[8.4/10] The beauty of speculative fiction is that it let’s us understand ourselves better by reflecting the world from a comfortable distance. Thankfully, there is no actual conflict between apes or humans, no post-apocalyptic, disease-ridden setting that requires humanity to cluster for survival, and no human vs. simian enmity. But the real world does have xenophobia, the tension of nations wanting to show strength while avoiding the costs and bloodshed of war, and families of all stripes struggling to find their way in an uncertain world.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes does better than its fellow genre films by taking those issues seriously in the context of its fantastical premise. It would be easy to turn a movie about a colony of sentient monkeys interacting with a colony of survivalist humans into a big block of cinematic cheese. Instead, Dawn imbues its man vs. ape conflict with rich, culturally-relevant points of tension, recognizable characterizations for human and chimp alike, and an approach that gives weight and meaning to events that could sound ludicrous on paper.
But it also does better than its mainstream prestige-aiming brethren at exploring issues of community conflict, prejudice, and leadership because it has the benefits of that distance. The tensions between apes and humans in Dawn can, in different guises and modes, work as a metaphor for international conflicts, for issues of race relations, for familial challenges, without having to be bogged down in the real world lionizing or contentious details. By going bigger and more outsized, the film also becomes more universal than a more down-to-earth take on these ideas could.
Dawn picks up roughly ten years after Rise of the Planet of the Apes, its Franco-fronted predecessor. In that decade, humanity has been decimated by a “simian flu,” leaving pockets of survivors, including one holed up in the remains of San Francisco. In that same time, Caesar, the literal and figurative father of a new generation of sentient apes, has formed a community in nearby Muir forest, leading a growing group of his kind with his allies from before the fall of the world, fostering that sense of community, and raising his two sons with his wife. It’s been at least a couple of years since the apes have seen a human, and the surviving humans seem to have no idea that there are intelligent, english-speaking chimps out there.
Naturally, this being a movie, these two groups come into contact and conflict with one another when the dam that the humans need to restore power to their makeshift village lies within ape territory. But from that simple need for community to have to encounter and deal with another, Dawn spins an engrossing story of mutual mistrust, efforts to mend fences, a legacy of hate, and the inherent difficulty of calming the tensions that arise from those who are angry, scared, and unable to stomach the hard work of accepting another people as being as valid and complicated and noble and pitiable as your own.
The great tools of Dawn’s screenplay, penned by returning scribes Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver and franchise newcomer Mark Bomback, are the parallel and the counterreaction. The film spends a significant amount of time cutting between the apes and the humans, showing them to be two households alike in dignity. Caesar's growing family is juxtaposed with the blended family Malcolm (Caesar’s designated “good guy human” counterpart) is trying to forge. Both human and simian leaders mull over the necessities and potential costs of violent conflict in much the same terms. And both communities have agitators ready to wipe out the enemy before the enemy has the chance to do the same to them, and those trying to hold the clan together and keep the peace. The same fears, the same prejudices, the same hopes and affections, are put on display for both groups.
At the same time, Dawn deftly depicts the rushing and receding tides of relations between the groups. A tender moment between Malcolm’s friends and Caesar’s son just as quickly turns tense and violent when an unexpected bit of contraband is uncovered. The good works and bonds formed between Caesar, Malcolm, and their confidantes that inspires hope for good relations is immediately undercut by scenes of their doubters who are instigating and preparing for war. Each moment of progress is met with a setback, only for another step forward to be made -- whether personal or ecumenical -- while another pitfall rests on the horizon. The film does justice to the tenderness and fragility of peace between peoples, how easily it can emerge and how quickly it can vanish.
But however heady it may be, Dawn is still a blockbuster, and it excels on that front even when its high-minded inclinations are set aside for the studio-mandated combat and explosions. Director Matt Reeves, cinematographer Michael Seresin, and the incredible team of animators who brought the apes to life and integrated them into an outsized but recognizable world, come together to create incredible cinematic images that serve the film’s purposes and aren’t reduce to mere superlative eye-candy.
It’s a fine line to try to show a chimp on horseback, brandishing a pair of automatic weapons, guns akimbo, riding through flame, and make it something both awesome and serious, but somehow Dawn threads the needle, matching gripping visuals with the sense of the horrors of war. A close-up on Caesar’s eyes as bookends works as a visual shorthand for his renewed humanity and the weight of the world on his shoulders. And the movements and expressions of the apes, and their interactions with the humans, help communicate that life and sentience better than raw exposition ever could.
Like Rise before it, that may be Dawn’s greatest achievement. In a time where every blockbuster is filled with undifferentiated, oft-unconvincing CGI, the simian characters in Dawn not only move and interact with weight and purpose, but the animators take pains to capture the subtle gestures and expressions of the human actors portraying the apes, making them feel like genuine souls and not just computer-generated abstractions. That not only gives power to the inevitable ape-on-ape and man vs. monkey skirmishes, where chimps limp and engage in the grisly business of war with either the fires of revenge or the weight of sadness in their eyes, but it gives added force to the film’s “equally yoked” approach to the two communities.
That’s especially true for Andy Serkis’s take on Caesar, who somehow tops his performance from Rise. There’s plenty of solid performances in Dawn, from Jason Clarke who’s serviceable as Malcolm, to Gary Oldman and Keri Russell who make great things out of the all-too-little they’re given to do. But Serkis’s Caesar is the film’s crown jewel, making the viewer believe in a chimp who can weigh the costs and benefits of war and civilization, convey both anger and tenderness at the right moment, and want a better future for the next generation as much as any flesh and blood character ever could.
At times, though, the blockbuster-y elements of Dawn do weigh down the film. Both the ape and human antagonists become too over the top evil at times. But even there, Dawn manages to motivate them in believable ways, with the human foil resenting his simian counterparts because he blames them for the disease that wiped out humanity, and his ape equivalent carrying the legacy of his own mistreatment at the hands of humans. That experience led one hawkish chimp to inherit the worst of humanity (plus an impressive ability to code switch) and a desire to inflict it back on his tormentors, while Caesar’s experience of the kindness and decency humans are capable of in Rise gives him a different, more yielding perspective.
It’s that kind of depth that sets Dawn of the Planet of the Apes apart from both the science fiction and fantasy films that treat an outlandish premise as an excuse to tell weightless stories, and from the more “serious” films that treat the gravitas of their subject matter as an excuse not to delve into it with grace or nuance. This film offers the best of both worlds, a meaty take on a classic sci-fi idea, and a fantastical lens through which to review real world communal conflict, that gets at notions of leadership, fear of the other, community and humanity, better than scores of films on either side of its divide.
"We both have families. You want to protect yours. I want to protect mine. It's our only chance for peace."
Not as great as the first but still a good movie and follow up. I just think Rise had a better story, more complex characters and thought-provoking themes. Dawn is a bit more by the book and simple. There's more action and thrills though and the CGI looks even better, so much attention to detail and it's smooth. There's a fun score we only hear twice in the first half that elevates everything, a bit underused. The action set pieces are great and epic but nothing beats the red bridge in the first.
Not as emotionally poignant as Rise but we still get a few moments of greatness like the video camera scene, perfect nod to the first and a good reminder of what Caesar is fighting for. Caesar's arc is a bit underwhelming overall in this one compared to the first though, can't say he changed that much except for realizing apes are like humans. They could have added more to Maurice and Rocket. Koba has such a predictable character arc, foreseeable all the way in the first movie. I don't know why they made it so obvious from the get-go. In fact, a lot of this movie was predictable. The human sidekicks are forgettable and bland, they fit a steriotype and propel the plot but that's it.
Set a full ten years after the events of its predecessor, the latest Apes picture has humanity near extinction while Caesar and his ever-expanding family have established a functional utopia amidst the desolation. Most of the first act is a simple, enveloping visual treat - establishing the world as it now stands and savoring the unique visuals of San Francisco (and the surrounding area) in the aftermath of a near-total human annihilation event. Crumbling cityscapes, creeping plant life, reverberations of a lost civilization... this story lends itself nicely to vivid, poignant splashes of scenery, and the effects team is more than up to that challenge.
In fact, moving on from that slow, thoughtful series of reflections is a feat the film struggles with. Though rich and layered in its own ways, the story plays second-fiddle to the mood at large, and often feels telegraphed by the events of the first film (not to mention the original series). It's a deep, thought provoking installment, with some lights-out physical acting from the entire motion-capture cast, but I couldn't shake the sense that it could have stretched itself much further than it did. When it came time for the parallel climactic face-offs amidst the fireworks of an unavoidable human/ape warzone, I kept thinking to myself, "Is this really all there is?"
Firm, fiery and intelligent, but perhaps a bit too safe, too happy to fall back on a set of standard action movie routines. Beautifully dark, it's also a decided step back from the promise seen in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
I have watched the trilogy (so far there is only a trilogy) and boy how glad I'm to see this saga only improve. I found the first one shitty, but enough of that, this is a comment on this movie specifically, not the trilogy, even so, I will compare this primarily with the other two, without getting too detailed about it.
The plot continues not so short after the first movie. There is a narration in the beginning but it's not so annoying as others narrations can be. The first scene of the apes hunting was amazingly shot, I actually gasped a little, first, there is Ceasar's yell, then a moment of the prey running in despair and then the sound starts. That sound I found it so amazing and fit the scene nicely, but I don't think any director could pull something like that easily (though I'm "dummy" level when it comes to cinematography techniques).
The plot then follows slowed-paced. It is actually kind of boring at times, but this is rewarded by the emotional shit, the conflict that comes in Ceasar's understanding that Apes are just as bad as Humans.
That ending though was better than anything they put in the first movie, but not the third (even better than this one).
Even after the watching the third movie and loving more than the first two, I'm still amazed by Serkis's acting. Even with CGI, he manages to pass a great deal of emotion, that, of course, couldn't be accomplished with a shitty CGI team, so they did a really amazing job in that part.
While I was praising the sound from the opening scene I can say that its soundtrack is not that memorable and other movies, that is not to say that is bad, it's just not memorable.
Compared to the other two movies, the humans in this one is lacking something, I would say charisma, but that wouldn't be accurate. The only acting that really stands out, besides Serkis, is that of Gary Oldman. But even Gary didn't have the time for truly shine.
Finally, I must say that the first movie is good but worse than this one and this one is worse than the third one. At least in my humble opinion.
In 2011, director Rupert Wyatt brought us Rise of the Planet of the Apes which to me was just another ordinary blockbuster, good when it comes to entertainment but with a few flaws along the way. It had a decent story, a great emotional side and an important and controversial message, but the truth is that it did not brought anything new.
This year, this time with Matt Reeves directing, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was not the film that I would be waiting anxiously. See the continuation of the story would be something interesting, but I had the impression that it would follow the same path of the first film. The truth is that great criticism led me to want to see it already in its first weekend display.
In this new film we follow the new life of Caesar. The ape that developed a super-intelligence due to a substance created to cure Alzheimer's disease in humans. Caesar was raised with humans and always felt very close to them emotionally, but a series of events led him to come to lead a rebellion by the party of all apes. In this new story we see a completely different world, living in an apocalyptic scenario. Caesar leads a large group of apes in a forest on the surroundings of San Francisco, apparently they live alone, but always in fear that the human race will interfere in what apes consider to be a life of freedom, against all that many of them passed in times, imprisoned and tested by those who once called themselves his friends.
After the first few minutes of the film we felt that it chosed a different path from the first. The introduction to this new phase of the Apes and Era on Planet Earth is made with such an absolutely brilliancy! With a very dark and gloomy atmosphere we are dragged into all this environment that leads us to the right emotion at the right time. For those who have not seen the first film may be some loose ends, but nothing too serious that you can't follow the story clearly.
The study of the character Caesar is fantastic, very depth and well developed. We feel through him all of his fears and frustrations. Andy Serkis, deserves to be recognized in this film but also in the previous because his performances are what carries the films, especially this one. It is seen that from him there was a huge study of the species and the fact that he becomes beautifully real ape is magnificent. The other performances of the film, especially Jason Clarke and the legendary Gary Oldman are very striking, I only regret that an actor of the caliber of Oldman not has more screen time.
Some questions about Human vs. Animal are consistently presented to us throughout the film and leave us thinking. Are we so different from each other? Physically we can be so, but, as regards emotions? Freedom? Survival? Power? Thirst for revenge? Revolt? It is a story that touches a bit on what we all humans have the ugliest.
The soundtrack is also something that needs to be mentioned because it perfectly reflects all the environment. Dark and sometimes very terrifying goes very well with all that we see and with what each scene wants to transmit.
The action scenes are very well made and is a visually beautiful film. The colors and light were impeccably studied and this is reflected in the final result. Some plans are absolutely fabulous, especially when it comes to the action scenes.
Contrary to what I was expecting, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is not just another blockbuster that we see this Summer. Yes, it is a great entertainment flick but with a lot of substance, which is good not only visually but also in messages he brings. I am very surprised!
Review by Simon MasseyVIP 11BlockedParent2014-07-20T01:48:19Z
It's a testament to the quality of this film that you soon forget what a technical marvel these ape characters are and become much more focussed on the story. Caesar, once again, is at the forefront of this film, and the exploration of the ape community is fascinating to watch. Yet rather than simply focus on Caesar, Reeves is more interested in showing the fragility of peace between the human and ape communities, the distrust and hatred that can develop between two opposing factions and how easy such emotions can tear down any attempts to bring an end to hostilities. It's as relevant an issue that you could find to explore in modern society and it works wonderfully well here. Although the human characters are not as well developed, Reeves doesn't rush the story and the tentative steps to building trust between the two "families" in the opening half are beautifully played and help to ensure that the audience has some investment in both sides when all hell breaks loose. And whilst there are no real surprises in where the story is going, it is this focus on the characters like the previous film that help to make the action sequences tense and exciting to watch, even if the finale strays a little into CGI overload.