War For The Planet of The Apes — Hit Blockbuster Franchise’s Final Installment Is An All-Levels Disappointment

luke lomeli
Jul 20, 2017 · 4 min read

★★

There’s a moment in Matt Reeves’ War For The Planet of The Apes where Woody Harrelson’s barbaric Colonel marvels at Caesar, the ape who the entire series is centered around, saying with amazement, “My God, look at your eyes — almost human.” Within the context of the story, it’s a somewhat condescending and derogatory comment — but the remark is also self-reflexive in how it captures the same sense of awe that I assume audiences will get from looking at these incredibly lifelike CG apes. Their presence in the film is a result of pure technological wizardry, and the visual effects team deserves plaudits for being able to incorporate them into the live action setting with a genuine sense of texture and expressiveness.

And if the film has any faults, none of them have to do with Andy Serkis, who reprises his motion capture role as Caesar here, and performs with such conviction that suspending disbelief in regard to the concept of talking apes comes naturally. Yet, for all the exquisite visual effects, boundary-pushing motion capture work, and artful direction, War whiffs so badly on a basic story level, that all of this technical accomplishment is rendered useless. It’s the kind of singularly disappointing effort that makes you fantasize about what the film would look like had only these cutting edge resources been equalled by the strength of the narrative.

All that being said, it begins promisingly, with an exciting and well-directed opening sequence in which a faction of what’s left the U.S. military stumbles upon Caesar’s clan of apes in a forest, and a conflict ensues. After this initial skirmish, Caesar realizes that he’ll be forced to relocate the colony of apes, but not before those same soldiers’ Colonel storms in at night and delivers him a deeply personal blow. This inciting incident, which I won’t spoil here, sends Caesar on a quest for revenge, and forces him to reconcile his pacifist leanings with his desire to take justice into his own hands.

It’s here that the film grows increasingly episodic and uneventful, as Caesar and a team of apes roam the bleak, post-apocalyptic landscape, meet some new faces, both human and ape, and decide to take them along for the journey. The leisurely pace allows for plenty of dramatic wide shots of the apes riding on horseback through the snow, but these would-be majestic images are somewhat undercut by Michael Giachianno’s score, which manages to be both intrusive and monotonous, and isn’t in sync with the action on screen. Nevertheless, it’s a quiet and mostly agreeable opening section, and it even feels like a pleasant departure from the bombast and hurriedness of other summer blockbusters.

But as the apes reach their intended destination, which turns out to be a labor camp, the film takes a turn for the worst. The plot fizzles out as Caesar and friends are captured, giving way to an interminable middle act that faintly echoes the worst stretches of films like Schindler’s List and The Passion of The Christ, all the while never even remotely approaching the same level of artistry or gravitas. Reeves is so intent on making the film live up to its title, and shoving the audience’s noses in the grim realities of war that all of these protracted sequences of cruelty and suffering register as phony and desperate. It doesn’t help that all the humans are cartoonishly evil either — Woody Harrelson comes across like a comic book rendering of Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, and it simply heightens the ridiculousness of it all. While it is somewhat interesting to see a reversal of the power dynamics from the original 1968 version and a portrayal of the more animalistic and exploitative side of humanity, it doesn’t make it any less unpleasant and exhausting to sit through. It’s the exact kind of hacky, endurance-test filmmaking that many mistake for “maturity”, but it all mostly made me long for the days when blockbuster entertainment was actually entertaining, and didn’t have Holocaust allusions.

And if you don’t prefer your summer blockbusters with that much misery, don’t worry, there’s still the two characters that Caesar and company picked up along the way, who seem to exist solely for the purpose of lightening the mood after various executions of apes or brutal whippings. The film’s emotional center is found in a mute, emaciated little girl who’s later revealed to be not much more than a twist delivery device, and the comic relief comes from a goofy character named Bad Ape played by Steve Zahn, who, admittedly, is pretty funny.

War eventually shifts genres into a prison break movie as a last resort, complete with a slightly whimsical score underneath, but by then I had already checked out. Even Caesar’s fascinating moral dilemma is resolved in the most cliché way imaginable, and while his ultimate decision is consistent with the nature of the character, the fact that the film has nothing to say beyond regurgitating trite themes like the futility of revenge and the cruelty of war is hugely disappointing.

If nothing else, War For the Planet of the Apes is valuable for narrowing down the possible answers for the age-old question of: “War, what is it good for?” We can scratch “summer entertainment” off the list.

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luke lomeli

i write sometimes

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