War for the Planet of the Apes

Director: Matt Reeves

Starring: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Karin Konoval, Steve Zahn

Genre: Action, Drama, SF

Year: 2017

When Fox announced Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a reboot/prequel of their Planet of the Apes franchise, no one expected much from it, myself included. I wasn’t a big fan of original Planet of the Apes and Tim Burton version from 2001. was just awful. And in the end Rise of the Planet of the Apes turned out to be one of the biggest surprises of a year – in my humble opinion, it was a very good SF movie that focused more on story and characters than on epic action and explosions. One of the best things in that movie was the main ape character, Ceasar, which was excellently played by Andy Serkis.

Three years later a sequel, called Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, was released. Directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let me in), it was a rare example when a sequel is as good as the original.

And now in 2017, we got a third movie, called War for the Planet of Apes and also directed by Matt Reeves. Mostly when they got 2 movies right they mess it up with the third one. Is this the same case? No, but War of the Planet of the Apes is the weakest in the new apes trilogy. Which doesn’t mean they blew it; it’s actually one more pretty good movie but just not on the same level as previous 2 chapters.

The movie starts with a text against a blurry background that introduces us to events after the end of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. The world is at war and Ceasar, together with his apes, is hiding in the woods and leading battles against humans led by Colonel (Woody Harrelson). After they defeated a squad of soldiers at the beginning of the movie, soon they’re attacked during a night in their hideout by a smaller team of soldiers led by Colonel himself and Ceasar’s wife and son are killed. Now, Ceasar together with a couple of apes decides to go after Colonel and avenge loved ones while the rest of the tribe is going far away in a search for a better place.

Don’t let the title of the movie fools you. This isn’t a war movie. This isn’t an action movie. This is not your typical Hollywood blockbuster. War for the Planet of the Apes is a drama which focuses more on a story and characters than on shooting and explosions with maybe 15 or 20 minutes of action. It is a drama about love, hate, revenge, and survival. It shows us how war changes people and what terrible things people would do in a war. And this is not a bad thing at all. Actually, I was little surprised by the approach they took; it is not anything especially original or new and War for the Planet of the Apes felt like a mish-mash of western, prisoners, drama and war movie. You can swap apes for any minority (Indians, Jews etc) and soldiers with any oppressors (Nazis, US army) and you’ll get the same movie. As I said, nothing new, but I liked they took more serious approach than focus on explosions.

WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES

Director Matt Reeves did a pretty good job and I’m looking forward to his Batman movie. Actors are on the same level especially Andy Serkis as Caesar and I think he should get some recognition for his performance in apes trilogy. And special effects here are outstanding – I was blown away how good and convincing these apes looks, you really can’t tell this is CGI and not masks. This was also the case with previous two movies, but here they took it to the next level and I think the team responsible for this should be awarded.

There are a couple of things I didn’t like. There are some small plot holes and parts that are not convincing, some scenes which were supposed to be emotional was just pathetic (actually in my opinion authors played little too much on emotions), relationship between apes and little girl was little unconvincing  and I found ending little disappointing (not bad, but disappointing).

Nevertheless, I think this is a pretty good movie worth checking out.