War for the Planet of the Apes Review

A Solid Trilogy Limps to the Finish Line...

Braden White

War for Planet of the Apes 2017©

The dystopian film was arguably to the late 60s-70s as comic boo movies are to the late 2000's-2010's. It seemed like every novel featuring an abundance of social commentary/sociological themes relating to current political and environmental threats set in a bleak future was turned into a large budget film with obvious symbolism lead by Charlton Heston. Its very difficult to say that the original Planet of the Apes films still hold up or where ever anything other than products of their time. This was evident in the failure of the 2001 reboot, which did in fact follow closer to Pierre Boulle's original novel. Despite this the world and mythos of the films would be fascinating in any decade. Thus enters the 2011 prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which succeeds through its faults thanks to a fresh take expanding on a long dead franchise nearing a half a century.  Although its followup Dawn of the Planet of the Apes faced a mess of cliches and an hour long stall in the middle, its breathtaking visuals and heart pounding action made for one of the best blockbusters of summer 2014. Thus enters the third film in the new trilogy War for the Planet of the Apes, once more directed by Matt Reeves. Caesar continues a defensive fighting strategy deep in the woods until he sets out on a revenge mission for the man who killed his family. How does this one match up in terms of the franchise and other summer blockbusters.

Well not great. While still surpassing all films up until the 2011 reboot, War faces all the same struggles as Dawn while adding some problems. The pacing issues, flat human characters, clichés and an massive eventless slump in the middle all return, now joined by new additions such as a pointless and unfunny comic relief, stupid decisions, ridiculously irrational character motivations and a plot that struggles to justify its existence. For a 144 minute film an easy 100 minutes feel like a slog as characters move from A to B introducing new characters, such as a pointless child actor and the aforementioned failure of a comic relief. Events happen to happen and the plot moves forward by the slowest definition. The forgettable characters from the previous film fail to produce the movies early emotional moments- a trend that would follow throughout the whole movie. The human characters have never been the strong points of these films however prior films had at least one to enjoy where here the only one memorable is Woody Harrelson's "Colonel", and by memorable I mean he is single handedly responsible for every driving force in the movie. Harrelson's character is sloppily written to be sympathetic which is painfully obvious yet fails under the over exaggerated characteristics previously showcased. While avoiding spoilers character and narrative choices are unintentionally stupid, specifically the driving force for the climactic battle. Speaking of the final battle I'd assume by the tittle that the Apes would be involved more in the fighting but instead we see the last few humans on earth deciding to fight each other. It might be the contained setting for the film's second half but the movie also feels very small scale and up until the very end seems like an unnecessary addition to the trilogy. Where the first two films over drastically different stories which forward the modern day story by slowly piecing together the history of the first film. However here only a few answers are given all of which were to questions no one was asking. All of which makes the whole movie seem kind of pointless. 

Despite everything I just pointed out, I wouldn't call WFTPOTA a bad movie. Everything outside of the writing room is pretty stellar. Human performances sway between poor and above decent, while the apes continue to showcase some of the greatest motion capture performances. Andy Serkis provides a fascinating visual growth of his character over the course of the trilogy with small ticks and movements. Initially a majority of ape traits with subliminal human characteristics in 2011. Now six years later the performance has grown to feature mostly human traits while sometimes showing ape-like ones. It takes a pretty clever actor and director to include this visual storytelling which many people may take for granite. While the effects haven't quite improved like they had between Rise and Dawn they are still undoubtably impressive, (That orangoutang will never be anything short of a perfect real-life recreation. The action pieces are few and far between and missing a lot of the ape action we had previously seen, however when it amps up it is generally heart-pounding. The best way to sum up the film is great from some aspects and poor in others with little in between, ultimately decent yet disappointing compared to the prior two films. 

6/10