What I thought of: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

So just yesterday I went to see the long awaited sequel to the Rise of the Planet of the Apes. If you don’t know, this is a part of a sort of remake of the whole series, with Planet of the Apes being the first one (astronauts travel forward in time to find apes have taken over the earth), Rise of the Planet of the Apes being the second one (backstory to how the apes became intelligent and how most of humanity died), and the third one being Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Needless to say, the two earlier movies were very, very entertaining to watch, and even posed some very good questions to the viewer such as “What separates a companion and a pet?”.  But can the latest movie in the series hold up this standard?

Yes. It definitely can.

To start off, the visuals of the movie are amazing. The body language of the apes looks very natural, and the images of San Francisco’s suburbs taken over by the forest are very believable. Throughout the movie you get a clear sense of presence, and you rarely get confused about where everything is happening. This sense of presence goes so far that I honestly think that I could probably draw a map of the movie locations off the top of my head. The reason you will not see one below is that I am horrible at drawing and also because I can’t be bothered.

Probably the worst part of the movie were main human characters. Very bland, I can’t even recall their names now. For some reason it feels like all the actually interesting human characters were kind of pushed to the side and didn’t get nearly enough screen time. With the humans being so bland, the focus of the film’s drama side turns to the apes. The apes are amazingly well done. Every single ape shown seems to have their own character, and the movie draws heavily on the backstories that were established in the earlier movie; Koba (Chimpanzee), who was used as a test subject by humans in the earlier movie carries a deep hatred that eventually leads him to war. Maurice (Orangutang) and Rocket (Chimpanzee) were held in a primate sanctuary where one of the keepers teased them for fun. Although they aren’t exactly fond of the humans either, they still follow Caesar (Chimpanzee) since he was the one who lead them out to freedom.

The story was fairly good as well, even though it did have some flaws. I’m not going to touch on it too deeply, but at its best it created an attachment between the viewer and Caesar’s son by comparing his experiences with one of the teenage humans’ experiences. At its worst, the story focused on some asshole who had a gun with him when he shouldn’t have, creating a random extra scene that the movie would’ve been fine without.

Final verdict: Go see this movie as soon as you can! (of course, remember to watch Planet of the Apes and Rise of the Planet of the Apes first)

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on IMDB: www.imdb.com/title/tt2103281/

How'd you like the movie? Share your thoughts below!