Caesar and his apes embark on their most harrowing journey yet
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes ended with a promise of war. The human settlement, before being driven away by the apes, had called for aid from a surviving military base. Soldiers were on their way to destroy the apes. War for the Planet of the Apes opens two years later; the prolonged war being well under way.
I spoke in my last review about how genuinely good these movies are, despite seeming somewhat goofy from the outside. Especially with War and Dawn, director Matt Reeves has treated the premise and these characters with real care and emotion, which I absolutely adore. There are no winks at the camera or mis-timed quips by writers too embarrassed by what they’re working on to keep a straight face.
War for the Planet of the Apes feels both personal and mythic. It’s my favourite Apes movie yet, and one that I spent a long time processing after it was over.
Let’s get into it.
What Is It Good For?
War was the first movie where I had to mentally prepare myself for the experience. I hadn’t expected the first two movies to go to the emotional places that they did, and it caught me off guard almost to the point of tears. But this time I would be ready. This time I knew what I was getting into.
Well, that’s what I told myself, but that absolutely wasn’t the case. No spoilers as usual, but this movie pushes Caesar to the limit of what I think any sentient being should be able to endure. My heart repeatedly broke for him throughout this movie, and if you’ve built up any attachment to him over the course of the previous movies, be warned, yours will too.
Following an assault on Caesar’s home, the leader of the apes strikes out with a small band of friends to put an end to the human threat once and for all. Caesar’s path of violence threatens to take him to a place of irredeemable darkness, but thankfully we have Maurice the orangutan and Rocket (Caesar’s right-hand man and long-time buddy) to keep him on the straight and narrow, along with a few new faces.
One of these is a human girl (Amiah Miller) who has lost the ability to speak. There has been a development in the world of Apes—the virus that uplifted the apes is now causing the previously immune humans to lose control of their higher brain functions, effectively reducing them to animals. The ripple effects of this change can be seen multiple times throughout the movie, but I’m also not sure if it was put to best use.
Caesar and the gang taking a human girl into their care is a great, thematically resonant development—but the virus itself had little effect on the story. The girl—Nova—seems to act in quite a human-like way, too, which confuses the narrative of the virus. Maybe kids are partly immune? Who knows. I really liked Nova’s inclusion regardless.
Another fresh face is ‘Bad Ape’—a former zoo chimp, voiced and performed by Steve Zahn. Bad Ape is quite eccentric and adds a few moments of golden comedy to an otherwise bleak movie, but his genuine earnestness saves the character from become too slapstick. I enjoyed his inclusion in the story if only because he was a tragic character that I didn’t want to see hurt, which created a good amount of tension.
Ape-pocalypse Now
I think one of my favourite aspects of War is the sense of consequence carried over from Dawn. This movie could certainly be enjoyed in a vacuum, but the added context of the previous movie really helps. Koba’s assault on the humans in Dawn is what created this new status quo in War, but even more intriguing are the Donkeys.
‘Donkeys’ are what humans call the apes that have defected to their side. These were Koba’s loyalists, who feared retribution if they returned to Caesar. It’s a frightening bit of worldbuilding, and perhaps the only thing more disturbing that seeing a human shoot down an ape is an ape shooting down an ape for the humans.
This almost political thread between the movies really adds to the sense of meaning to the unfolding events. Consequences make the current situation feel ‘earned’ as well as adding extra depth to the previous iteration in the story. It sounds like simple story construction, but it’s something that even the best long-running movie franchises can get wrong (the most-discussed example being the seemingly catastrophic events of Captain America: Civil War having practically zero fallout in the MCU).
Natural Born Monkey Killer
I’ll admit I’m finding it difficult to talk about this movie without spoiling it. There are twists and turns in War that genuinely had me gasping aloud, and I feel like these deserve to be experienced first-hand. Permit me, then, to talk abstractly about the movie’s villain—the Colonel, played by Woody Harrelson.
Having most recently watch Harrelson in a re-watch of Zombieland, I initially bumped on his presence here. Obviously, he can be a great dramatic actor, but it took me a minute to disassociate him from ‘Tallahassee’.
The Colonel is a terrifying figure—he’s transformed his militia into a cult that worships him, and he uses his power to ruthless effect. He does unfortunately suffer from a rather prolonged ‘villain monologue’ scene that kind of kills the pacing for a few minutes, but at least his backstory and motivations serve as an appropriate mirror to Caesar’s, which is a nice touch.
He’s a welcome presence in the movie, and both an emotional and physical force for Caesar to reckon with, which makes him a great antagonist.
Ape-finity War
Franchise cinema gets a lot of hate, but I say this with total honesty: I want Hollywood to keep making Ape movies forever, especially if they’re this good.
You might be able to claim that it was cynical for there ever to be a reboot of this franchise to begin with, but studios are always going to take the shortest route to a quick buck. That we’ve been lucky enough to be gifted such talented filmmakers like Matt Reeves and Andy Serkis to helm these projects is something to be thankful for.
War for the Planet of the Apes is not an easy watch. It’s a turbulent emotional journey, but one you’ll be glad you went on. Catching up with the series just so I can see the new Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes has been one of the best movie-watching decision I’ve made to date, and one that you should make too.
***
Thanks for reading my review. If you liked it, consider buying me a cup of coffee at https://ko-fi.com/kieranobrien
Comentarios