The Appropriate Tune: 'Guerilla Radio' by Rage Against the Machine
The original Planet of the Apes was the little franchise that could. Your standard Twilight Zone plot hitched to a Charlton Heston vehicle with some (for its time) impressive costuming effects, mixing together into a cinematic gumbo that took the country by storm for a time. ‘Lighting in a bottle’ I’m sure was the common refrain, especially when Tim Burton’s attempt to reboot the franchise hit theaters like a wet turd thrown by an angry simian. Not as bad as the realization that I’ll probably have to cover it to keep the number of Star Trek and Apes films consistent in the Marathon, but still pretty bad.
Ten years later however, the naysayers and poo-pooers were silenced with the release of Rise of the Planet of the Apes; A reinterpretation of the monkey movie which took a more hard sci-fi approach rather than the allegory of the original, and a film which succeeded largely on the back of Andy Serkis and the advances in CGI technology. Such success demands more success in Hollywoodland, and so three years later there came a sequel, the first sequel to an Apes film in 41 years. Is this a Wrath of Khan or more a Final Frontier? And how long until we see a banana on screen?
Released in 2014, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was directed by Matt Reeves, written by Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver and produced by Peter Chernin, Dylan Clark, Jaffa and Silver through Chernin Entertainment and TSG Entertainment. It’s the near future, and civilization has collapsed thanks to that handy-dandy retrovirus that was cooked up in the last movie. Human civilization that is, as the ape society run by Caesar (Andy Serkis) is doing better than ever. Things are looking up, until the apes come across a party of humans led by Malcolm (Jason Clarke). Turns out there’s an entire colony of humans living in San Francisco (immune to the plague wouldn’t you know) and they’re itching to rebuild, preferably without learning any sort of lesson. To do that they need electricity to potentially contact other colonies, and the only way to get that is via a hydroelectric dam right in the middle of Ape country. Thus begins a tense tete-a-tete, as Malcolm tries to build a working relationship with Caesar. As there are humans mistrustful of ape however, like Dreyfus (Gary Oldman), there are apes distrustful of human, like Koba (Toby Kebbell), and it seems that peace between the species is teetering on a razor’s edge. Just about anything could set this powder keg off, so who’s gonna be the one to light the match?
Rise gave us a chunk of ape action by the end, but Dawn kicks it into overdrive. Talking apes, apes riding horses, talking apes riding horses and wielding guns, we’re finally into Planet of the Apes territory proper. Not only that, but apes get the most screen time, the action set pieces, even the most dialogue if you count sign language and hooting as dialogue. If you thought the human characters in Rise ended up being overshadowed by the apes, that’s nothing compared to the bare bones arcs and characterization of the humans here. I mean this film has Gary Oldman in it, who is not the lead for whatever reason, and I had to check wikipedia to remember his name, And the name of the female lead. And Malcolm’s son. Did they even say their names in the movie more than once? Christ…
Then again the only apes that are named in the film are Caesar and Koba, and I didn’t even know one of the apes was supposed to be his son until the last half hour or so, so they aren’t the only neglected primates in this movie. Really this movie revolves entirely around Caesar; His arc, a more melodramatic and better looking version of his arc from the original films, is the one that dictates the entire course of the film, and pretty much none of the characters aside from Koba seem capable of accomplishing anything without him. I mean Serkis puts on the best performance of the film again so you can hardly blame them for putting the focus on Caesar, but at the same time I found it very hard to maintain interest in inter-ape politics, especially when most of them don’t talk. Didn’t matter much in Rise when they were still mostly just apes, and it didn’t matter much in the original film where the Apes were mostly just humans, but Dawn is in the unfortunate middle ground where the whole idea starts feeling really dumb.
Which isn’t a jab at the CGI work by the way, because Dawn goes above and beyond the call of duty (and probably the budget) getting these damn dirty apes on screen, and I think the effort bore fruit. Some look better than others of course, looking at you Caesar’s kids, but the emotional depth they can convey with these ape models more than makes up for any unnatural lighting. The scene where Koba’s army engages the colony in particular, the most memorable scene in the movie to me, is like something out of Saving Private Ryan; The apocalyptic carnage and mayhem just wouldn’t have been possible using the old Ape masks.
Ultimately though Dawn is in an unenviable position. It’s not a bad movie per se, the FX are obviously good, the action set pieces are good, but even though Rise and Dawn share similar problems Rise felt like a much more compelling film. Honestly I found it hard to even think of anything to talk about, which probably comes through in the review. I believe imdb has it around the 7, 7.5, and yeah, that sounds about right. A mild recommendation, and maybe next year we’ll see how it sets up for the grand finale.
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