Mad Reviews: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

I'm just putting this out there right now: 2014 is going to go down as one of the greatest years in movies ever!

Seriously, The Lego Movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, God Fucking Zilla, X Men Days of Future Past, How to Train your Dragon 2, 22 Jump Street... All awesome movies! And we haven't even gotten to Guardians of the Galaxy or Interstellar yet! I must say though, that as of right now, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the best movie I've seen this year! Heck, it might even be the best I've in quite a few years! It's that good!

The movie begins with telling us how the ALZ 113 Virus, now dubbed "The Simian Flu" pretty much wiped out the human race. We then get an extreme close up on Caesar that would make Sergio Leone blush, as you see him all covered in war paint with his ape tribe ready to hunt down a pack of deer. Eventually, they manage to hunt down one of the deer, but Caesar's son gets a little too anxious and decides to move in on the dead dear... And he gets blindsided by a grizzly bear! Eventually, Caesar and Koba (Simian Scarface) manage to fight off the bear with Koba ramming a spear into the bear's fucking head (Like A Boss)! We then see Caesar return to his home where his ape wife is giving birth to his second child...

Caesar: Family man by day, Badass ape tribe leader by night.

 

This shot is more awesome than a barrel full of monkeys

 

 

Anyways, we then learn through exposition that it's been nearly 10 years since the tribe came into contact with humans. Caesar and Maurice assume that they're pretty much gone... Or are they??? Dun dun duuuunnnnn!!!!

We then cut to a few apes chilling in the forest, where they run into one of the vilest creatures on earth: That dude from Fringe! Anyways, that Fringe guy shoots one of the apes and the rest of his human group comes to his aid. Next thing we know, the entire tribe surrounds the group of humans, and Caesar tells them to "GO!" and they get the fuck out of there.

As the human group returns to San Fran, we learn that part of the Apes territory contains a dam that could give the human group unlimited hydro, and they need to get it activated... By any means necessary... And now we have our movie!

So, you probably know how this movie is going to play out after reading the synopsis, don't you? Well, whatever you're thinking, you're wrong! This movie has plot twists and turns throughout, throwing away any type of clichéd storytelling that you might expect from a blockbuster of this magnitude.

With that said, obviously the strongest thing about this movie is the story, it constantly keeps you guessing and keeps you on the edge of your seat. It'll rip your heart out and put it back in, just so it can have the sadistic pleasure of ripping it out again. I felt as if the Breaking Bad writers took over the storyline of this movie and were taking me to school on how to write an amazing film! So yeah, you get it, the story is absolutely powerful! But what about the characters? Well, they are what drive this amazing story! The characters (especially the ape characters) are awesome!

Caesar has grown since the first film and has become a wise and powerful leader of his ape tribe. He has to deal with his family, as well as keeping his group of apes together as tensions mount with these newly encountered humans. His arc during the movie goes from leader, to peacekeeper, to simian John Connor.  Caesar is mo-capped beautifully by the legendary Andy Serkis, as he makes one of the most complex and powerful characters of the last 10 years come to life. Is Serkis’s performance Oscar worthy? Well fuck yeah, but unfortunately for him, the Academy won’t give it a second look as Dawn of the POTA isn’t a low budget drama. So yeah

 

"ALL HAIL ME!"

 

 

On the human side of things, we have Malcolm, the leader of the small pack of humans that’s trying to reactivate the dam and keep peace with Caesar and the Apes. Over the course of the movie, he forms a strong bond with Caesar, with the pinnacle being when Caesar watches an old home video of himself and Dr. Franco teaching him sign. When Malcolm asks Caesar who that person was, Caesar replies with “A good man, like you”, which to me was one of the most heart-wrenching moments of the film. At the end of the day, Malcolm is Caesar’s human counterpart: He only wants peace, and he wants his race to survive. Jason Clarke did a wonderful job with this character, playing one of the many complex roles in this movie with ease.

We also have human leader Dreyfus, played by acting chameleon Gary Oldman. Going into this movie, I thought his character would be the douchebag of the show, much like the bad guy from Avatar. But he was much more complex than that! Sure, his motivations might be a little heartless, but after you get to know this guy and what he’s been through, you start to sympathize with him. There’s one very emotional moment he has in the movie, where you find out just how much this man has lost, all because of the simian flu. You grow to understand his character, and why he does what he does near the end of the film. He’s an antagonist for sure, but one that the audience might be able to relate to at some point or another.

Back to Ape characters… and now I’m going to talk about the unquestionable badass of the whole film: Koba! The monkey who spent years getting tortured by humans (as evidenced in Rise of the Planet of the Apes), is now Caesar’s right hand ape in this movie. At the very beginning, he’s a very helpful, caring dude, saving Caesar’s ass from a bear and shit… That is, until the tribe makes contact with humans, and his traumatic memories make him snap back into asshole mode. He doesn’t trust humans one bit, he spies on them, gets in Caesar’s face about them, attacks them at one point, and he even tries to start a revolution against them. He’s the film’s main villain, but in all honestly, he’s just another shade of grey like Dreyfus. There’s a scene in the movie where you really get to understand his psyche and his motivations: When the small human group is working on the dam, Koba tells Caesar how he doesn’t trust those human pricks, and he wants to fight them. Caesar tells Koba to let the humans finish their work…  Koba responds by pointing at his scars and saying “Human work! Human work! HUMAN! WORK!” At that point, you really can’t blame him for being the way he is, as humans not only tortured his body, but tortured his mind as well in the process. Koba is mo-capped by Toby Kebbell, and like Serkis, he does an absolutely brilliant job of bringing his character to life.

 

"I'm an ape with a gun, you're fucked."

What I love most about these characters is that there’s no clear cut good guy or bad guy, the characters in this movie are all grey. I applaud the movie for not giving us some clichéd cardboard characters and instead giving them some depth, and allowing us to connect with them, regardless if they’re live action characters or CGI characters.

I guess that’s a segue into the special effects, right? Well, I’ll put it this way: During the entire 2 hours and 10 minutes of watching this movie, I had no idea there were any special effects on screen! That’s how good it was! Everything looked real, especially the apes. There’s a few times where you see an extreme close up of Caesar and he looks like a real ape, not a product of CGI! A good special effect is a special effect that you can’t notice. So props to the effects team for making everything look so real!

All in all, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes had great action, amazing characters, brilliant effects, an emotional roller coaster of a story, a badass climax, and it leaves you wanting more when the film is over, Matt Reeves did a fantastic job as director and I hope he makes the next one! I usually don’t look forward to third installments of a franchise, but I’m looking forward to the next Planet of the Apes movie, because as amazing as Dawn is, it felt like it was building up to something even bigger and better!

The third film will have its work cut out for it, as well as the rest of the movies coming out this year. I don’t know if this film will go down as the best of 2014 in my eyes just yet, but Guardians of the Galaxy and Interstellar are REALLY going to have to blow me away if I’m going to consider it better than this! Fuck, I guess I should’ve waited to see this movie before I did my top 10 sequels list, right?

This movie is 5 apes on horses out of 5. It’s a chimptastic masterpiece and like many movies I’ve seen this year, it might go down as one of my all time favourites!

As usual, the comments section is there for you to call this film overrated.

- Mad Mike of Metal