Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is the sequel to 2011's surprise success Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and is not to be confused with Escape From The Planet Of The Apes, Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, Battle For The Planet Of The Apes, or Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes. Which begs the question: who can keep all these movies in any kind of order? And which silly, overused word are they going to slap in front of the next Planet Of The Apes movie? How about resurrection? Or extinction? Those worked great for the Alien and Resident Evil franchises.
But enough of that, let's have a look at this movie (which for brevity's sake I'll simply shorten to Dawn). Set ten years after the events of Rise with mankind mostly wiped out by the previous movie's virus the film picks up with main ape Caesar (again gloriously played and mo-capped by Gollum aka King Kong aka Andy Serkis) who has established a whole colony of apes in the woods just outside of San Francisco. One day some pesky humans show up, led by a guy named Malcolm, played by Jason Clarke. He comes from a human settlement in San Francisco and is trying to fix a dam to generate power for the survivors. Unfortunately though, this dam is located right within ape territory and Clarke's group's shenanigans soon kick off a wave of "speciesm" between man and ape that eventually results in all-out war.
I'd have to lie to say that it didn't take me a little bit to get into the story, mostly due to some embarrassingly heavy-handed exposition. But soon things started coming together and suddenly, sometime in the middle of the film, a feeling of déjà vu struck me, and I remembered what I had liked and what I had disliked about Rise and what seemed so familiar with Dawn. And guess what, Dawn is having the exact same shortcomings as its predecessor. But it also has the same highlights.
First and foremost, the film stands and falls with its main character, Caesar. He is the most interesting being on screen and everytime the plot gets entangled with anything but him the film starts stumbling. I don't blame the actors for that, they do the best they can with their poorly written material. Jason Clarke makes a so-so leading man who pales compared to Caesar. Gary Oldman as the other human lead has the most thankless role but gets a couple of scenes where he can show off some acting skills. Keri Russell as Clarke's love interest doesn't have anything substantial to do, and neither does Kodi Smit-McPhee as his son, their two characters could have easily been cut out and made Dawn a whole lot smoother. The worst offense though is probably the character of Carver, a guy without any human qualities who simply exists to act as a big jerk in every scene he's in. I was more than thankful when he was offed by one of the apes midway through.
Speaking of the apes, did I already mention that they are the real focus of the film? I already did? Kind of? Anyways, they are and led by Caesar they undeniably are the movie's strength. On a technical level they look as lifelike as possible, blending in almost seamlessly with the human actors. The only time their presence reminded me of watching a special effects extravaganza was when they were riding horses while wielding rifles. Actually, the more I think about this image the sillier it gets. Oh boy, better scrap that from my memory.
The apes' character interactions are what's driving the narrative and there's a power struggle between Caesar and another ape named Koba that slowly builds until it takes the main stage and eventually escalates in the film's mighty climax atop a San Francisco skyscraper. While those scenes were certainly eyepopping, they were also a little dull with its heavy use of CGI for the ridiculous action that is unfolding.
But who cares about all of that, right? Dawn delivers when it comes to simple entertainment value. It is not terribly deep (although it sure as hell thinks it is) and is quickly digested even though you are required to have a good amount of sitzfleisch. I mean, do we really need 131 minutes of this? What happened to the days of 100 minute blockbusters? With that being said, I hope that for the next Planet Of The Apes movie they just get rid of the humans, that will save us time and the screenwriters some embarrassment as well.
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