Director Matt Reeves didn’t mess around with the production Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. He wipes out most of humanity before the title card and then unfolds a powerful story of two hostile societies doomed to war despite having every opportunity for peace. It’s dark. It’s brave. It’s fucking fantastic.
Fox comes out next week Kingdom of the Planet of the Apesa new film takes place in the legendary franchise that started in 1968 planet of monkeys. kingdom is a sequel to a film trilogy that began in 2011 Planet of the Apes: Prevolution, which we visited again last week. Next week we will review the third film, War for the Planet of the Apes, as well as the new one. And now let’s look back further dusk.
Published three years later Planet of the Apes: Prevolution, dusk takes the series to a whole new level thematically and dramatically. It’s narratively more complex, subtextually more interesting and, for a post-apocalyptic film, incredibly poignant. This is all highlighted by stunning VFX work as well as a fantastic human cast, with Gary Oldman and Keri Russell being two of the biggest names. It picks up the story in the end credits of Raise, as we see how the substance ALZ-113, deadly to humans but helpful to monkeys, spread across the globe. News footage, including that of former presidents, shows a shocking look at how humanity collapsed due to self-inflicted disease, killing the vast majority of the population.
At least that’s what the monkeys think. Ten years after the events of the first film, Caesar (Andy Serkis) and his ape friends have created an entire world in the woods outside of San Francisco. Caesar has a wife, a son, a newborn on the way, and we learn that the apes haven’t seen or heard from a human in two years. However, what we learn is that during this time, all the immunized people from the area gathered in the city. With resources drying up, they formulate a plan to restore power and possibly society by developing an abandoned dam. A trip to the dam leads to a chance encounter between humans and the ape society, an event that begins with shock, turns to fear, and then evolves into opportunity.
Jason Clarke plays Malcolm, a respected member of the human group who leads the investigation to restore the dam. After encountering the monkeys, he is one of the few who does not immediately view them as enemies. Instead, he sees an opportunity. Malcolm fights against the leader Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) for a chance to negotiate peace with the apes, which ultimately, largely works.
As soon as people find out that the monkeys are doing well and vice versa, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is permeated by a unique, restless tension. As an audience, we want everyone to understand everything. The problem is that there is so little trust between the species, and with both thinking almost only of themselves, most of the film is filled with painful frustration as we watch all the near-failures for peace that is the course of events would have changed history.
Of course, we also know that the Earth will eventually Planet of monkeys-so that would never work. But Reeves tells such a fantastical parallel story that he suspects that perhaps it wasn’t always inevitable. dusk shows how choosing one or two bad apples sets off a domino effect that leads to this new world. It really is one dusk.
Tension and desire drive a film that is relatively free of major action for much of its running time. Things escalate in the end and there are scattered moments, but most of the film is driven by our fascination with how these two societies, so similar yet so different, just don’t get along.
There are so many things that can be described as incredible Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Firstly, the performances of the actors who play the monkeys. Toby Kebbell as the evil Koba is breathtaking. Nick Thurston is notable as Caesar’s conflicted son, Blue Eyes. Judy Greer as Caesar’s wife Cornelia is heartbreaking. And compared to this great human cast, fantastic script and wonderful direction, it’s a sight to behold.
When it comes to a new watch, our biggest takeaways are: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes were that it was somehow even greater than its already excellent predecessor. Above all, the story of these monkeys is so compelling in itself that one almost forgets that while the monkeys lived their lives, humanity was also trying to survive. People didn’t know that there were super smart monkeys outside the city. All they knew was that a virus the media called “monkey flu” had wiped out almost everyone on Earth. The few who survived had a hard time rebooting society, and in this film they come pretty close to that goal. But just as human greed fueled the deadly virus, our same bad qualities make it impossible for peace to reign on both sides. As we will see in the next films, human society was immediately doomed due to the events here.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is now Streaming on Hulu and Disney+. Next Up: War for the Planet of the Apes.
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