Gorilla Warfare

Is the new Planet of the Apes franchise underrated or underwhelming?

May 24, 2024

“Being more more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral.” -Frans de Waal

“Magua’s heart is twisted. He would make himself into what twisted him.” -Hawkeye, The Last of the Mohicans

As a kid, renting movies from Front Row Video on Solano Avenue was my portal to another world. Few worlds captivated me quite as much as 1968’s Planet of the Apes did. I was enthralled by the Twilight Zone style, Charleton Heston chewing on the scenery, and the iconic twist. Then I watched the sequel, which had a nuclear apocalyptic ending I wasn’t ready for. I also saw Tim Burton’s confusing reboot multiple times, not because it was good, but because it was also available to rent, I was 11 and bored, and TNT kept replaying it.

When I heard they were launching a prequel trilogy in 2011 I was curious, but skeptical. Now, having finally seen the entire thing, I have more intensely conflicted feelings about these movies than ever before.

On the one hand, the recent Apes movies have been an undeniable financial success, grossing over 1 billion dollars to date. On the other hand, it feels like each installment has vanished almost as soon as it arrived, drowned out and overshadowed by more popular movies. How has such a huge modern franchise left so few cultural footprints? Are these merely meh monkey movies or is something else going on? Let’s find out.

Wait, I never saw these and don’t plan to- what actually happens again?

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)- Behold, proof that James Franco is responsible for both the downfall of the 2011 Oscars and the human race. In a plot that’s a blatant rip off of 1999’s Deep Blue Sea, Franco is trying to cure Alzheimer’s by genetically tinkering with chimps. So the chimps get smart. Led by Caesar (motion captured to perfection by the inimitable Andy Serkis) they escape captivity and, like so many selfie-stick-wielding tourists, proceed to ride the cable car and make a mess of traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge before scampering into Muir Woods.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)- Its ten years later and San Francisco finally looks as apocalyptic as Fox News has been insisting for years. Caesar is trying to keep his Marin County gated community of apes safe from human incursions, but keeping the peace is increasingly difficult. Caesar’s second in command Koba, who was brutally experimented on by humans in the last film, disagrees with Caesar’s diplomatic approach, wanting to kill the humans before they can wipe out the apes. Koba ends up dual wielding machine guns on horseback while shooting frantically at Gary Oldman, in a sequence that’s either the pinnacle or rock bottom of this franchise and modern Hollywood.
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)- An army of humans has descended from the frigid North to eradicate the apes, starting with Caesar and his family. Seeking revenge, Caesar ends up in a sort of ape concentration camp where he is tortured and must perform forced labor under the psychotic gaze of an unhinged Woody Harrelson. The movie becomes The Great Escape until the final showdown when Caesar has to break out and lead his comrades to the promised land like a monkey Moses.

Overall, these films’ biggest strength and weakness is that they consistently defy your expectations. I went into them expecting yet another soulless cash grab but found three films that are as impressive as they are hard to love unconditionally. Here’s what I mean:

It’s hard to know who to root for

These movies intentionally challenge you by featuring few human characters and even fewer sympathetic ones. Andy Serkis delivers a remarkably subtle motion capture performance that’s on par with his turn as Gollum. Yet it’s hard to cheer for him since his success implies our own extinction. His human adversaries range from arrogant businessmen to insufferable psychos, with the most sympathetic ones resembling lost backpackers in desperate need of a shower. This puts you in an awkward position as a human viewer. The characters that most closely resemble you are forgettable, loathsome military types while the characters that are easiest to sympathize with are covered in millions of CGI hairs and communicate almost entirely via sign language and halting neanderthal poetry.

Caesar is an understated protagonist

In contrast with other Hollywood tentpole movies that rely on Ryan Reynolds or the Rock fast-talking their way in and out of trouble, the modern Apes trilogy is remarkably restrained, relying on silence more than noise.

Caesar is by far the ape with the most dialogue, but even he says remarkably few words in his own trilogy. He barely speaks in the first film except to yell “NO” at Draco Malfoy. This scene is the film’s single most dramatic moment, which says a lot given that second place is a gorilla parkour-ing off of the Golden Gate Bridge to karate chop a helicopter.

My favorite character by far wasn’t Serkis’s Caesar, Oldman’s Dreyfus, or Steve Zahn’s “Bad Ape,” but a charismatic Orangutan named Maurice who communicates only via sign language. He serves as Caesar’s closest advisor and the films’ moral compass. At one point Alexis remarked that if they killed off the Orangutan she’d stop watching, which speaks volumes about these curious films.

This is a slow, dark trilogy with many possible themes

These movies are methodically and sometimes slowly paced affairs, which makes the second and especially third films drag at times. Explosive violence happens only after the simmering character drama finally boils over. Even for a franchise about the demise of human civilization, the tone is somber and the takeaways are remarkably bleak. I suspect this heavy material is also why these movies aren’t universally beloved. While the protagonists of Deadpool, Wonder Woman, and The Fast and the Furious get to fight off the end of the world with witty quips, Caesar and company must rely on halting dialogue and mournful glances as flickers of hope are gradually eclipsed by an inescapable sense of doom.

The themes are weighty but also a bit muddled. Despite what the first film sets up, these aren’t actually Michael Crichton-esque cautionary tales about the dangers of technology. You can make the most compelling case that these movies are about the difficulty of being a pacifist in a militarized world, or how the collateral damage of war makes it a losing proposition for both sides. They’re also tales about how collective trauma readily splinters us into warring factions and why cooperation and unity are as compelling as they are elusive. You could even argue they’re ultimately about how language is our most defining and dangerous human attribute that creates and destroys civilizations as efficiently as guns do. Like all good Sci-Fi, Caesar’s journey allows us to see the best and worst of humanity more clearly by refracting it through a monstrous, alien, or animal other.

The style varies dramatically between movies and even within movies

The cinematic reference points in this trilogy feel so diverse that these movies start to feel like nothing else and also like everything else. Rise at times feels like Jurassic Park meets Deep Blue Sea, with a dash of Contagion sprinkled in. Dawn feels like The Last of Us mixed with Children of Men and The Road. By the middle of War this becomes a slow-burn revenge film like John Wick or The Revenant, but once Caesar gets captured, this franchise adopts the nihilism of Apocalypse Now and the shocking brutality of 12 Years a Slave. This makes for a cinematic identity that’s as unique as it is disjointed. Each movie has clear upsides, but they’re curiously never the same things. The first film has the tightest story, the second one has the most engaging character conflict, and the third has the most impactful message, but it’s undercut by pacing issues and a tone that’s as bleak as the wintry color palate.

These are prequels, reboots, and neither, all at once

Prequels come with lots of baggage via built-in expectations. They also must actively fight off the lack of suspense implicit in knowing where this all ends up. When the first one of these was announced, I expected yet another soulless film that drives by beloved intellectual property while saying “look, that thing you like!” Instead, I found movies that had crash-landed in the uncanny valley between prequels and reboots.

Some parts, like the post-credits sequence in Rise and the opening of Dawn, both depicting an eerily COVID-like Simian Flu that decimates the human population, scratch the “aha” itch that most prequels settle for. Yet while a more conventional prequel trilogy would be more concerned with shuffling everyone into the locations they’re supposed to be in by the end, these films are just as interested in dwelling in the many stepping-stone eras necessary to get there. This is how this trilogy shows us, arguably better than the original film did, how much of humanity’s undoing was self-inflicted. The apes didn’t rise; we fell by tearing ourselves apart. In the end, Caesar isn’t a conqueror, but the reluctant inheritor of the broken world we left behind.

Dawn of a Comprehensive Theory of the Apes

My favorite movie was the second one, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, whose strengths and weaknesses epitomize this entire franchise. If you ignore the subplot about restoring a hydroelectric dam, which feels like a boring side-quest from a lesser video game, this movie is fundamentally about leadership, violence, and power.

We witness Caesar trying to stay on the razor’s edge of peace as forces all around him try to drag his nascent civilization into war. While this conflict ends with monkeys dual wielding machine guns, it starts with believable and compelling character drama between the two principle apes. The contrast between Caesar’s nonviolent diplomacy and Koba’s militant extremism illustrates two common ways to protect a society in crisis. What’s chilling isn’t just how much the film gets you to feel the gravitational pull of violent retribution, but how common the Kobas of our world are compared to the Caesars. Caesar’s optimism may mirror our own highest hopes for humanity, but Koba’s brand of politics is what you’ll find on the front page of The New York Times every single day. Through their struggle, we see how fear, misunderstanding, and the primal urge to other our enemies can quickly turn people with both the best and worst intentions into corpses.

Strange movies for a strange planet

These are movies that defy easy categorization. They offer an experience unlike most modern blockbusters. Their slow pace, somber tone, and nuanced development of mostly nonverbal protagonists make them stick out in a world of zippy, talkative, bombastic spectacles happening around them. They’ve also been victims of the franchise fatigue that’s turned people against the MCU, DCU, and anything Star Wars related. Ironically, even their triumphant and masterful special effects, one of their biggest accomplishments from a filmmaking standpoint, may have worked against them. For many, movies that this heavily rely on CGI warrant skepticism, not sustained interest.

To spoil it, nothing here tops the Rod Serling “Damn them, damn them all to hell!” moment at the end of the original film. Yet I can’t help but feel that Serling would appreciate how much the monkey business he started back in the sixties has given birth to one of the boldest, quirkiest, and most enduring franchises in Hollywood. Thanks to this trilogy, The Planet of the Apes franchise has become a visually impressive and ambitious saga whose greatest legacy may be fearlessly challenging blockbuster norms with unconventional stories.

Long live the Planet of the Apes, er, Earth. Yikes. Whose side am I supposed to be on, again?

Have you seen these movies? What did you think about them?

Wryly Reilly

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