Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
With the newest entries of the “Planet of the Apes” franchise, we are witnessing the best of what the notion of a “reboot” can be. Rather than simply telling the same damn, dirty stories over and over, the filmmakers behind the new “Apes” films (namely, writers Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver, and actor Andy Serkis) are breathing new life into the series by returning it to a place for “hard” science-fiction ideas blended, in the best way, with blockbuster sensibilities. While 2011’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” was a great surprise after the narrative dead end that was Tim Burton’s 2001 “Apes” film, “Dawn” is a film people see coming a mile away, which brings a different sort of expectations. The big question is whether director Matt Reeves (“Cloverfield,” “Let Me In”) can deliver.
In my opinion, he does. As you can tell by his previous films, Reeves is a filmmaker that isn’t really tied down to a particular sort of film– he’s less an iconoclast and more of a hired hand, a director who doesn’t have a particular style or vision he brings to the table, but is a solid shooter who can nonetheless create an immersive world on-screen. (He would have thrived during the old studio system during the ’40s and ’50s.) In that respect, he’s very much a throwback to the directors who made the original “Apes” films in the ’60s and ’70s, people who (with the possible exception of Franklin J. Schaffner, who directed the first “Apes” movie, and won an Oscar later with “Patton”) weren’t really well-known for anything beyond their entries in the “Apes” franchise. The important thing is that he is able to realize the ideas on the pages of Jaffa and Silver’s script (this time co-written by Mark Bomback), and deliver on expanding on the cutting edge visuals WETA Digital created in “Rise.” He succeeds on both fronts.
The film takes place 10 years after the events in “Rise,” when the majority of the human population has been wiped out by what has been called “Simian Flu,” the disease that we first saw begin to spread when a researcher at the lab in “Rise” became infected, and died. Humanity is in the midst of a new Dark Ages, and struggling to survive. Although a worldwide pandemic, our attention is focused around San Francisco (where “Rise” took place), where a collective of humans (who are genetically immune to the disease) have carved out something of a life for themselves, but are hoping to make contact with any other survivors by restoring electricity if they can get a nearby dam/former nuclear reactor going. To get there, though, means going through the forest, where Caesar (the chimpanzee from the first film, whose exposure to a drug to cure Alzheimer’s lead to superior intelligence) has set up an Ape City with structure and education available, allowing for a further evolution of the intellect Caesar began sharing in “Rise.” Having not seen a human in two years, Caesar and his most trusted advisors (Maurice and Koba) wonder whether humanity is gone. A chance encounter with one band of humans (including Malcolm and Ellie, the characters played by Jason Clarke and Keri Russell) going to the nuclear reactor, however, leads to tensions that could mean war between man and ape.
If “Rise” found some inspiration in the stories for “Escape From the Planet of the Apes” and “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” (the third and fourth films in the original franchise), “Dawn” takes more than a handful of inspiration from “Battle for the Planet of the Apes,” the film widely regarded as the “worst” of the original movies (although if you watch the Extended Version of “Battle” on the great Blu-Ray box set, you’ll see that a proper budget was the big thing missing from that film). It’s a smart move, because it allows for an introduction of Caesar’s motto from the original series, “Ape Shall Never Kill Ape” (which makes for some great tension between Caesar, who saw the best of humanity in his interactions with Will and his father from “Rise,” and Koba, who was abused by humans before Caesar set the apes free in “Rise”), as well as a glimpse of Caesar as a family man, although his wife (performed by Judy Greer, a huge “Apes” fan) is ill when we first meet her, and his eldest son Blue Eyes is having a hard time with his own identity. The scenes of the apes, and Ape City (arguably my favorite design of the location in the entire franchise), are where the film really delivers on the promise of “Rise,” and it’s a triumph of production design and visual detail that raises the bar WETA set itself in the first film. This is especially true in the visual effects and performance capture that brings the apes to life, with Serkis breathing further life and feeling into the role of Caesar that is unforgettable, and worthy of comparisons to the humanity Roddy McDowell brought to the character in “Conquest” and “Battle.” This isn’t a one-man show, though, as characters such as Maurice (played by Karin Konoval), Koba (Toby Kebbell), Ash (Larramie Doc Shaw) and Blue Eyes (Nick Thurston) are fleshed out and given definition that enhances the drama we’re watching on-screen. In particular, it’s the scenes between Caesar and Blue Eyes; Caesar and Maurice; Caesar and Koba; and Blue Eyes and Koba that bring the strongest moral questions in the film. Although Koba will become the villain of the film, he’s not a one-dimensional bad guy, because we understand where he’s coming from– he hates humans, and for good reason. As Caesar says, “From Humans… Koba Learned Hatred.” Caesar learned compassion and kindness, and try as he might, he is unable to prove to Koba that humans, for all their faults, are capable of such feeling. It would be an easier movie if there was a simple black-and-white moral at it’s core, but Silver, Jaffa, and Bomback are determined to make this count, and as he did in “Let Me In,” Reeves creates a real emotional experience out of what could be an ordinary, empty entertainment in lesser hands; that he does it with characters who lack the expanded vocabulary of humans says as much about the actors as it does Reeves’s ability to realize this story.
The big missteps in “Dawn’s” impact (and there aren’t many, because the overall strength of the narrative with Caesar is considerable) lay, not surprisingly, on the human side. With the exceptions of the first “Apes” and “Conquest,” the human characters have never been as interesting as the apes, and unfortunately, that’s the case with “Dawn.” My biggest complaint is how the post-apocalyptic look of San Francisco in this film looks like pretty much every other post-apocalyptic city, from “I Am Legend” to “Terminator: Salvation” to “The Hunger Games,” and it’s especially disappointing when put next to the visual inventiveness of this film’s Ape City. On the character side, there’s some solid work done by Clarke, Russell, and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Clarke’s son, and Gary Oldman (as a cop who has taken charge of the human population remaining in San Fran) and Kirk Acevedo (as Carver, a man who has a significant grudge against apes) do some fine acting, but there’s no one on the level of complexity and interest as Caesar or Koba on the human side of the story. That means that when the film is following humans exclusively, it slows down. Interactions between the apes and humans result in some of the film’s best scenes, such as when Caesar and Koba fight at the nuclear reactor, or when an injured Caesar takes Malcolm and Ellie to a significant place to hide out after war breaks out courtesy of Koba. Watching the way working alongside Serkis and the other actors playing apes brings out the best work from Clarke and Russell, in particular, makes one wish they didn’t try and create a large-scale conflict, and kept the tensions that result from men and apes interacting on a more personal level. Unfortunately, such are the demands of blockbuster filmmaking at times, even if it results in a lesser film.
To call “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” a “lesser film,” though, implies more problems than it really has. This is a rousing entertainment and another step forward for visual effects and performance in movie history. Just like John Chambers changed filmmaking with his makeup effects in the original “Apes” movies, WETA is doing the same in these new films, and the results have been films that are emotionally engaging in a way I don’t know that many people would have expected as digital effects began to take over the industry 20 years ago. For that, you can thank the writers and actors, without whom, movies would be pretty damn boring.
