Recently it’s almost been like the universe is very sorry about what happened a week ago with the whole Transformers affair. It is going out of its way to apologise. After last night’s night raging funfest with Guardians of the Galaxy, I saw Dawn of the Planet of the Apes tonight. I nipped out of work a little early, and loved it without reservation.
It’s so fucking cool:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpSaTrW4leg
It has the same brooding, thoughtful tone as the first movie, and is saturated in beautiful oranges, golds and greens. The mo-cap design on the apes is absolutely stunning, and a testament to the digital arts. The apes are more compelling and believable as characters than the humans were. Considering that one of the humans was Gary Oldman, that’s pretty high praise.
It In fact, the work that went in to creating the apes and their language is utterly seamless and believable. Their communication is every bit as complex and nuanced than their human counterparts. Indeed, now I am home again, I cannot remember the names of the human characters, but the ape characters made a lasting and indelible impression. The humans are stock stereotypes in comparison. I could have wished for a little more work on them there, perhaps, but it’s my sole criticism.
So the story is this (spoilers ahoy)…
It stars Caesar (aced once more by Andy Serkis), the genetically enhanced chimp from the first movie. He now leads a band of several hundred apes in the hills above San Francisco. They have a peaceful, low-tech society.
We are informed during a very economical opening sequence that a global viral outbreak and then the resulting war for resources has finished off the humans. The apes haven’t seen one in years, and wonder whether they have all finally died. So when they meet a band of humans scouting for the old hydroelectric power dam on behalf of a colony of survivors based in the city, this sets off a series of increasingly tense encounters. Both human and ape communities respond to each other and to their own racist, destructive internal elements.
Caesar, who has fond memories of his human adoptive family and now has a wife and young family of his own, wants peace and the opportunity for the apes to consolidate their gains. But Koba (Toby Kebbell), his hawkish right-hand man, wants war and revenge for his own years of suffering, and doesn’t care who he hurts to get it…
Years ago I remember seeing the Planet of the Apes movie this is nominally based on (Battle for the Planet of the Apes). Like a lot of movies in the 70s, this predecessor was harder edged. When Caesar faces down his would-be ape rival and betrayer he is also slaying his son’s killer. They really don’t make them like they used to.
That said, the movie undoubtedly also does what great science fiction and fantasy is supposed to do. It makes us think that much harder about our own lives and the way things are now. This movie is a meditation on race and war. Despite the actions of good men, Caesar is ultimately betrayed by partisanship and hatred. Koba, the relentlessly seething and damaged ape that is willing to slay his best friend Caesar to destroy all humans, is the product of years of torture and maiming in a human lab. Caesar finds that the price of recovering his leadership is that war with the humans will be ongoing and inevitable. This is unlike Battle for the Planet of the Apes. There Caesar’s legacy is 600 years of peace and peaceful co-existence.
There’s a wonderful bit of staging at the very end, where Caesar parts from his human opposite number (Jason Clarke). The human vanishes into the shadows as the apes converge in San Francisco’s ruined City Hall. Caesar looks back over his shoulder at the empty doorway where the last man was standing. One is left with the sense that this is humankind leaving the world stage, and that this is indeed now going to be a Planet of the Apes. It’s a wonderful grace note, and does what all good cinema should do, and leave one thinking…
