War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) and the Fantasy of an End to Humanity

The 2017 film is disturbingly prescient in its ability to imagine a world in which humanity’s dominance of the world is at an end.

I distinctly remember being absolutely blown away when I went to see War for the Planet of the Apes. A longtime devotee of the Apes franchise, I’d been similarly awed by its predecessors Rise and Dawn, and the conceit of a worldwide pandemic of a respiratory virus — which occupies the coda of the first new film and the aftermath of which motivates the entire plot of the second — seems in hindsight to be eerily prescient, the fantasy of an end to humanity’s worldwide dominance even more disturbing.

The film begins two years after the conclusion of Dawn, as the forces of the Colonel (Woody Harrelson) attempt to utterly eradicate the sentient apes, who have retreated ever further into the forest in a desperate attempt to survive. When the Colonel assassinates Caesar’s wife and child, he sets out — with the orangutan Maurice, the gorilla Luca, and the chimpanzee Rocket — to gain revenge. Along the way, they meet Bad Ape, another sentient chimpanzee (who is not part of their tribe), before coming across the hideous concentration camp the Colonel has staffed with Caesar’s captured…