The reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise has proved something of an unexpected success story.
Set as 21st century prequels to the classic Charles Bronson sci-fi of the late 1960's (a remake of which is expected to follow this in two years time), the first film proved a critical and commercial success, which led to the arrival of this sequel.
The second film is oddly titled, given that Rise of the Planet of the Apes could equally be a title attributed to this one as well as Dawn, but instead this film takes the second moniker.
Title quibbles aside, the film begins in the same way the last one ended - by tracing the spread of a humanity-killing virus, nicknamed here as "Simian flu" from a research lab in San Francisco to civilisation killer, with airplanes the carriers and doomy news footage filing through until the lights go out on Earth.
This has left the human race in tatters, with expertly realised renderings of an abandoned San Francisco as the world clocks up to ten years following the virus' outbreak in 2018. But the film is less about the humans and moreso about the ape community, who were last seen fleeing their laboratory and conservation confines for woodland north of the Golden Gate Bridge, which for once was not fully destroyed in a sci-fi movie.
The apes have grown in numbers and have established their own community of over 2,000 apes in woods north of San Francisco, which allows the film to show off its arsenal of motion-capture technology. This is primarily led by go-to motion capture man Andy Serkis, who plays the apes' leader Caesar.
The impressive computer graphic realisation of the creatures even to the individually wet furs in the rain makes it seem almost like a post-human nature documentary. There is a clearly structured community perched in the middle of the forest, with even rudimentary education systems set up, while the intelligent apes now have battle plans, rudimentary language and even a morale code of conduct not to kill other apes.
It all seems idyllic for them, and almost as if they really are alone. So when a small band of humans walks in on two apes hunting for their tribe, it leads both sides to surprise and with it an unfolding chain of events.
The chain of events quickly leads to the apes contemplating an early invasion of San Francisco, where they reach the human compound and tell them not to come back.
The now-verbal Caesar is not cornily given pages and pages of dialogue, but is developing a nicely blunt, sketchy vocal tone with authority to it. By contrast, his second in command Koba (Toby Kebbell) is not so keen on the new human visitors, although the fact he spent most of his life in a research lab would explain why.
This stand-off within the ape community is exacerbated when a former power engineer called Malcolm (Jason Clarke) is sent back into the ape side of the Golden Gate strait. Near the ape compound lurks a hydro-electric dam, with the humans hoping to use it to provide electricity to San Francisco as a replacement for their finite diesel power.
Malcolm is sent back by command of the human leader Dreyfus (Gary Oldman), who takes the inverse position of Koba - that the apes are the untrustworthy side. Dreyfus is certainly cunningly malicious, but far too little is really done with his part.
In truth, barring Malcolm, not a lot is really done with the humans outright and one of the film's primary criticisms is that the humans are really underwritten and under-deployed. We do get a glimpse of their community in what appears to be an abandoned shopping centre at the bottom of a half-finished skyscraper in the middle of downtown San Francisco, and that they all have an immunity to the virus that claimed the lives of so many others, but that's about it. If anything, this is a film being made primarily more about the power struggle within a community of CG apes.
It also, as noted by other critics, sidelines its female characters of both species to cardboard cut-out roles of mothers and medics, which is something for number three to improve upon. By contrast, it is all males that are involved with the political plotting and the vengeful outbursts that characterise this movie.
The political plotting as it is comes in a very well crafted way that almost feels like a satire on contemporary diplomacy. There's even a very well baited use of gun control politics and the "false flag" principle so beloved of conspiracy theorists, with very ugly results for the characters on the screen.
Those ugly results are naturally the big battle between humans and apes that people presumably paid their ticket fees for, and the resulting showdown at the gates of the human's compound are beautifully realised. There's even one impressive sequence where Koba steals a tank, which is played on screen with focus on the battle for control of the tank while the world spins around the rudderless war machine's rotating turret.
Throughout, the film's look is always very superbly realised, and for once doesn't provide CGI fatigue, as many other recent films (i.e. Transformers) have provided. It also has impressive emotional layers, depth and motivation to the apes on screen, although enhancement of that is best layered if you had seen the previous movie.
As an exercise of film making in 2014, it is a very well realised piece and a welcome continuation of one of film's favourite franchises. Next step, naturally, is presumably the 21st century realising of the moment that made the film such a beloved franchise in days of yore
4/5
No comments:
Post a Comment