Film Review | Dawn of The Planet of The Apes

We should really count our silver screen blessings in this day and age, when the received – and repeatedly drummed-through – wisdom insists on reminding us that most mainstream films are targeted squarely at children and young adults, and that any quality and artistry being practised in the audio-visual medium is migrating almost entirely to cable television.

The fact is that the received wisdom tends to be true for the most part, as comic book adaptations and their young-adult-novel counterparts (see: Hunger Games, Divergent) tend to soak up anything truly novel and original, relying heavily on in-built audiences and safe formulas.

This appeared to be the case with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) which, much like JJ Abrams’s slick Star Trek re-imagining, set out to reboot the Planet of the Apes franchise with a sort-of prequel to the classic Charlton Heston simian dystopia.

All the toxic ingredients appeared to be lined up and in place. ‘Rise’ was piggybacking on a recognised (and therefore bankable) franchise, it employed a star – motion-capture master Andy ‘Gollum’ Serkis – to the thing he does best yet again, and top it all off it came with a fashionably ‘gritty’ wash.

But instead of turning out to be a by-the-numbers cash cow, ROTPOTA (lovely acronym, isn’t it?) was a cleverly stripped down and thrilling update of the ‘Apes’ franchise, making it familiar to a younger audience by re-jigging the franchise through what was essentially a Frankenstein narrative.

Cloverfield (2008) and Let Me In (2010) director Matt Reeves steps into the shoes vacated by Rupert Wyatt, who opted not to return to the franchise after helming ‘Rise’.

The jump in quality may be down to factors other than just a change in director, but the second instalment emerges as the stronger of the two. Taking a chronological leap forward to establish a world ravaged by plague – with the human race said to be largely eradicated and bereft of a source of electricity – the new chapter of the story sees Caesar (Serkis) now effectively crowned king of an ape settlement ensconced deep in the woods.

But their peace is shattered when a human expedition led by Malcolm (Jason Clarke) accidentally stumbles across the settlement, with nervous and trigger-happy Carver (Kirk Acevedo) escalating the situation by shooting a young ape. Though Malcolm manages to secure a precarious truce with Caesar and his settlement – on condition that the humans don’t return to ape territory – the erstwhile leader of the human survivors, Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) insists that they go back and finish what they started: getting a disused dam back in action so that their city could once again have a power supply.

Steeling himself for a potentially hostile rebuke, Malcolm heads back to the ape settlement with his girlfriend Ellie (Keri Russell) and son Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee) in tow. Meanwhile, all this negotiating with humans has put Caesar in something of a precarious political position: with the vindictive Koba (Toby Kebbell) bristling at the idea of compromising with the species that had tortured him in laboratories in the past.

This set-up should ensure that the plot simmers to a satisfying boil, and the screenplay by Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver is, thankfully, a beat-perfect one. Clearly identifying the good apples from the bad ones in both the human and the ape camp, it gives us characters to root for and care about, while the tension builds in parallel, leaving us to relish the (inevitably) action-packed climax.

But what pushes this particular installment out of box-ticking, lowest-common-denominator blockbuster rut is Reeves’ strong visual style and attention to detail.

We’ll get to the apes themselves in a bit (they truly are a wonder to behold), but it’s worth noting how Reeves goes the extra mile visually. A chiaroscuro hybrid world is established from the word go, as the humans are made to live in what is essentially a ramshackle squat, where nature is already making a slow but steady move to reclaim the landscape. By contrast, the apes live in a harmonious communal space, but one free from the kitschy rural idyll of typical sci-fi forests, as seen in Avatar (2009) and the like.

But crucially, this is also a film with heart. It also gives weight to the cliché that the eyes are, in fact, the window to the soul – and exploits this fact with aplomb when rendering the motion-captured apes. It may be difficult to quantify, exactly, where the CGI stops and the ‘real’ acting begins, but a human touch is clearly evident. Serkis once again excels as Caesar. Much like the rest of the film, he is a bit of a humourless, almost dour presence, but what he’s meant to do, he does well: power, righteous anger, gravitas and – ultimately – pain.

The team also mercifully moves away from chest-thumping clichés to convey ape-to-ape communication, instead opting for delicate hand gestures, subtitled for our convenience. The fact that our sympathies are calibrated towards the apes is neither original nor surprising, but the sterling CGI work, and Reeves’s efforts to create an immersive world ensures that we’re emotionally connected to the story at every level.

It’s probably unwise to overstate the worth of its internal ‘message’ – like the aforementioned Avatar, it says pretty much the same things about endemic conflict as, say, Pocahontas did.

But it’s not just about the story, it’s also about how it’s told. Given that Reeves is riffing off established material, it’s to his credit that every element of this ape vs man allegory both convinces and entertains.