Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

[Zarathustra]

Yep, it's a summer blockbuster popcorn flick. But it's a heck of a good one. If you go by the trailers, you might think it's action-packed, but at least 3/4 of the movie is pure drama, character development, thematic exploration. There are quiet times that explore family relationships, fear, trust, betrayal. The last quarter does have some pretty impressive action sequences, but it's all character-driven action that drives home the themes.

The clash of cultures that leads to the inevitable conflict is not a new idea, but the way it's told sure feels original. I love the ape civilization, the home they build for themselves that looks like nothing else: certainly inhuman, but still very practical. The danger of talking apes turning into a parody of itself is never an issue. They don't look or feel silly. You can almost forget the "gimmick" of this movie and simply view these creatures as another form of human--as if Neanderthals still lived among us. Their eyes, their expressions ... wow Andy Serkis did another amazing job, and the digital creations transcend mere special effect.

Besides the final Hobbit movie, this will probably be the only other film I see at the theater this year. I think it's worth braving the rude phone-checkers to go see it on the big screen. [Yes, once again I had to tell someone to put up his phone, despite at least 4 warnings on-screen prior to the start of the film. We had two people texting right in front of us. This is the main reason I don't go to the theaters as much as I used to.]

[dlbpharmd]

We enjoyed this. It's a logical sequel to the re-boot from a couple of years back.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

So is it safe to presume that it isn't anything like that Mark Wahlberg/Helena Bohman Carter movie from a decade or so ago?

I probably won't go see this one but I guess I should check it out when it gets released on disk.

Andy Serkis, though, has carved out a great niche for himself as being the go-to actor for stop-motion capture. I suspect he has also done video game work but I can't name any at the moment.

[Cail]

It's OK. It's visually amazing, but that's about it. The story's predictable - you can practically check the boxes as it hits its plot points (and there's the "conflict") in the standard formula. The score is awful (now feel THIS!). And the characters are cardboard caricatures.

It lacks the depth of the first film, and it lacks anything approaching decent acting or a great character (which the first film had in spades).

[Cail]

The more I think about this movie, the less I like it.

Keri Russell, who is fantastic in The Americans, speaks her lines like a first-year drama student. Gary Oldman is barely in the film and plays the exact character he's been typecast as. Ditto with Kirk Acevedo, who's criminally wasted.

Every human is a brand new character, and at no point is any attempt made to give us any information about them. Well, other than, "I lost my wife". Oh really? "I lost my daughter". We're a new family now. YAY!

The thing that made the first film work so well was the emotional story between James Franco and John Lithgow, which lent weight to his interaction with Caesar. There's none of that at all in this film. Instead there's a paint-by-numbers story in which the protagonists are introduced, a conflict is established, red-herring alliances are formed, there's a (quite literal) fall for the main character, a resurrection and redemption, a nice, big action set piece, Gary Oldman does a Gary Oldmanish thing, the inevitable ape-on-ape confrontation takes place, and the sequel is set up.

And sorry, everyone was incredibly well dressed, well groomed, and well fed given this takes place 10 years after the first film.

[Zarathustra]

Cail, I just finished watching Elysium, and it made me think about your criticisms of this movie. If you'd made these points of Elysium, I would have agreed wholeheartedly. But the contrast between the two only elevates Dawn in my eyes. For instance, in Elysium every rich person was evil--so evil in fact that they showed no sympathy whatsoever even for suffering children. They could destroy ships full of innocent people without a second thought, simply because they didn't want to share paradise with them. It wasn't about survival, but unrealistic selfishness that was obviously supposed to mirror our own society, without any interest in taking account evidence that contradicts its own premise.

But Dawn has more interesting ambiguities, where neither side is 100% good or bad, though each thinks it's justified in acting in the interest of its own survival (hard to argue with that logic). You can actually understand the motivations of the characters--even Oldman's character and the "bad" ape. Again, saving the human race is a pretty compelling argument for violence, and the hatred that the bad ape learned at the hands of humans makes his character arc plausible. In the end, he's wanting to preserve his people, too, and views Caesar as naive.

I don't understand the complaints against the acting. I didn't have a problem with any of the actors. The backstory did seem a little sparse, but that seems to be typical of post-apocalyptic dystopian movies. (Again, Elysium was much worse in this regard.)

I do miss Franco and Lithgow, and your comparison between the two movies is a fair point. The first one was better. But comparisons can be made with other science fictions movies that start with similar premises, as I've done here, and the balance shifts the other way. But on its own, I think it's a decent movie.

[Cail]

Elysium was awful, for the reasons you mention and then some. Check out Snowpiercer. Similar idea as Elysium but far better executed.

My main issue with DotPotA was that it was so rote. It was trying to play above its level and be something more than just a popcorn film. As such, it failed at both. It's paced too slowly to function as an action movie, and it lacks the depth to work as a statement about the nature of the survival instincts of two competing species.

[I'm Murrin]

I saw this on Friday, it was a really good, well made film, but the plot is essentially a standard and predictable one. How many times have we seen the story of the peaceful leader whose more aggressive advisor secretly plots against him, including to the point of starting a war, to boost his own power?

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

I wasn't planning to see this one, but based on the reviews here i may have to rethink that. To me it is so difficult to top the original movies, why even bother?

[I'm Murrin]

By the way, probably my favourite bits of the whole film are when Koba bamboozles the two guards at the armoury.

[peter]

I said to my wife earlier that tonight we may get out the dvd of this film from our local store and her reply was a sort of grunt. I enquired whether she was not enamoured of 'Planet of the Apes' films and she said not. When pressed further she said "It's all the damned monkey things!". Thats why I love her.

[peter]

One of the main things that stays with me after a viewing of this film is the uncomfortable feeling that Koba may have been the one in the right. Yes he was a bastard in many ways - but he was ruthless in the pursuit of what he percieved to be the right path - and quite posibly what *was* the right path, given the film's ending. Was it in fact Ceaser who, as a result of his original bonding in 'Rise' [a luxury not afforded to the other apes], was unable to see the impossibility of an equitable settlement between apes and man [particularly in the light of the apes experience of 'human work']. Would a resurgent human population really have ever been prepared to share mastership of the planet with their 'ape' bretheren?

One point that I don't think has had mention yet is the series 'top-down' approach to the original films. Here we have the story of the origins preceeding the [presumably] future films where the apes will gain ascendancy [surely the next film will be called 'Battle for the Planet of the Apes]. Will the revamped franchise then take the story onward to it's [normalish] further story of mankind wrestling back controll of the 'Planet' from the Apes?