I’m wondering if every horrendous Tim Burton reboot will eventually get another attempt and result in a good franchise like Apes. Probably not since all the others had little to go on beyond their original flicks.
Anyway, the same team behind the rather good Rise do-over for 1972’s Conquest is reunited to tell the next chapter in the Apes saga ten years after the pandemic has decimated the human race. During the opening credits you see the virus spread via passenger planes followed by outbreaks then civil unrest, unnatural disasters (at least one nuclear reactor meltdown) and human civilizations collapse until there’s only one survivor for every 500 killed (theoretically 15 million people remain).
Meanwhile the apes who escaped into the Muir Woods have flourished and are ruled by Caesar. His lieutenants Rocket, Maurice and Koba remain by his side but they also have spouses and offspring: Cornelia, Blue Eyes and Alexander. Humans are becoming a distant memory because nobody has spotted one in two years. Caesar figures they’ve destroyed themselves which he sees as a great pity.
Seems the apes’ ears were burning!
Alexander and Blue Eyes stumble upon a wandering human. Unlike past encounters, he’s in good shape, well equipped…and armed as he panics, wounds Alexander. This leads to several tense standoffs: Humans v. Apes obviously; Caesar v. Koba about what’s the next move; Malcolm (the human engineer) v. Dreyfus (the human leader) because the damned monkey leader can speak! A quick minor spoiler over the last conflict. West of the Muir Woods are the ruins of San Francisco where an ex-soldier named Dreyfus (the incomparable Gary Oldman!) presides as the de facto mayor. The struggling colony has managed to hold it together yet it will run out of fuel in two to three weeks. Malcolm is in charge of getting a nearby dam functioning which makes him the ape-appeaser who thinks Caesar can be reasoned with if the humans are honest.
There wouldn’t be any movie if either side didn’t re-enact the current Gaza debacle times a thousand. I loved it though. Dreyfus isn’t a two-dimensional villain, he’s just doing what someone like him would naturally do as the human leader, defend the settlement when everything hits the fan. Caesar also tries to be a wise, thoughtful leader as he tries to keep the ‘hawks’ Koba, Blue Eyes and Rocket restrained. He understands their mistrust of humans but he knows they’re not all are evil plus a war will lead to needless deaths on both sides.
Dawn definitely lived up to my expectations in nailing the spot as the best movie for the Summer of 2014 (from May thru August is my definition). Not just due the other entries being weak, Dawn was well executed even if Godzilla, Amazing 2 or X-Men:DFP were stronger. Sure there were several key McGuffins undertaken to make the inevitable fight happen; I tend to hold low expectations of humans too. The story was a decent balance of drama and action which surprised me, usually this type of film is released during the doldrums.
I do have one major complaint, it isn’t a dealbreaker though. With the exception of Gary Oldman, all the CG-based characters are more expressive than the “real” actors, namely Keri Russell, the poor-man’s Olivia “Wood” Wilde. Sure, Andy Serkis is the Laurence Olivier of the motion-capture suit but the human cats had no excuse.
Overall, Dawn like Rise has earned the right to replace the next chapter in this dark future will unfold. Dawn goes where (or when?) Battle for the Planet of the Apes once stood. Now what’s next? Another installment illustrating how the apes took over and subjugated the humans, say a century or two after Dawn or do we jump ahead millennia like the original Planet? Fingers crossed for either in a couple years.
Alamo Extras: Again, we were too late to catch anything extensive. A CG gorilla batting in a Korean baseball game and a Japanese chimp playing T-ball was all I remember. I was hoping for clips from the original movies and short-lived TV shows (live action, cartoon).