Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The first movie ever to blend animation and live performance within the same scene was a silent short film of the 1900s called, The Enchanted Drawing, and features an artist drawing a person with a hat, a bottle of wine, and a cigar, and then plucking the items one by one from the easel into the real world, angering the man in the drawing. The art of animation magic has certainly come a long way over the years, but one thing that has never changed is animation’s ability to create characters and personalities out of thin air. Iconic moments in cinema like Dick Van Dyke dancing with cartoon penguins, Jessica Rabbit’s lap-dance for Bob Hoskins, or Frodo and Sam’s interactions with Gollum and Smeagol simply pound the hammer over our heads more and make us continually marvel at how far animation has come. We now turn our attention to motion-capture animation, apes, and the deep breath before the plunge into the end of the world: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. 

Set ten years after James Franco created a super-smart ape named Caesar (Andy Serkis) as well as an accidental virus that has spread across the world and wiped out a large portion of the human race, Caesar and his colony of live peacefully in the woods until a group of humans show up with a plan to use the dam to power their city. As Caesar attempts peaceful negotiations with the humans about their presence in ape-homes, Koba (Toby Kebbell), still hateful of humans, distrusts their intentions and rallies together a group demanding that they fight. As tensions continue to mount within the colony, all that’s needed is a spark to ignite war. 

As filler movies go, Dawn works really well. A definite step up from the first movie, it not only draws out the suspense before the climax successfully, but also manages to achieve a lot of complex character development. Indeed the strongest component of this movie is the villain, Koba. We already know the whole ‘you maniacs, you blew it up’ ending and it was pretty clear from the first movie that humans, the stubborn and self-entitled species that we are screwed ourselves up, therefore, have no real status as heroes and villains anymore. Basically it’s, “sorry you had to find out this way, but you’re not that important.” 

So, with all that major drama and exposition covered in the first film, Dawn turns its attention to building the characters of the apes, namely the development of Caesar and Koba. Caesar’s leadership story is quite a recognisable one. The hard lessons that he learns, the hurdles that he must clear, and the walls that he must get through have all been seen before in everything from courtroom dramas to biopics about the Royal Family. This familiarity works on a dual level because it hammers home the film’s point of humans and apes being like each other. The fear of the Other is a strong narrative trope that works wonderfully in this type of story, and while the film is all about Caesar realising how alike the two species are, it’s nice that the audience are given their own illustration of that point. 

The development of Koba’s character is truly engaging. We’re given clichéd clues about his wickedness from his physical appearance and behaviour towards Jacobs in the first movie, but Dawn actually makes us retract a few of these primed judgements and prejudices. I cannot delve too deeply into this without giving away some spoilers, but I will say that Koba’s character arc is probably one of the realest that I’ve seen. He goes through loyalty, betrayal, and a constant struggle to see things how Caesar sees them and, in the end, there are more wars happening than the mere human vs. ape. 

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes rises above its predecessor namely because it now has the time and freedom to explore and develop its characters and it does it really well. No opportunity is wasted in this movie and it’s great to see a film that does that. 

Starring: Andy Serkis, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Jason Clarke, Toby Kebbell, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Kirk Acevedo, Nick Thurston, Terry Notary, Karin Konoval, and Judy Greer 

Year: 2014 

Rating: M