REVIEW: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! God damn you all to hell!

Sorry, I had to get that out of my system. The Planet of the Apes franchise doesn’t perhaps have quite the reputation it deserves. The 1968 original is most well known for a few ridiculously bombastic Charlton Heston quotes, excellent make-up and a twist that was probably absolutely staggering if you didn’t already know about it, but unfortunately much like The Sixth Sense, everybody fucking knows now. The thing is, the original and the better sequels actually represent a kind of ‘political fantasy’, they were some of the first sci-fi films to explore the idea of a society different from our own, something that might have had parallels with humanity but wasn’t a proxy for it. 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes certainly followed that ethos, asking how apes would react to their own treatment, were they granted with heightened intelligence. It was a great, if flawed film with probably the best motion-capture CGI in a film to date. Most importantly though it set the table for a whole new chapter to a franchise that still has a lot to give, provided Tim Burton never gets near it again.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes picks up around a decade after the previous film, the apes that banded together and fought their way out of San Fransisco at the end of Rise have formed a secluded, prospering community in Muir Woods, not far from the city. Caesar (Andy Serkis) is still very much in command, having raised a family in the interim. Humanity meanwhile has been shattered in the wake of ‘Simian Flu’, birthed by the agent that made the apes smarter in the first place. At the point which the film starts the apes haven’t seen a human for years and we don’t see one for the first 20 minutes or so, but the moment we do things start going awry. As it turns out a small community of survivors are trying to bed down in the abandoned city below the forest and the apes are nestled right between them and valuable resources. Caesar is sympathetic, but his abused, disturbed subordinate Koba (Toby Kebbell) is a tad less trusting. Hijinks ensue.

It’s not a simple, dogmatic ‘apes versus humans’ tale in any regard. There’s right and wrong on both sides and whilst the morals aren’t particularly difficult to untangle, the issues they highlight are as real and striking as the computer generated primates. Wisely, the bulk of the action stays on the apish side of things, the human characters are reasonably well written and their actions are consequential but they are doubtlessly the supporting cast, the plight of the apes is the central concern. It’s a real testament to the quality of both the script and the production that you can have a film which spends 75% of its runtime following the exploits of apes without ever seeming silly or cartoonish. It might seem like plenty of films are entirely about animal or alien characters but those are essentially just people in costumes, dead ringers for human characters. These are actual, genuine apes; their thought processing, movement, communication, everything. Balls to bones.

You’ll believe they’re actually in front of the camera, too. I’ve always championed practical effects over digital but when the motion capture effects are this good I have to make an exception. The Na’vi didn’t feel this real, Gollum didn’t feel this real, this is on a whole new level. There’s a scene at around the half-way point when Maurice, the orangutan, sits with a teenage boy and reads a graphic novel, the gloss of his eyes, the way his fur is slicked and matted with rainwater, the way he carries himself, I was sat there gaping. Who actually gapes? I must have looked like a moron.

Director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In) wisely made the decision to shoot the bulk of this one on location, shooting the mo-cap artists acting out their scenes in the exact same environments you see in the film, a decision which makes the film that much more tactile. You can almost smell the moisture in the air as you watch the apes hurl themselves between branches after a herd of deer during the ludicrously awesome opening. The action is sensibly spaced out between longer sections favoring ape/human diplomacy and double-dealing that retain a consistent sense of tension. With dissenting parties on both sides, any interaction stands on a knife edge and when things do start going wrong (very, very wrong) you can’t look away. This film feels exactly as big as it’s trying to be, it has weight, it stays with you long after the credits have rolled, a rarity for a summer blockbuster.

It’s really nice to see a film with such a well-defined aesthetic, from the superb music (Michael Giacchino, of LOST fame), to the post-apocalyptic production design to the effects, Dawn is its own entity. Granted, the characters do feel like they’re going through the motions or adhering to archetypes at times, but they remain compelling despite the plot sometimes falling on the wrong side of predictable. It’s a tightly woven story with not so much as a second wasted and a flagship example of ‘show-don’t-tell’ scripting, allowing plenty of room for audience interpretation. Perhaps the best thing about Dawn of the Planet of the Apes though is just how much more mileage the franchise has left in it. Reeves has already signed to direct another one. It’s been a while since a film like this has left me feeling so excited for the future. There is just one thing niggling at me though, where the hell was Dr. Zaius!?