A stunning victory.
In one of the more unexpected Hollywood developments in recent years, 20th Century Fox’s dusty old Planet of the Apes series has blossomed once again as a viable big-screen franchise. Even more unexpectedly, with War for the Planet of the Apes it has now turned out to be perhaps the best big-budget trilogy we’ve gotten in some time. To use the parlance of main character Caesar: Apes together strong indeed.
As with its immediate predecessor, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, it’s War’s focus on Caesar and his fellow simians from both a character perspective as well as a technical one that drives the film to greatness. Whereas the performance-captured ape characters of the first two movies (Rise of the Planet of the Apes kicked off the rebooted series in 2011) were groundbreaking, here the work of visual effects powerhouse Weta Digital has finally reached the point where there’s never reason to question the “realness” of the characters onscreen at all. Ape or human, it makes no difference. This world simply exists.
But as recent effects-driven duds prove, none of that matters if the audience doesn’t care about the story and its players. Fortunately, Dawn director Matt Reeves has returned along with Dawn writer Mark Bomback to craft the further adventures of Andy Serkis’ Caesar. Two years have passed since the momentous events that plunged the apes into war with the humans, despite Caesar’s best efforts to avoid it, and now he and his followers have found themselves in a pitched battle with an army led by Woody Harrelson’s character, known only as The Colonel. This figure, with his shaved head, camouflage face paint, and shall we say less-than-Regular Army methods calls back to Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now, although Reeves is self-aware enough to have some fun with such direct parallels; at one point, the camera holds on a patch of graffiti that reads “Ape-ocalypse Now.”
With subtle hints of levity like that one, War manages to soften its dark undercurrents in a way that Dawn couldn’t. The arrival of Bad Ape, a new character played by Steve Zahn, brings a level of humor to War that has often evaded these films, while also expanding the bigger world of the series when Caesar realizes the questions raised by this talking, thinking ape’s origins.
Bad Ape is an amazing addition to the cast: a funny and unique figure who also has a tragic edge to him. Along with Caesar’s dude-bros Maurice (Karin Konoval), Rocket (Terry Notary), and Luca (Michael Adamthwaite) – all returning characters from the earlier films – Bad Ape is not just a mere expensive visual effect. The members of this group all serve important functions in the story as Caesar’s lieutenants, and each has at least one or two great character moments themselves.
Still, War for the Planet of the Apes can be pretty heavy – it is a war movie, after all. After an inciting tragic incident, Caesar and his friends head off on a dangerous mission of revenge that they hope will finally get The Colonel off their backs once and for all. But for Caesar, this journey is an internal one as well as he seeks to save his own soul. In a callback to the unforgettable antagonist from the previous film – I refuse to simply refer to Toby Kebbell’s Koba as a “villain” – Caesar now finds himself faced with the same sort of demons that drove Koba to betray his kind two years earlier. Along the way, Serkis once again turns in an award-worthy performance. It’s a cliché at this point, but the guy really does deserve an Oscar nomination, if not a win.
Meanwhile, Reeves fills his widescreen with some remarkable imagery, reaching for an epic feel whether it’s the peaceful sight of apes on horseback riding along a beach or huge scenes of carnage as man battles ape. Michael Giacchino’s score is also memorable, supporting the scope of Reeves’ vision while also imparting on War a slightly off-kilter feel that calls back to the original 1968 film – and supports the notion that the world has turned upside down in these movies.
There is some late second-act drag in War for the Planet of the Apes that slows things down too much, as an extended prison-break sequence eventually feels like it’s treading water. But otherwise the film is frequently gripping, due to either emotional moments or action scenes, and the callbacks to the classic series are also smartly achieved. While the circumstances of a mute human girl’s (Amiah Miller) inability to speak tie into the greater Apes mythos, her nickname is also a charming callback to the 1968 film. Elsewhere, The Colonel’s soldiers call themselves the Alpha Omega (the first and last Greek letters, signifying the beginning and the end), which doesn’t just refer to the particular existential crisis these men are living as they face the potential end of humankind as they know it, but also is a neat reference to 1970’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes. And so on.
It’s hard to say precisely why a series like these three Apes movies has worked so well while so many other reboots and revivals of familiar movies and TV series fail, but undoubtedly a large part of that success – certainly of the latter two films – has to be attributed to Reeves’ instincts as a filmmaker. He knows he needs to put big battles and cool visuals in his movie, and he does that very well. But when it comes down to the heart of the film, Reeves doesn’t shy away from, say, a climactic scene between Caesar and The Colonel that isn’t about punches thrown or computer-generated sparks. It’s just two alpha males staring each other in the eyes and coming to grips with the madness that surrounds them.
The Verdict
War for the Planet of the Apes is an excellent closing act to this rebooted trilogy, but also one that does enough world-building that the series can potentially continue from here – and it’s a rare case where, after three movies, we’re left wanting more. Andy Serkis is once again outstanding as Caesar as he wrestles with the morality of inter-species warfare, and his supporting cast almost all provide memorable and striking performances as well. They’re assisted by seamless effects, which seldom have the luxury of not having to try to carry a whole blockbuster on their own. Director Matt Reeves and co-writer Mark Bomback display a fantastic ability for both spectacle and restraint in delivering one of the best summer blockbusters in years.
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