THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes gave new life that Pierre Boule’s sci fi franchise to inspire future generations of how inventive the genre can be. The said film showed how the outbreak started, but Dawn showed the final nail in the coffin on the inevitable rivalry between the devolved humans and evolved apes.
PLOT
The 2014 film takes place 10 years after the Simian Flu drastically reduced the human race whereas 1 in 500 are genetically immune. Apes however have been bestowed with genetically enhanced intelligence from the virus and have established a colony in Muir Woods. Their leader Caesar has gained a family of his own, conceiving his two sons Blue Eyes and Cornelius with his wife Cornelia (Judy Greer). He also maintains a brethren with his lieutenants Koba, Maurice & Rocket. After a successful hunt taking out some deer and a bear, Blue Eyes and Ash, son of Rocket, hunt some fish for themselves, leading them to encounter humans for the first time in 2 years. The group includes: Malcolm, his girlfriend Ellie, his son Alexander, and close friends Carver, Keemp (Enrique Marciano) & Foster (Jon Eyez). Malcolm’s group encounters the forest with the hopes to restore the power of a dam for the sake of their own remaining colony in San Francisco. When Carver encounters them first, he shoots Ash out of fear, which triggers Caesar. When he and his lieutenants see the humans for themselves, he orders them all to leave. When returning to San Fran, they share to their leader Dreyfus what happened. Caesar would then decide to go to San Fran with his colony to personally tell the humans he doesn’t want to start a war, but will fight if provoked. He proves his intentions when Blue Eyes returns a personal bag that belonged to Alex, who dropped it when retreating. With all the humans terrified how evolved the apes have become, they worry the possibility of them to come back as a display of dominance. Dreyfus assures the remaining survivors he’ll defend what’s left of them with arsenal left behind by National Guard. With only weeks left of fuel, he gives Malcolm only three days to go to the forest and convince Caesar to let him restore the dam’s power. If he doesn’t come back by then, he vows to do it by force. Malcolm goes with the same group from before and succeeds in convincing the ape leader, under the condition they surrender their firearms which Rocket would satisfyingly destroy. Koba is not comfortable of having humans around due to hating them all for all the torture he went through as a lab test subject. When he scouts San Fran, he finds out Dreyfus is testing out the ammunition at Fort Point armory. At the forest, Caesar considers kicking out Malcolm’s group when Carver snuck in a shotgun, but allows them to finish what they have to do and leaves Carver to watch over their camp when Ellie offers antibiotics to an ill Cornelia. When Koba returns to the forest, he calls out his leader favoring humans over his own kind. Both apes would fight and Caesar would spare him as it is against a personal law for apes to not kill each other. After this fallout, the humans would complete repairing the dam’s generator but Koba would later kill two human guards and steal some guns. Just as celebration occurs between both parties as Cornelia would recover from her illness and the power in the city is shown to be restored, Koba shoots Caesar with the gun he stole and frames Carver for it who he also killed beforehand. He even takes a step too far in framing humans by burning the colony’s home. Knowing humans are innocent, Maurice instructs the humans to make a break for it. Malcolm, Ellie & Alex avoid the wrath of the apes heading towards the city, but Foster & Keemp are presumably attacked. Koba leads the apes to the armory and breach the city walls. With such an assault, he imprisons most humans while Dreyfus has no other choice but to go into hiding. With many still following Caesar’s belief to spare humans, he makes an example by killing Ash and imprisoning the likes of Maurice & Rocket. Luckily, Caesar is found still alive by Alex & Ellie, thus leading to them and Malcolm taking him to hide at his childhood home to properly recover. Malcolm would then go to the city to get a surgical kit for Ellie to treat his wounds. When he does, he encounters Blue Eyes and takes him to his father who is able to explain who truly was in the wrong. Now knowing his father is still alive, he frees the humans and his loyal followers. When they reunite with Caesar, they share Koba intends to bring the females and young ones into the city to join him, which would include Cornelia & Cornelius. As Malcolm guides the apes into the city, he ends up reuniting with Dreyfus and two other humans who avoided ape capture, Finney (Keir O’Donnell) & Werner (Jocko Sims). Dreyfus shares with him he’s planted C4 explosives all over a tower intending to take out all the apes at once. Malcolm would them at gunpoint in order to give Caesar a chance to restore leadership by defeating Koba in combat. Dreyfus would only reveal it won’t matter now because he’s already contacted a military base on the way to annihilate the apes anyway. He proves his desperation to save the human race by pressing the detonator that would take his own life, including Finney & Werner. The tower collapses and many casualties would occur as he would predict, but the central ape characters are able to survive the commotion. Koba will still try to maintain his position by taking another gun and shooting ablaze. He ends up grazing Maurice, triggering Caesar to tackle him off a ledge. Koba is still able to hang on for himself and Caesar considers sparing him again, until no longer identifying him as an ape and letting him fall to his death. Once Caesar regains leadership and reunites with his wife and newborn, Malcolm warns him more danger is coming and insists him to hide to save himself; The chimpanzee however insists him to do so instead with his family to avoid the fighting, knowing humans will never forgive what has happened. As Malcolm retreats, the film ends in a cliffhanger with Caesar preparing his colony for the inevitable war.
THOUGHTS
After already enjoying Rise, I was onboard with what would come next because you can’t say there isn’t more to explore in this dystopia. Getting to see the evolution of it all hopefully until it officially ties into the classic ‘68 film is quite intriguing to say the least because the execution is done very well. With respect to Rupert Wyatt getting things going, it’s really Director Matt Reeves that has the opportunity to redefine the franchise with making the setting feel personal, which it should be because the transition of seeing apes become superior over humans is not an easy feat yet continues to pay off. Rise has infinite respect for the use of motion capture visual effects to bring the apes to life instead of traditional makeup, and this film exceeds the quality of said technology with every detail being so perfect on each character. This one even has the best production design to clarify how decayed society has become for one side yet favored for another. All of this benefits the editing & cinematography to make each sequence surreal to witness. The tower fight was indeed intense, but it was really the shootout between both species that took my breath away because even when you have an idea on how it’s gonna go, you just can’t believe it’s happening until you see it. The reason I were to prefer this entry the best film since the very first goes to its incredible way to tell us to avoid deceit and always be open minded because the decision to put your beliefs will only create loud consequences. This lesson was boldly explored thanks to another impressive ensemble. Andy Serkis once again becomes breathtaking in the performance of Caesar because he is wise enough to think things through before making the final call. He wouldn’t have this perspective had he not been raised by humans, so he does know how others would feel and makes the best intentions possible to satisfy both parties. He knows starting a fight is bound to fail because no one wins except death and he refuses to bare with casualties, hence letting Malcolm’s group deal with the dam. Karin Konoval & Terry Notary don’t have an appropriate focus as Maurice & Rocket respectively, but they still get the chance to display the natural loyalty they have towards Caesar, aware that peace is better than dominance. You also feel for Blue Eyes because his youth makes him feel so conflicted. Nick Thurston makes clear he wants peace as well but doesn’t know how to act about it. Thankfully, seeing both sides firsthand helps him understand his father’s way was the safest rather than be manipulated to act in sinister fashion. Sadly, not everyone has the same opinion. Toby Kebbell is bone-chillingly great as Koba because he is one driven by hate. At first, you would hope to assume he had moved on but the action of one human was enough for his trauma to return. You get where he’s coming from, but he makes it more about himself than all apes, acting like he’s the only one to be abused. Because of this perspective, he chooses to amass everyone in front of him and become worst than those who harmed him. Caesar did the right thing killing him because it’s his fault War had begun and knew he wasn’t gonna stop with his motives. Despite defeating the origin of War, it doesn’t stop him from the inevitable fight his race must overcome. Although the apes are usually more interesting than humans in this franchise, you’d be lying when saying the latter are not at all. Jason Clarke was great as Malcolm because he desires peace like Caesar does. He saw humans at their worst and wants to put that era behind him no matter what, hence determined to repair the dam. Even though he succeeded, it doesn’t stop the inevitable. Caesar gave him a chance the whole time because he saw the good in him that reminded him of his adoptive father Will. Keri Russell was great as well when playing Ellie because she displayed all the gentleness that made Caesar remind her of Caroline. She didn’t save Cornelia for the sake of a peace treaty, she did it because she knew she could help and naturally wanted to, which she expresses when later saving him. Kodi Smit McPhee also made the most of it as Alex because he brings his own level of gentleness. He’s been through of seeing humans at their lowest like his dad and chooses to pass on kindness rather than the cycle of trauma. He proved that when sharing his manga/book to Maurice which warmed my heart deeply, because the simplest acts of kindness can go a long way. Because of Koba’s selfishness, their alliance ended before it could truly start and you just wish things were different. Although some have similar intentions, it is a shame that the actions are gonna be done differently which is exactly what was the deal with Dreyfus. Gary Oldman expressed his own paranoia with this character who was willing to do whatever it took to save his race. You were sure he was doing it for everyone because with the loss of his two sons during the pandemic. He did have good intentions when choosing to take his life and simultaneously take out the tower, but that only made things worse before it could get better. If we’re not gonna blame Koba for the reason of War to happen, we’re definitely gonna be pointing fingers at Carver. I have no shame saying so because Kirk Acevedo makes it clear he was someone who thought of himself throughout compared to Dreyfus and was too bitter to give anything or anyone a chance. I didn’t feel bad when he feel bad because wild animal or not, War could’ve been avoided if he didn’t shoot Ash. I stand by my statement when I identify this film is the franchise’s very best since the and original film, but there’s a couple of things that confuse me to this day. Going from the top, I appreciate the opening exposition for those jumping in from here, but I refuse to believe the Golden Gate Bridge conflict took 6 hours when it looked like 30 minutes to us when we saw Rise. I know the apes went on foot, so at the very least I would believe it took them 3 hours to fight off the blockade. And let’s be honest, was it really a good idea for Blue Eyes to see his newborn brother when he just wounded by a bear and hasn’t been given medicine to be tended to? That was such a risk because his brother hasn’t even gotten an immune system and I wish Caesar knew that. The same can be said when Ellie chooses to talk to Alex before she tries washing the blood off her hands. Moving on, why was Carver so far from the group? It is an excuse for him to shoot Ash and get the conflict going, but there’s no clarification on he went so physically far when he probably he had no reason to. If he had to take a piss, it’s nuts no one just said that. Also, why does Dreyfus wait until there’s weeks left of fuel to rely on and check out the dam? If Malcolm knew they were low, he should’ve left months prior. Moving on, why is Cornelius with his dad out near the dam when they’re unsure if they can trust the humans? If Caesar didn’t want to prove Koba right, he should’ve let Maurice if one not of the ape nurses to babysit him. It would’ve saved them some trouble and no one would know Carver stashed a gun for himself. Koba was smart enough to frame Carver when shooting Caesar, but why doesn’t he double tap? He doesn’t hesitate doing rapid fire on the humans, so it feels illogical for him to not ensure success. I don’t want to root for the villain, but he sure loses his touch at that point where he chooses to imprison Maurice rather than kill him like he did with Ash. The only continuity error I had here was how the iPad barely sounds like it turns on once the power restores yet when Dreyfus checks it out, the battery percentage looks like it’s at the 70s. If you wanted me to believe it’s barely charging, you would’ve had me at 11%. It’s an incredible sequence when the apes have a shootout with the humans, but why would the humans have fuel barrels outside the city walls? It’s one thing to leave them out for the sake of rationing and avoid overusing it, but they should’ve been brought in once the apes were proven to still be around. Ignore this, then you’ll still love this movie as much as I have. In conclusion, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the best entry of the iconic franchise for properly raising the stakes and hooking us in with every outcome. If you were impressed with what was done with Rise, you’ll sure as hell love this too.
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