War for the Planet of the Apes

• Directed by Matt Reeves
• July 10, 2017 (SVA Theatre) / July 14, 2017 (US)
• Based on characters created by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver and premises from the 1963 book Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle

The conflict between apes and humans has escalated into full war as Caesar sets out to get revenge.

Mostly I was okay with the preceding Ape films. Good but not great because I hold most of the originals in high regard. We won’t talk about Battle for the Planet of the Apes. However this is far and away a step above its predecessors. There is much more substance to this movie than the other two. War for the Planet of the Apes contains a truly collapsed human civilization with the apes ascending but not yet secure as the dominant species. The apes are certainly in a better position to survive and rise but it wouldn’t take much for the humans to undo all that security. Both sides are in a very precarious position.

Caesar (Andy Serkis) is fighting a war he never wanted while a mad colonel (a menacing Woody Harrelson) is seeking revenge and victory and focusing all that during his initial introduction on this group of apes. You even have elements in the form of apes who aid the humans out of vengeance or some misguided belief of protection. That is reminiscent of any war where one side clearly desires to wipe out the other and some people are stupid enough to think if they’re just nice enough to the exterminators they will be okay. War even touches on themes of revenge and guilt and even deciding what side you are on. Do you stand on the side of evil just for the sake of revenge? Or do you do the right thing even if it’s not what you want?

Rather than simply being a leader Caesar has grown into an ape of his people. A man of the people if you will. He feels for them and understands them and cares for them. He can relate because he does not stand apart from their struggles. He hears their concerns and wants to take care of them, but when he cannot he tries to communicate that he has heard them.

All this against the backdrop of a new virus variant which takes away the ability to speak and quite possibly higher intelligence from humans. It’s first encountered with a young girl, but other examples quickly follow.

Perhaps the best new character is Bad Ape (Steve Zahn) who is also one of the few ape characters to actually speak. In the story he’s that isolated character that is discovered but because of the long isolation has probably gone a little loopy. Bad Ape is not comic loopy but damaged and sympathetic. That connects to how this is treated as a whole which is serious. There are brief moments of action, but War is more a drama than it is an action film.

The characters are incredibly complex here. From Bad Ape to Caesar to Maurice (Karin Konoval) to even the ones who foolishly side with the humans all have a level of complexity. You get a sense of their hopes and dreams along with distinct personalities which helps since sign language is their dominant form of communication thus eliminating the ability to distinguish a character based on voice alone. Even Woody Harrelson’s character of The Colonel ultimately has more motivation than simply killing apes. It focuses much more on the characters and the situation than it does giving us a big ending. It crafts a story rather than crafting something to give us big action before the credits.

There is always something happening in every minute of this movie. Each scene and each line of dialogue moves the story forward. Maybe it’s because there is a great deal of CGI so they couldn’t have characters (which would probably be CGI) standing around and expounding on random point this week. And it moves so smoothly that you don’t feel like this is two hours. At no point does this drag or slow up.

I’m a little lost on exactly what happened to the civilian survivors in San Francisco. I don’t recall it being covered in the opening text nor mentioned by any single character. Are they still alive? Having survived the Simian Flu were they taken out by the Dumb Flu? Or were they at the military base where The Colonel’s opposition was coming from? Not sure.

If there was one serious complaint it’s the ending. Yes it’s a big explosion ending but it’s not that it is big explosion ending. It’s that the potential of the other group of humans is dealt with by an avalanche. It is a happy ending for the ape characters, but so could Caesar sneaking off and simply watching them cheer over victory that he knew was ultimately meaningless because of the Dumb Flu. That would have been happy too. Such an outcome was implied by the conversion of The Colonel into a non-speaking individual. When you have a character that believes they are untouchable get touched by whatever that says anybody/everybody is game. That includes nameless cogs that show up in the end regardless of their numbers.

War for the Planet of the Apes is a fantastic conclusion to a reboot of a great concept. And while the original series did not end on a high note, this version of the concept most certainly did. For moviegoers and film fans of all stripes, this is certainly worth viewing!