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| Caesar, Koba and those two other guys |
After the disastrous TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION threatened to derail this otherwise stellar summer (setting aside the lousy opener that was THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2), in comes DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, putting things back on track by giving us not only arguably the best film of the summer, but one of the best of the year.
And I say this as a general non-fan of the PLANET OF THE APES franchise.
Yes, as I stated before in my review of RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (which feels like I wrote it a lifetime ago), I have never been particularly enamored with the concept of this series. I found the original film dated and sort of lacking, with cheesy antiquated ape makeup and a extremely slow-burn pace, and can barely remember the sequels (though it says something that DAWN makes me want to revisit them. Maybe I can view the originals with fresh eyes now). Tim Burton's remake is the most hollow garbage imaginable; it's the movie you fear one would make handed the keys to this kingdom, with ridiculous humor (see: monkey sex/foreplay, apes going apeshit for no reason), B-movie level acting (not AGE OF EXTINCTION star Marky Mark's finest hour by any stretch of the imagination), and an infuriating and ludicrous ending that simply makes you wish you could get those two hours of your life back. After it served as the BATMAN & ROBIN of the series, director Rupert Wyatt was brought in for RISE, in order to adopt a more basic, modern approach in the vein of BATMAN BEGINS. I rewatched RISE as prep for DAWN, and I mostly stand by my original review on that one, as a solid, entertaining piece of work with one truly remarkable bit of performance and effects work colliding in Andy Serkis as Caesar, but a mostly empty and one-dimensional human side. It bugs me that the movie is almost completely pro-ape, while the humans either range from misguided (James Franco, who needs to stick to the stoner comedies with Seth Rogen and Danny McBride. It's where he truly belongs) to completely mercenary and self-absorbed (the laughably greedy business exec played by David Oyelowo) to simply dickish and deserving of death by plague flu (Draco Malfoy's cruel ape prison guard). It works in general, but other than Caesar, it all feels a little slight. Wyatt does OK work on his first big movie, and Weta's ape effects are basically still perfect and seamless today, but RISE really needed a little more meat on the bones. It aimed to legitimizing the concept as a sophisticated, fully serious piece of science fiction, and at times it comes pretty damn close, but its lack of dimensions results in it never really quite getting there. It deserves a 7.
I was interested in where a potential sequel would go, but I wasn't exactly anticipating another one. Wyatt leaving didn't particularly surprise me, as Fox has had trouble locking down directors for their tentpoles since the dawn of time (note that Matthew Vaughn ditched X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST the very same week). Having never seen CLOVERFIELD or LET ME IN (though I have seen LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, the masterful original Swedish version), I was pretty unfamiliar with the body of work of new director Matt Reeves, though the decision seemed to make most fans fairly happy. I also thought completely recasting the humans was the right call, as none of them made a particular connection the first time out, and filling the new cast with stellar performers like Gary Oldman and Jason Clarke certainly didn't hurt. What really piqued my interest was the new post-apocalyptic landscape, a far more interesting setting than the overly docile and peaceful San Franciscan suburbia of the first movie. The trailers ended up being enough to sell me, so I settled in to give DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES a shot.
And I am very glad that I did.
DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, if RISE was the BATMAN BEGINS of these films, is THE DARK KNIGHT. It's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK to the original STAR WARS. It is THE ROAD WARRIOR to MAD MAX. It's that rare sequel that builds on, improves, and transcends everything about the original. It's thoughtful, tense, action-packed, morally and thematically complex, filled to the gills with character, and put simply, fucking awesome. It legitimizes the APES concept in every way, and delivers on the wpromise that the first movie in this rebooted series had hiding in its best moments.
And it may make a PLANET OF THE APES fan out of me yet.
(SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT)
Reeves, after making two mid-budget movies, one a found footage monster mash and one a remake of a classic foreign horror flick, erupts onto the summer scene here, with a movie that is sweeping, confident, and filled to the gills with dread. We see an Earth that holds the remains that humanity has left in its wake as a result of the James Franco-developed flu virus, a world where everyone would be uplifted just by lights, warmth, and a good song blasting on the CD player. But we see the apes first, and how far they've come in the decade since RISE, building an almost alien tree village as they solidify their numbers in the redwoods across the Bay from San Francisco. The movie opens with a stunning 15-20 minute sequence with no dialogue as the apes collect food for their group. Caesar (Andy Serkis, owning the role once again, this time bringing gravitas and wise leadership on top of his preexisting humane qualities) has managed to establish a familial community with his evolved ape brethren, one dictated by the simple doctrine "APE NOT KILL APE". However, there is dissension in the ranks, as when human survivors are revealed in the apes' territory, blood is shed born from fear, and the human hating Koba (the scarred lab test subject from RISE, now mocapped by Toby Kebbell, who gives Serkis a run for his money with his dark, haunted, and sadistic performance) seizes the opportunity by attempting to press Caesar to engage the humans in battle. Caesar instead attempts to broker a fragile peace with the assistance of the reasonable and sympathetic human Malcolm (Clarke, in an understated role suited to his more everyman qualities (see ZERO DARK THIRTY and his downright affable torturer), as opposed to the melodramatic, over-the-top ham he displayed in like THE GREAT GATSBY and WHITE HOUSE DOWN), who seeks to reach the dam beyond ape territory to attempt to bring the power in San Fran back to life, and in turn, to attempt to begin to find others and properly commence to rebuilding of the human race. However, apes like Koba and men like Dreyfus (Oldman, not as villainous as the trailers made him out to be. Here his actions are downright justifiable) and Carver (Kirk Acevedo, basically playing a tamer version of his WALKING DEAD character), push the sides closer to war, as the situation becomes increasingly complicated.
And that last sentence gets at the heart of where DAWN succeeds where RISE could not. In DAWN, both peoples' standpoints are thoroughly addressed through multiple perspectives. Caesar and Malcolm represent the ones who simply want to protect their families and people from further bloodshed, while Koba's past history of experimentation only seeks to drive him to try to force humans to see things from his angle, eventually becoming so tyrannical as to demand that an ape must kill innocent humans, and killing him when he fails to do so. Men like Dreyfus and Carver are equally at fault, as they live in a cycle of paranoia that drives Carver to bring a shotgun into a situation where the apes demanded the guns be left at home, and causes Dreyfus to decide to bomb their base tower in order to attempt to wipe out all the apes in one shot. Eventually, Koba's bloodthirstiness forces Caesar to make the ultimate choice, to break the ape code he created to stop it from crumbling permanently. Unlike Michael Bay's recent atrocity, Reeves actually considers the implication of what Caesar letting Koba die truly means. He violates ape code by utilizing simple semantics, and if history is any indication, this small crack in the code could one day open into a full-on chasm. And then Caesar must make the next difficult decision (which is spoiled in the trailers, no less) to lead his people into war as a reluctant commander. Malcolm says "I thought we really had a chance", and Caesar agrees. Because of actions born from fear and hatred, the world the apes could have salvaged will continue to fall to ruin, perhaps one day leading to a world where a certain astronaut will collapse on a beach in despair as he stares at the remains of the planet he once knew...
Or perhaps Reeves will take us in a completely new direction (he's already signed on to return for the third film).
Either way, I can't wait.
And that's something I did not think I would be saying about a PLANET OF THE APES movie.
Kudos.
DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES gets a 9.5 out of 10.
I'll be back for GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY.
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| Nitpick: shouldn't Koba be the one on the horse? Also, that bridge never explodes. |
Also, my rankings of the summer movies I've seen:
1. DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
2. EDGE OF TOMORROW
3. 22 JUMP STREET
4. X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST
5. GODZILLA
6. The GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY trailer
77. The guy yapping behind me in every movie I've ever been in.
824. My dad constantly making ape puns in DAWN, mostly revolving around bananas.
1056. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2
22,593. Koba's vision of the future where humans would live in cages.
429,384. Crack addiction
1,394,959. Me dying by torture a la the death scene from BRAVEHEART (at least "freedom" would mean something there).
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,007. TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION
