Of all the sci-fi tentpole films that have reached our
screens in the last few years, including the myriad of comic book-related fare,
no singular series has given more credibility to the genre as a whole like the
Planet Of The Apes prequels have managed. Hell, just the fact that we have not
one but two prequels from this series
that are not a complete embarrassment to the license is proof enough that these
are some special-ass movies. Through a combination of legitimately
ground-breaking special effects work and some truly inspired scripting, Rise Of
The Planet Of The Apes and Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes have a very special
place in the film industry as it stands today. If we ever grow a sense that the
Oscars actually matter in any real way, and decide to end the stigma concerning
‘genre films’ and how they mostly get relegated to the special effects
categories in terms of nominations, you’d be hard-pressed to find two better
pieces of evidence than those.
Since the cyclical nature of cinema releases
means that quite a few of 2014’s releases are getting follow-ups this year, I’m
definitely curious to see if this film is able to live up to the series
standard thus far. What I was not expecting, even from these filmmakers, was a
result that manages to outdo the previous installments. How is that even
possible? Well, let’s take a look.
The plot: Two years after the events of Dawn, Caesar (Andy
Serkis) and his tribe of genetically-enhanced apes are still trying to leave a
peaceful existence. However, in the wake of an attack by human military troop
Alpha-Omega, led by the genocidal Colonel (Woody Harrelson), Caesar’s patience
has run out. He sets out to find the Colonel and get revenge for what he did,
but as his mission carries on, he fears that he has become the very thing that he has spent so long fighting against.
Serkis retains his place as the king of mo-cap, furthering
Caesar’s well-intentioned quest for peace by emphasizing just how much his
fight has worn him down over time. Karin Konoval furthers Maurice’s stance as
Caesar’s moral compass, resulting in some very powerful exchanges between them,
and his new position as the child’s guardian gives her more to do within the
plot; this will never not be a good thing, especially with characters this
well-defined. Speaking of the child, Amiah Miller’s place as the token human of
the main group not only works amazingly well alongside the apes, but her
presence ends up serving as a hopeful but no less grim reminder of how far her
own species has fallen since the Simian flu outbreak.
Terry Notary, while being
saddled with a rather unfortunate bit of bodily humour (I’m surprised it took
this long for more traditional ape poop-flinging to be featured, but then
again, I honestly hoped it just wouldn’t), fits nicely in the main group as the
main muscle Rocket, same with Adamthwaite as Luca. Harrelson, in absolute
contrast to his warm and inviting demeanour from back in The Edge Of Seventeen,
manages to create a new high point in a series full of complex antagonists,
playing the ‘God complex’ card in a way that is at once horrifying and horrifyingly
understandable. If there’s a weak point in the cast list, it’s most definitely
Steve Zahn as Bad Ape; honestly, Zahn being cast in this role makes way too
much sense in hindsight, given his character serves as the comic relief in a
film that in no way whatsoever needed comedic levity. Well, at least not to
this extent.
Whenever I mention Weta Digital in relation to a film I'm
reviewing, it always involves me gushing like a broken faucet over how good their
work is. So it comes as a surprise, to me at least, that this might serve as
the single best showcasing of their work to date. I actively had to keep
reminding myself that the apes we are seeing are rendered in CGI because the
texture quality here is astoundingly real and tangible. With how much computer
graphics are used to create the worlds depicted in film and elsewhere, the
feeling that what is on screen isn’t actually there is a common problem. Very
rarely are filmmakers able to use that technology to the effect of being as
close to reality as it is possible to get, and even though there are a couple
of shots where the use of computers is rather obvious, that’s precisely what we
get here.
That sense of realism is aided by the motion-capture work of the
cast, who basically communicate just about everything they need to with barely
any dialogue. Sure, Caesar gets a few speeches to deliver (and Serkis does so
incredibly well), but most of the character progression we get is through
gesture and subtitling. With how language get played around with by the cast as
a whole, whom all have differing capabilities in terms of communicating with
others, this approach ends up doing magical things for the overall production.
To be fair, quite a bit of the real emotional connection that this approach
brings is aided by Michael Giacchino’s compositions, which hit at just the
right moments to make the already extremely heavy scenes bring serious tears to
the audiences’ eyes.
Despite their shared titles, the previous two Apes movies
were told through the perspective of the humans. Rise was about Will’s initial
experiments that led to the Simian flu pandemic, with his connection to Caesar
being given prominence; Dawn, likewise, was Malcolm’s story of trying to
connect with Caesar’s tribe and prevent war from breaking. This time around, it
is almost exclusively Caesar’s story and there’s quite a story to be told here.
Over the seventeen in-universe years that Caesar has been alive, he has
suffered at the hands of humans… and yet, he still clings onto some hope that
his tribe and the surviving humans could co-exist.
However, once the conflict
becomes all too personal for him, even that goal seems to fall away from him.
He’s driven to the point that Koba did back with Dawn in how human treatment
has turned him into a vengeful creature, something brought home by how Koba’s
own words come back to haunt him in a couple of harrowing moments. Even for a
trilogy that contains quite a few moral complexities, seeing Caesar fear of
what he is turning into might be one of the more layered characterizations I’ve
seen yet this year, and will likely ever
see this year. Just as the Colonel’s role in the main conflict is set but still
allows for genuine (for lack of a better term) humanity, Caesar’s internal
conflict between his want for his tribe to survive and his thirst for revenge
for what was done to him shows a sense of reality that not many films these
days, not even those outside of the SF umbrella, have been able to touch.
This series so far has always been riddled with numerous
thematic elements: Oppression of minorities, the hubris of humanity, the best
of intentions leading to the worst of outcomes, and that’s just for starters.
The big theme of these films though, something brought right into the
foreground in this installment, is humanity’s connection to nature. Nature, to
put it simply, kind of gipped us as humans. We don’t have genetic defences that
are designed against environmental aggressors (at least not to the extent of being literal poison so that nothing will try and eat us), no wings, no extra appendages;
all we have is our creativity. With that, humanity shaped the world to better
suit it, often by warping the natural order in ways that have unseen and wide-reaching
consequences. While this series can be rather on-the-nose with its messages,
and this film unfortunately isn’t an exception to that, the way nature plays
into the actions of the humans in the story makes for rather fascinating ideas.
Well, fascinating might not be the correct word; terrifying might be more apt.
After we see why the Colonel is waging the war that he is, injecting some
religious zealotry and possibly even some contemporary political commentary
into the already-viscous mixture, we see that humanity’s actions against nature
have gone too far and are somehow going even further. The last remnants of
humanity, represented by both the Colonel’s Alpha-Omega squadron as well as
another army force that turns up during the climax, are so scared of their own
annihilation that they are even willing to destroy each other in a vain hope to
prevent it from happening. If humanity has reached the point where it doesn’t
even view its own life as worth preserving (something echoed through Caesar’s
bubbling prejudices), then quite frankly, humanity doesn’t deserve to survive.
Then again, the title clearly states that this is a War For The Planet Of The Apes, not ‘Of’; this planet isn’t ours
anymore, nor should it be if this is what we’re reduced to.
All in all, this is a heart-rending and incredibly fitting end
to a trilogy of great films. The acting is fantastic, even if not all of the
characters we see are entirely necessary, the effects work is among the best I
have ever seen (this ranks up there
alongside T2: Judgment Day in terms of the heights that CGI can reach on film,
far as I’m concerned) and the writing furthers the nigh-on-Shakespearean
touches from Dawn to deliver statements on human nature that are terrifying but
also frankly honest.
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