Runtime: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Matt Reeves
Quick Impressions:
This has been a crazy week for us. My father’s in the hospital awaiting a liver transplant and has been at the brink of death several times since last Thursday, and my husband just had his wisdom teeth extracted Tuesday (highly necessary since he had both an infection and an exposed nerve). That’s not all that’s been going on, but that’s enough, don’t you think?
Anyway, in the midst of all these stressful happenings, we took a break to spend the afternoon with my stepson since he’s about to go on several trips and we won’t see him for a few weeks. So while my dad was in ICU hovering between life and death, my husband, stepson, daughter, and I were watching Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
Of course, a major theme in this movie is the tormented relationship between a dying father and his emotional son. That seems right. I remember how touching, how moving, I found the scenes between Caesar and John Lithgow’s character in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Several times while watching that film, I thought of my daughter’s long stint in the NICU, and my terror that I would lose her, and then when I brought her home, my terror that somebody would decide I wasn’t a good enough mother, and then someone would take her from me.
These new Planet of the Apes films seem uncannily adept at stoking my primal terrors.
Though I personally preferred Rise of the Planet of the Apes (because I particularly connected with Lithgow’s character, I found the story more compelling, and I liked the supporting cast a bit better), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is great for what it is, a tense, action-packed, thoughtful examination of how and why conflicts start.
The Good:
I finished reading War and Peace this week, finally (I’ll bet Tolstoy wrote it faster!), and I can highly recommend watching Dawn of the Planet of the Apes when you’re already thinking about stuff like the nature of conflict, how wars start, who makes them happen.
For a PG-13 summer action movie, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is surprisingly thoughtful. In this way, it lives up to the legacy of both its emotionally resonant predecessor Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and the 1968 original film (which, despite an equal parts riveting and mockable central performance by Charlton Heston is still a very thoughtful, well written work of science fiction with a genuinely powerful twist ending).
For an action movie aimed at a broad audience, this movie is surprisingly character driven. In fact, the plot is incredibly simple (maybe a bit too simple for my tastes). The movie’s main concern is the slow, steadily building conflict between (and among) the apes and the humans.
In terms of plot, the basic scenario is simple. This ragtag band of humans wants to access a generator on ape land to see if they can get it running and restore power to San Francisco. The apes are suspicious. The humans are also suspicious. One guy is given a limited amount of time to negotiate with the apes and get the generator running before the rest of the humans decide to make war on the apes.
This situation ought to be straightforward, but of course it is hopelessly complicated by prejudices, fears, insecurities, worries, and power struggles on both sides. In this way, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes closely examines the situation under which wars start, power struggles begin, and fledgling societies develop. This tension is what keeps the story moving forward.
It’s actually very well done. You feel like you’re watching a movie about the history of Rome or something—only with apes. By the way, the CGI is absolutely fantastic (in terms of ape rendering at any rate).
Last time in Rise, the best performance in the film (the one that made the whole thing work) was Andy Serkis’s brilliant motion capture turn as Caesar. This time, the simian characters get even more focus and prominence. Serkis is still fantastic as Caesar, but equally compelling are his ape co-stars, particularly Nick Thurston as Blue Eyes (aptly named), Karin Konoval as Maurice (who was practically my favorite character in the movie), and Toby Kebbell as Koba.
I found all the apes extremely compelling and sympathetic (even the violent or misguided ones with which I did not agree). Koba, for example, can be a huge jerk who makes some questionable decisions, but he seems so much like a victim of PTSD that it’s hard not to feel some compassion for him. Plus his fears (though paranoid and taken to the extreme) are not completely unfounded. I found his demonstration of what humans had done to him extremely powerful. Even though he does some awful things, I was way more invested in him than in any of the human characters.
Best Scene:
I love the moment when the neon 76 light at the gas station flashes on and the whole convenience store comes to life. A highly surreal quality makes this scene so compelling. The lights are on, the music is playing, and the hum of the world we know would seem so familiar under other circumstances. But since we’ve spent most of the movie in overgrown wilderness with the apes, signs of our normal, everyday reality now seem so strange and foreign. Watching the apes ride on horseback through the newly illuminated ruins of the gas station sent a thrill through me. The visual incongruity is so powerful, and this scene also marks a turning point in the narrative. Events have reached a crisis. The humans have accomplished their stated goal. The power is on. If everything else were okay (as it ought to be), the story would end here. But the story does not end here.
Best Action Sequence:
Two great moments stand out. One is definitely Ash’s last stand. The other is the moment when Caesar makes a final assessment of Koba.
Best Scene Visually:
I almost laughed watching the scene of Koba galloping in on horseback firing his machine gun nonstop and making his terrifying war-face as explosions blasted out dramatically all around him. Somehow I couldn’t fight down the thought that this is no doubt the way some citizens of other countries around the globe imagine the United States. We see ourselves as a hero riding in on horseback to save the day. Everyone else sees us as some kind of crazy power-drunk ape charging in recklessly in a blaze of delusional, pyrotechnic glory, shooting first (and broadly) and asking questions later (or never).
I’m not sure if this is what the audience is supposed to take from the scene, but considering how much time and energy Koba expends searching for weapons of mass destruction, I find it hard to believe that I’m reaching too much.
The Negatives:
The humans are pretty thinly drawn in this story. I’m not sure that’s entirely a bad thing, but I think I preferred Rise of the Planet of the Apes largely because the humans were more compelling. (And I say that as someone who doesn’t particularly like James Franco and thought Freida Pinto’s part could have been a bit more substantial.) These humans all seem so expendable, disposable, even interchangeable. That does make sense because this film is documenting the transition between a human-centric civilization and an ape-centric civilization.
Keri Russel’s Ellie is a character whose backstory is far more interesting than anything she says or does in this film. Basically in the past she lost her daughter (and presumably the rest of the family) to the Simian flu. She worked for the CDC, and she endured violent uprisings and an unstable life of privation and tumult. In the present, she has access to antibiotics. So before appearing in this movie, Ellie underwent suffering and conflict and lost all the people she loved the most. Now she has antibiotics.
Kodi Smit-McPhee definitely does what he can to make Alexander sympathetic and interesting, but he’s never given anything very significant to do. It’s almost like he’s there just for the parallel. The main sympathetic ape has a son, so the main sympathetic human needs a son, too.
Honestly, watching this, you get the idea that humanity has already lost its chance, and these pitiable stragglers just haven’t gotten the memo yet.
Gary Oldman’s character is the worst (in terms of development). From the previews, I assumed that Dreyfus would be a really sinister, villainous threat, but actually he’s just a normal, well-meaning guy doing his best to give the languishing human remnant some hope and to protect them from total annihilation. The character is criminally underwritten, underdeveloped, and far too seldom seen on screen (especially considering that he’s played by Gary Oldman). The recent brouhaha over Oldman’s comments in Playboy is far more interesting than anything he does in this movie.
The only two humans who get decent treatment are Jason Clarke’s Malcolm, and Kirk Acevedo’s Carver. (Maybe I’m biased because I really like both of those actors, but I doubt that’s it because I like all of these actors.)
Carver is transparent and one-note, but he’s useful for generating discussion. His whole, “I just fired my gun by accident in the heat of the moment…although I hate his kind so much that just the sight of them makes me want to puke my guts up,” attitude makes his character worthwhile. It’s a shame that there’s not more complexity there. Carver is like a human parallel to Koba, except we’re never given any particular opportunity to sympathize with him at all.
Jason Clarke is a very talented actor, and I’m glad to see him playing the leading human in a solid summer release. (I wonder if his fantastic scenes with those monkeys in Zero Dark Thirty had anything to do with him getting cast in this movie.) Malcolm is a decent, fair-minded, and courageous man, but even he is most interesting because his name is Malcolm, so you figure if the human race is going to have a hope left, it’s probably him. I mean, if Caesar dies, everybody’s hopes have to rest on somebody who seems promising. They should have given all the characters Shakespearean names. That would have been fun.
I think, honestly, that part of the problem with the movie is that the humans already seem like a lost cause. I mean, I’m a human, and I found all of the Simians more sympathetic and more interesting than the people. Even Koba (who has his faults, to put it mildly), seemed more worthwhile to me than any of the human characters in this story. It’s like the story is already entirely about the apes and the humans are only incidental. We no longer care enough to feel invested in them. They’re not very remarkable in themselves. They’re only there because of how they assist and (more importantly) shape Caesar and Blue Eyes.
Maybe I’m just an unfeeling jerk, though. Who can say for sure? The movie is quite well done, but I think it could have been better if it made the human characters at least as interesting as the apes.
And why were they stockpiling all those weapons by the way? I think while my daughter was squirming around and complaining (because this movie was really not “her kind of thing” and she found it very stressful), I missed some of the dialogue explaining those weapons. My husband says that they’d discovered a cache of weapons left behind by others, and now they were testing them to make sure they still worked. Frankly I would not blame any ape for being suspicious about this. One implication is, should it matter if someone secretly has some really deadly weapons? Is merely the act of possessing weapons tantamount to a confession that one plans to use them for evil? But you know, I find it hard to blame Koba for being suspicious. Human beings have a really long history of using their weapons to kill everyone else indiscriminately. I would be suspicious, too. (In fact, I was suspicious, mainly because Gary Oldman’s character was so vague and vacant. Isn’t this a movie? Shouldn’t he have been up to something?) What’s worse is that these particular people are Americans, and we are as a society rather notorious for never keeping our peace treaties.
I was also underwhelmed by the explosive finale. I like what’s said about Koba (because this kind of qualification seems inevitable as a fledgling society emerges). But what I didn’t understand was why Koba so quickly goes completely mad with power. What doesn’t make sense about this is that they tell us pointedly at the beginning that ten winters have passed since the events in the last film. Has Koba just been biding his time because he enjoys unexpected dramatic flourishes? (Did he somehow have access to a DVD player during those ten winters, and has he been secretly watching The Lion King the entire time and planning his strategy, or what?) I guess his behavior isn’t unrealistic since wars have to start somehow, but that he totally loses control so quickly seems really…odd. Maybe he’s just too damaged to wield power effectively. Who knows.
Overall:
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a worthy successor to Rise of the Planet of the Apes. (My stepson and I don’t see how it makes sense for Dawn to come after Rise, but my husband assures us that it does make sense when you think about it in the right way.) It’s one of the better films I’ve seen so far this summer, somewhat sophisticated in its exploration of how conflicts develop and what motivates people to take certain actions without skimping on the action and excitement. I think the movie could be better if the human characters were even 1/3 as well-developed as their Simian counterparts, but it’s a pretty good movie as is, certainly worth the price of admission. (Also there’s a very cute baby ape involved, the only reason my five-year-old daughter did not completely hate the movie.)