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‘War for the Planet of the Apes’ Is a Very Serious Movie, but It Didn’t Need to Be

"Because it has nothing to do with Caesar"

Caesar would not be happy with you for saying that.

Heavy themes burden the close of the ‘Apes’ trilogy

By K. Austin Collins Jul 11, 2017, 10:45am EDT


(20th Century Fox)

Here’s a movie pitch: Woody Harrelson rules over a kingdom of CGI apes. Disaster ensues. A comedy? I’d like to think so. But here comes War for the Planet of the Apes, the final volume of the rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise, out to spite me. This is a capital S, capital M, Serious Movie. Here’s how I know. It’s got a runtime of two hours and 20 minutes, but it wasn’t directed by Judd Apatow, which means it’s definitely not a comedy, because who else in comedy would dare. It’s got the Serious Movie Starter Kit™ color palette, too, its hues averaging out to something between gray and grayer, as if the director, Matt Reeves, had consulted a mood board composed of a slab of wet concrete when dreaming up the movie.

More urgently, however, War for the Planet of the Apes has got heavy themes, bolstered with references to other heavy movies. War is nothing if not ambitious. It is about the fight for the survival of two rival species: humans, who are still being wiped out by the lethal Simian flu, which originated as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease; and apes, who were once the test subjects for said treatment, but who were accidentally made hyperintelligent, and thus threatening, by it. It’s a war "for the planet," but the apes aren’t colonizers, really. They just want to survive. Led by the valiant, mean-mugging Caesar (Andy Serkis), the apes want to live separately, but equally. "Leave us the woods and the killing can stop," offers Caesar. If the humans had only accepted, they’d have saved themselves, and saved us from this movie.


(20th Century Fox)

War for the Planet of the Apes is a basic allegory that flirts, dangerously, with becoming an outright social issue drama. In it, we see the apes become a true underclass. They get captured by the military and sentenced to labor in a prison camp run by an erratic, nameless colonel (Harrelson). The Colonel needs the free labor to build a border wall?—?never mind why?—?and the apes (among them the still-young Cornelius, hero of the original franchise) get beaten, starved, and forced to work. They’re treated like slaves. This status is fairly unambiguous from the get-go, but the movie wants to make sure you feel the weight of its subject. So, in an audacious move, Reeves and Co. reenact a scene from an actual slavery movie: Denzel Washington’s Oscar-winning whipping in Glory ..

. Maybe you remember it: a stony Denzel, his face toward the camera, wincing with each stroke of the whip but, memorably, trying to avoid showing his pain. It’s a scene of quiet rebellion. That’s the takeaway in War, too, as we watch Caesar get whipped in much the same way, the camera closing in on that prideful, implacable face.

Some day, I’m sure I’ll be in the mood to tease out just what’s so pathetic about a rebellious black former slave getting reimagined as a humanoid ape in a blockbuster. But why go there? I’m not offended: I’m bored. War for the Planet of the Apes is being hailed .. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/war-for-the-planet-of-the-apes-review-release-date-trailer-caesar-rise-dawn-andy-serkis-woody-a7828921.html .. as "the best franchise film in recent memory," which is in large part, I reckon, because it tries so hard to seem more thoughtful and relevant than other franchise movies. The movie is bait for those of us who want to feel like our time spent with blockbusters should be somehow enriching, and not merely entertaining. That’s a nice idea … I guess. There’s no rule that says a genre movie can’t aspire to moral seriousness. But blockbusters?—?and all other movies?—?should resist conflating moral seriousness with taking themselves too seriously.

It isn’t that a Planet of the Apes movie can’t raise appreciable moral questions.

Continued - https://www.theringer.com/2017/7/11/16077830/war-for-the-planet-of-the-apes-film-review-512ff0cfa4bb