Curious about the film itself?

Yeah, definitely curious about the film itself. Also, just a nice counterpoint to the Tree of Life, which was the last thing that we saw and spoiled together.

That's true. This really balances out, although both sort of, you know, nature.

Environmentally, like, conscious and sort of like wishing for the...

And about man versus nature in some way? So, yeah, actually, that's the next thing piece, probably to write.

But are you a fan of the old ape series?

Not like a hardcore fan.

And before we went to see it, I mentioned to a couple people, a couple of friends of mine

that I was going and they were incredibly hyped for the entire experience and in a way that

made me feel like I probably didn't deserve going

to see it early as much as other people did. But growing up, I think there's sort of like a pretty

consistent wallpapering on basic cable when I was growing up, you know, T&T and things of that

...