Peter Viney's Blog

2017

Directed by Matt Reeves
Written by Mark Bomback and Matt Reeves
Premise suggested by Monkey Planet by Pierre Boule / Planet of The Apes film 1968

CAST:
Andy Serkis as Caesar
Woody Harrelson as The Colonel
Steve Zahn as Bad Ape
Karin Konoval as Maurice
Amiah Miller as Nova

SEE MY REVIEW: DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (linked)

This is the third of the “reboot series.” I had a lot to say on Dawn of The Planet of The Apes and I’ll repeat a bit. This third one was a box office success, fortunately, as it must have cost an incredible amount.

This is a deep retrospective. We bought it on 24K UHD right after getting a UHD player. There’s a shelf of films to be watched. I’ve taken it off the shelf over a dozen times since, and Karen’s declined the selection. It finally got on last night. The sleeve lists five five star reviews. I was a four star reviewer of Dawn of The Planet of the Apes? This one? Two at the most.

At bottom, they’ve got it wrong where it counts most: the storyline. As I said on the last review, it is between weird and scary to start picking holes in a storyline about talking apes, but I’m going to.

It’s fifteen years after the last one. The story has the apes being harassed and murdered … it’s so easy to fall into this anthropomorphism trap … killed … by human soldiers, and wanting to escape to start a new life. Caesar has lost his “wife” and “child” (not mate and baby chimp) and seeks his “son”, Cornelius. Hang on … Cornelius … that’s the friendly ape in the 1968 original one. Let me think a bit … the 1968 one is specifically set 2006 years in the future, in 3978.

After being attacked by soldiers, they encounter a man on a farm and shoot him. His daughter is mute. They find a car badge, from a Chevy Nova … the one they found hard to sell in Spanish speaking countries (no va.) They give it to the girl … and name her Nova. At this point, I’m losing patience with the story very fast. Nova is the mute girl in 3978 (played then by Linda Harrison). I begin to fear that in ten years time … if they make a fourth reboot … we’ll have caught up with the world of the original. No time allowed for the Statue of Liberty to decay and New York to become a desert beach.

Anyway, Maurice the sweet and lovable orang-utang cannot leave her to die and gives her a flower. He will look after her.

Off the apes trek to find a route of escape, and discover the Colonel’s base, an industrial-military complex with enslaved chimps. They meet a bit of comic relief, Bad Ape, who looks a lot smaller. At this point we pause the bluray, make a cup of tea and agree we’ll give it just five more minutes before deciding whether to continue. We both agree it’s dire.

It perks up soon afterwards when we meet the Colonel (Woody Harrelson). Woody saved the day and kept us watching . The Colonel has started killing any mutes, as the pandemic of Simian flu that wrecked humanity (let’s call it Covid-29 … after all, no one involved with this had any sense of taste) has another effect of removing the power of speech and possibly the concept of speech. Hang on, but Nova seems adept at talking to the apes in sign language, but then we’ve taught real apes sign language. The Colonel has decided to kill every mute, and started with his own son. The rest of the human military have decided he’s raving mad. You can see how they might come to that conclusion. As someone who shaves his own head every day, I thought just that watching the Colonel shave his head with a cut-throat razor.

OK, Caesar effects a rescue and escape. They all trek off to a lake in the mountains for an interminably long ending full of crocodile ape tears.

So why is it two star? The creation of a world of apes is stunning SFX. The accompanying music is the best thing about it. Woody Harrelson is, as ever, mesmerising on screen. There are massive landscapes. I thought so much snow would cause issues, but I suppose it’s SFX, not fake snow. You can believe the apes are real. There are lots of them all moving about simultaneously. It’s a major technical achievement.

One fault line occurs with all the 21st century ones, but it’s a fault that the first and best, the Charlton Heston one, didn’t have. In the original, the different species had different roles and didn’t get on too well. The gorillas were the military ones, the chimps in the middle, the orang-utangs rulers, judges. Let me repeat, apes are not a single species. They are not varied ethnicities of a species. They cannot interbreed. Horses and donkeys can, though the result is sterile, a mule. Wolves and dogs can do it. A chihuahua can breed with a St Bernard, though perhaps the St Bernard won’t notice it happening. Lions and tigers can interbreed. So we have to assume here that apes unite and co-operate, though it’s like horses, pigs and cows working together … I suppose they do in Animal Farm.

This has too much “One ape world” about it. Look at the film posters For Freedom … For family … For the planet. Yuk. It also squeezes in the only sympathetic human onto the poster.

The gorillas are “donkeys” enslaved and helping the humans stolidly by whipping and beating the chimps. OK. Actually, gorillas are the least aggressive apes … they don’t need to be. When they tried teaching sign language to apes, with a fair degree of success, it is said gorillas took to it better than chimps, possibly they’re more intelligent, possibly they’re less hyper-active. Definitely they’re far less aggressive.

The screaming fault is that there is zero human interest. We are to identify with the apes entirely. Yes, we can feel they were hard done by in the others, but in this we are totally seeing the world from the apes reddened eyes. I think that’s such a major fault that the film foundered on it for us.

For someone who fondly recalls the 60s / early 70s films in detail, the Cornelius / Nova line grated nastily. I had the feeling they vaguely remembered the characters and thought they might prequel them. No. Unless we assume that most future apes would be called Cornelius in his honour, and that all future mute females will be called Nova. No va. Hmm. It’s surprising humanity didn’t die out. OK, grudgingly I’ll agree that a vast proportion of Latin human females have a “Maria” somewhere in their name.

I’ll admire the effects. i’ll probably look at a few again, but for me, in a sci-fi story there has to be a gripping storyline. A sense of What if …? This doesn’t have it. As with Dawn of The Planet of The Apes this has a soft soppy ending.

It needs that Statue of Liberty twist. I used the same line in the last review.