I promised a spoiler review for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes at the end of my spoiler-free review so here we are. Only read this review if you have seen the movie as you will find heavy spoilers for the film and I don't want to be responsible for ruining the film for you. You have been warned!
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is my favourite movie of the year so far and is honestly one of the best I have ever seen. I was so heavily engrossed in everything that was going on, and the emotion and tension at the film's core was immensely powerful to me. I honestly cried on 2 occasions and, perhaps more embarrassingly, jumped out of my skin on a few occasions. I was honestly so involved in the movie and simple transitions between scenes, from a moment with the apes to a human firing a gun, made me jump!
The film begins with a series of news casts and snippets from interviews from famous people and it explains about how the simian flu wiped out the human race and for the years after that the endangered human species began to fight amongst each other in order to survive in a post apocalyptic world, run by the apes.
The first 15 minutes of the film is all about the apes as we get to meet up with Caesar again and get emotionally attached to Caesar's tribe. We learn that Caesar is the dominant leader of the group because all the other apes, including Koba, seriously respect him. We also get to learn a little bit about how he has a son, a new-born child and a wife. We learn more about the ape culture for example how they hunt deer in groups from the tree tops and their code of conduct, which includes very strict rules such as "apes together strong" and "ape not kill ape".
And there's something I wanted to mention here which I couldn't in my spoiler-free review which concerns how the apes are only just stringing together sentences. To me it would've been unrealistic if the apes could talk perfect English like they do in the later Planet of the Apes film.
The tension in the first and second act of the movie all happens due to the relationship between the apes and the humans. The humans are living in a dire situation where they're 2 weeks away from relinquishing all of their power. They are bottle necked in this one tower in San Francisco and are, as you would expect, living in fear of the apes who now dominate the planet. And you can hardly blame them considering their 10 years of struggle!
It really begins when that one guy (who I think was in The Walking Dead at one stage?) shoots an ape at point blank range. Obviously Caesar and his apes come rushing down to see what has happened and we get our first stand off between the apes and our group of humans. My favourite part about that scene was where one human said "they're just apes", and Malcolm (Jason Clarke's character) says "do they look like just apes to you?".
Caesar basically says for them to leave and marches on the human stronghold and says "apes don't want war, but will fight if we must", and simply leaves. What I loved about the film was that there were so many shades of grey. Gary Oldman wants to attack the apes and you can hardly blame him! After all, he did lose his family during the outbreak of the simian flu. Koba the ape wants to attack the humans and you can hardly blame him! After all, he was tortured by humans before the flu outbreak.
Malcolm, the human protagonist, and his family then decide that they have to go back to the apes stronghold as the humans need the power from a nearby dam to survive, however the only way through is past Caesar and his apes. This does bring for some extreme moments of tension but Caesar shows his compassionate side by helping the humans. Meanwhile, all of the memories of being tortured by humans is flooding back to Koba, and his relationship with Caesar starts to go south.
That one scene in the boiler room again highlighted Caesar's compassion, but also his brute strength, as he basically beats Koba and has his hands around his neck ready to strangle him. He yields because "ape not kill ape". Koba then proves that not all apes are better than humans by travelling to the human stronghold. The one scene where he is pretending to be silly with those 2 humans before taking their guns and shooting them was just as epic as it was in the trailer. My friend sitting next to me hadn't seen the trailer. Yeah.. you can imagine how that went down!
Koba then comes back to the ape camp, sets it on fire and shoots Caesar and I honestly thought Caesar was gone, dead. He falls all the way down the hillside as Koba blames the humans for the actions which he had just done. This is why Koba is a dick and he needs to die! He then places a gun in the hand of the son of the man (sorry, the ape) he just murdered and orders him to march against the humans. What a dick! The orang-utan Maurice basically tells the humans to haul ass.
The apes then mount their horses and march against the humans, now with shot guns as weapons. The fighting then commences and both humans and apes are getting shot down and blown up. It's really violent and the action in the movie his very hard indeed. That one shot where Koba mounts the tank and takes out those guys while it was spinning around blew my mind! It left my jaw hanging! It was perhaps my favourite shot of the movie. The apes then start to round up the humans and put them in cages. This is also something I wanted to talk about but couldn't in my spoiler-free review and that is the fact that the themes woven into this movie have so much depth. My friend when we left the theatre said that that one scene reminded him of aspects of the holocaust, and I agreed with him. The movie tackles on more themes like power struggle and acceptance of other races and it really merits it because the script, characters and emotion in the film are just remarkable.
Meanwhile the fleeing humans find Caesar, take him back to his old house in San Francisco and operate on him. Caesar lives! Thank God for that! Caesar's son in the middle of the fighting decides that Koba just isn't all that great of an ape when he throws Ash over the edge of a balcony, after he decided not to beat a human to death. He then frees the apes loyal to Caesar and returns to his father.
When they all reunite the apes make a plan to stop Koba and Malcolm decides to follow them. But Malcolm ends up with Gary Oldman again, who plans to blow up the human stronghold. Malcolm understandably pulls a gun on him but Oldman decides to detonate! This in turn half destroys the tower. Now we get to the epic confrontation between Caesar and Koba. The ape who once respected his leader has turned to wanting to kill him all because of an inherited hatred of humans. Caesar doesn't have this as he has experienced the good humans can do. Caesar wins the fight and Koba is hanging off the edge.
"Ape not kill Ape" - Koba. "You are not Ape" - Caesar. Caesar pulls Koba up and lets him go. Koba then entangles himself in some wire, falls onto a crane which then folds in on itself and falls to his death. Koba is dead at last. All hail Caesar! That is my favourite moment of the film by far as it was so goddamn satisfying.
The movie basically ends with Caesar back with his tribe and Malcolm one last time. Malcolm then disappears as the military, who the humans in the stronghold contacted earlier, are on their way. The film ends in the same way in which it began, with an extreme close up of Caesar's face.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is one spectacular film and is what a summer blockbuster should be; enthralling, intelligent and entertaining. The action is breathtaking, the CGI amongst the best ever, and the emotion you get from this movie is as powerful as any other film I've seen. I want to see it again very soon, and I will pick it up the day it comes out on blu-ray.
Thanks for reading,
Matt
No comments:
Post a Comment