When it was announced that a Planet of the Apes reboot called Rise of the Planet of the Apes was going to be released in 2011, movie fans all over the world were instantly up in arms. The reason the project was so unwelcome was equal parts how beloved the original film from 1968 was and how reviled the first attempt to reboot the franchise in 2001 was. Did we really need another reboot when people still happily watched the original film and the first attempt at a new franchise had become all but forgotten over time? It didn’t seem like it, but a funny thing happened when Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes turned out to be a lot better than anyone anticipated—suddenly there was desire for a sequel. After it was announced that Wyatt wouldn’t be returning for the next film, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, we were all right back where we started though—dreading another Planet of the Apes movie. Well, now a funny thing has happened again. Matt Reeves (Let Me In) took over the Dawn directing duties from Wyatt, and he’s made a Planet of the Apes movie that’s even better than Rise was. What a world we live in.
The film opens with an artful montage sequence that fills us in on all of the things that have taken place in the years between the events of Rise and where we are now. The basic gist of it is that most of the human population has been killed off by the nasty virus that was created in the first film, governments have collapsed, and the only survivors are people who were genetically immune to the disease and who now live in isolated communities. On the other end of the spectrum, Caesar (Andy Serkis) and his ape friends have been thriving in the redwood forests north of San Francisco. Their numbers have swelled, they’ve gotten more educated, more organized, and they even live in a giant treehouse village that’s pretty much the coolest thing this side of the Swiss Family Robinson. Conflict bubbles up when the last surviving members of the San Francisco population attempt to restore power to what’s left of their city by reactivating a dam that exists adjacent to the ape community. Both parties come face to face, tempers flare, and the question of whether the two species can coexist or if war between them is inevitable get raised.
Of course, this being a big action movie, you’ve probably already guessed that war is indeed inevitable; but what makes Dawn of the Planet of the Apes such a great movie is that it doesn’t glorify the war and make the destruction of the battle sequences the main attraction. Much to the contrary, the main point of the film seems to be to get you to empathize with both parties completely, and then to make the sequences where they do harm to each other as tension-filled and traumatic as possible. It’s a strategy that not only allows Reeve’s film to stand apart from the usual pack of destruction-obsessed summer movies we’ve been getting in recent years, it also allows it to be smarter, better, and more fun to watch.
The fun starts in the first act of the film, where most of the time gets spent on introducing us to the ape community and letting us get to know the various personalities that call it home. The combination of motion capture of real actors and CG animation layered over it used to bring these apes to life is seamless, totally believable, and it results in ape characters who are just fascinating to watch as they interact with each other and the world around them. Probably this movie could have just been a faux nature documentary exploring the newly formed smartape culture and it still would have managed to be entertaining all of the way through, action scenarios be damned.
What’s truly amazing about the creation of the ape characters is how distinct they become though—how many of them you can pick them out of an ape crowd (even if sometimes it’s because of a visual shortcut that gets provided), how many you can name, and how many you feel like you know by the end of the movie. These are hair-covered creatures who rarely speak out loud, but they’re so well established and so well-developed that you know what their motivations are and you know how they relate to each other. You can see the bonds that exist between them as well as the rifts that eventually form. In the end, you end up in a position where you remember the ape characters more clearly than you remember any of the human characters, who get an equal amount of screen time and also talk and are, you know, not completely covered in hair. That’s crazy.
That’s not to say that none of the human characters are memorable though. Jason Clarke and Keri Russell play the film’s main human protagonists, a romantic couple who are put in charge of the expedition to go get the dam back up to operational status, and they’re both such sympathetic screen presences that you can’t help but root for them, even when they’re put next to ape counterparts who are more interesting. The apes are so compelling here that there was a real danger the audience would root for them completely and not care much when human lives were put in danger, but Clarke and Russell are so likable and genuinely warm while representing the good side of human nature that no such thing happens. In a way, they end up saving the movie from mediocrity.
Special mention should also be made of Gary Oldman, who gets a fairly underdeveloped and thankless role as the itchy trigger finger leader of the San Francisco colony. This is a character who could have ended up looking like a caricature, or even worse a device to set the plot in motion, but Oldman burns so many calories acting the shit out of every scene he’s given that you not only buy his character as a real human being, you’re also able to empathize with him as a person who’s doing what he thinks is best for everyone. In a way, he also ends up saving the movie from mediocrity.
What’s in no way mediocre are those ape characters though, if we can go back to them for a moment. There’s really no surprise that Serkis is great at bringing Caesar to life. He’s so good playing these motion captured characters that it’s inevitable a new acting category for them is going to have to be created at the various movie award shows, and this is the best work he’s done to date. What might come as a bit of a surprise though is how good Toby Kebbell is as his ape counterpart, Koba, who eventually becomes something of an antagonist in the film. He’s at times terrifying, at times hilarious, but always believable, and he’s more than able to keep up with Serkis whenever they’re sharing scenes together. This role is likely to get him attention and earn him some future jobs, digital ape makeup obscuring his face or not.
If the movie succeeds because of its focus on character, then the one place where it falters is when the action actually does come to the forefront and becomes the main thing that the audience is supposed to be focusing on. It’s not that the scene isn’t spectacular, because it is—with a point of view shot that follows an ape onto a tank that then sits still while he kills everyone inside of it being particularly spectacular—it’s just that the sequence is so big and so over the top that it makes the energy the film is building climax before the actual storytelling is done. What comes next feels like an extended denouement, and it takes a bit of time for the narrative to be able to build enough momentum back up to the real climax. By modern standards, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ 130 minute run time isn’t really too extravagant, but because of the misstep in pacing you end up feeling every second of it.
Still, missteps aside, it’s amazing how good this movie is, considering that it’s the eighth Planet of the Apes film that’s been made. How many other franchises are there that have gotten this far and can still produce quality? The original Planet of the Apes was basically the high water mark for the intelligent, risk-taking science fiction of its era, and while Dawn can’t quite be as subversive, seeing as it’s now a commercial venture that’s attempting to cash in big on an established brand, it still manages to do the original proud when it comes to being intelligent and leaving its audience with plenty to chew on after the end credits roll. This is an epic story—fall of kingdoms and fall of man type stuff. We’re given complex characters and then we watch as they’re given complex decisions to make. Some prove their goodness, and others fall into villainy. It’s drama worthy of standing next its Shakespeare influences and all of the other classic stage stuff to boot, and it should be the template for a whole host of future summer movies going forward.
