Rise of the Planet of the Apes and
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes double feature. (minor spoilers)
Man, that was a lot of drama for one evening. I don't buy movies that often anymore, but I'm so glad I picked these up when each came out on Blu-Ray. I've watched the first one a few times, though this is my first viewing of the second one since it was in theaters.
Rise has the most appropriate title. You get so engaged in what's going on and invested in Caesar's character arc and the plight of the apes that the overall film gets you frustrated, and then uplifted as Caesar outsmarts those around him, human and ape alike. Andy Serkis is brilliant. Some of the CGI hasn't aged too hot, but the weaker special effects moments weren't exactly too strong back in 2011. The important parts were given the right amount of CGI attention and are still solid. And that's really pointless to worry about because the overall film is just so damn good. My only complaints are the couple quotes from the original Heston film, and that I really wanted to see what happened immediately after, and sadly the next movie jumps ahead 10 years.
Dawn switches directors, but that's okay because the tone switches too and both directors did excellent work. Where the first one is uplifting, this one feels like wall-to-wall stress as the situation gets worse and worse because unfortunately that's how people can be when fear runs them. The first movie was a revolution--this is a war drama. Both get a lot of credit in the science fiction department for their exploration on what being human is, but the characters are what shine.
This feels like such a risky movie. A lot of sign language and subtitles, most of the screentime devoted to apes. You look at the Transformers series which is all about the humans and figure that's what would happen here, but no--I know the apes' names. Maurice, Rocket, Blue Eyes, Ash, Koba. I barely remember the humans' names, although that doesn't mean their characters are weak, just that they're the secondary ones.
Dawn pays loving devotion to
Rise, either because both movies shared a lot of the same people working on them or because the second movie's team paid close attention to the first one.
Rise excels at planting and payoff; it jumps out at you on repeat viewing.
Dawn is careful to work with the prior movie's elements. Obviously the dynamic between Caesar and Koba had its seeds planted by the end of even the first movie, but it's little touches like Caesar's window, the camera zooming into Caesar's eye/eyes, showing how Caesar acts when he goes back to Will's house and it's clear this is the first time he's been back since he was taken by animal control in the first movie.
Even the idea of rebooting a beloved film franchise sounds like an awful idea, and this one from nearly 50 years between first movies. Hell, we've seen how bad that can go with the Tim Burton film. And yet, these movies are up in the realm of masterpieces. I saw the
Rise trailers in 2011 and scoffed, thinking how dumb an idea this was. Then everyone on hear spread good word of mouth, calling it the best movie of the summer, and I thought, "What the hell, I'll give it a shot." And I was just floored by how amazing it was. We're getting big budget, intelligent science fiction films ... I guess for all the shitty movies we put up with, we deserve it
. And now I honestly feel these are better than the original films.
It was a blast rewatching these. I'll be at
War for the Planet of the Apes either opening night or at the early screening the night before.
