Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - it's summer time!

With summer in full swing and a heatwave sweeping across Britain, what better thing to do than get yourself into the air conditioning of a cinema to cool off and watch the summer blockbusters?  Now that the world cup is over, the summer season of movies has shifted into gear, and one of the first big ones on screens is Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Putting aside any reservations that I have about the existence of these spoiler-inducing prequel to the SciFi classic Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a very good movie.  It's the follow-up to Rise of the Planet of the Apes and follows the continuing story of the super-intelligent Caesar, and ape who was created in a lab in the last film and now leads a group of apes living in the forests on the edge of San Francisco 10 years after the events of the first.  In those 10 years, the human race has been almost entirely wiped out by a simian flu virus and only small pockets remain.  When Caesar's band of apes encounter an advance party of humans from San Francisco scouting out a potential electricity source, tensions mount as there are those on each side who see the other as a deadly threat to their continued existence.

Where Rise... was a science fiction film about the balance that scientists have to strike between advancing their field and playing god, Dawn... is a film about politics.  On the side of the apes there is Caesar (Andy Serkis) and Koba (Toby Kebbel).  On the side of the humans there is Malcolm (Jason Clarke) and Dreyfus (Gary Oldman).  On each side one faction is pushing for all out war, while the other is calling for peace. The film-makers do a good job of not picking sides here.  'We' are on the side of neither the humans nor the apes, nor on the side of war or peace.  We simply stand at a crossroads in history, and watch as historical forces play out, each side as convinced as the other that it is in the right.  It's a film that asks questions about hard choices in realpolitik, about the courage it takes to make peace, and how the decision to do so can backfire on a leader who can be painted as weak and a traitor to his own people (examples throughout history are abundant - Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin come to mind though).

The special effects that are used to create the apes are outstanding.  There were a few moments when the green screened backgrounds seemed to float a little, but I think I was only noticing them because I was in such awe of the effects that were bringing the apes to life, that I was paying even more attention than normal.  Clearly a lot of care has gone into the motion capture process that made use of real actors to generate ape-like movements, the pay-off on screen is well worth it.  The film also allows its simian protagonists to communicate in their adopted sign language, with subtitles for the benefit of the human audience.  To use subtitles as standard in a Holywood film is both brave and serves as a narrative device to remind the audience of the genetic divide between them and the apes on screen.

In terms of negatives, the film does contain a lot of plot holes and conveniences that allow it to fit into the Holywood norm.  For example there's no reason why the humans couldn't already operate their radio without hydro-electric power, since they clearly have petrol and therefore have a way to generate electricity.  How many bullets do they really need to fire in order to test their guns?  Can a man really survive a detonation of C4 explosive in an enclosed area by simply jumping out of the way?  Just how many apes are there?  Like in the first film where they went from about 50 apes to several 1000 in a single cut, here the same thing seems to happen.  This is the biggest problem of all, since the film seems to want to have it both ways.  It seems to want the apes to appear to be a small band of loyal family members, but at the same time numerous enough to engage in a pitched battle against a heavily-armed fortified position.

I wonder how many more of these films there are going to be, and how many more of them are going to be given names that make them sound like the first of a series of prequels.  I guess in theory the studio could carry on making films as long as it has the desire to string out the narrative that the original classic starts with.  Given the kind of shit that we get used to being presented with from the big American studios, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a refreshingly interesting film.  It has science fiction, politics, action and successfully pulls at the heart-strings too.  If all Holywood films could be like this, the world would be a better place.