The spoiler free review is: I really liked it. Deeper and more fun and exciting than the first one (by which I mean the movie from a couple of years ago not the original which is a classic).
Some space…
A Planet
where apes
evolved
from Men?
So…I really liked this movie. One of my main complaints about the first one is I never really saw Caesar’s motivation to start a revolution. Sure he was treated like an animal and property and there were individual bits of cruelty but I always felt Caesar did what he did because he could, not because he had any real reason to. On the plus side, other than some individual doofuses, there really was no “bad guy” and that was refreshing.
This story was similar. For a long stretch of the story, until there was a coup in Ape City, there really was no Bad Guy just conflicted groups trying to survive who had no reason to trust one another.
It was frustrating (in a good way, if that makes sense) to watch. You just wanted these two societies to stop and talk because there was plenty of room for both of them and they both deserved a shot.
And then of course that all goes to hell and a War begins. And what a war! Very exciting sequences with plenty of characters where you really hope they make it through okay (on both sides).
I am curious how the next movie will work. Will it take place immediately after when the Soldiers they mentioned arrive or will there be another Time Jump. I hope the latter, that would be much more interesting. What did others think?
Haven’t seen it yet but have a question for those who have.
In the first one they make couple of references to the Icarus spaceship on both TV and newspaper. One stating “Icarus enters Mars atmosphere” and the other saying “Lost in space”.
Did they drop any more hints regarding this in the new one possibly foreshadowing it being part of one of the future sequels?
No hints of that mission in the sequel. I assumed that was a nod to the original Planet of the Apes and if those astronauts ever did show up again it would be in the far future like the original movie.
This movie is basically a post apocalyptic story set after the plague that started at the end of the first one.
(I didn’t see it as a revolution but more of a freeing apes in captivity motivation. He saw cruelty at the primate shelter and the lab and felt none of his kind should be treated that way. So they busted out and went to Muir woods.)
Saw ‘Dawn’ today and while it wasn’t perfect it was really good.
Things I liked:
-Koba and Ceasar were awesome. Real tension between the two.
-Bay area setting seemed geographically accurate.
-Ape city was cool.
-Koba playing dumb for the armory guys was good.
-Forest scenes of attacking apes felt ominous.
Just a few nitpicky things:
-SanFran seemed way too overgrown with vegitation for 10 years. I’ve seen ababdoned parts of cities before and while you get some tall weeds they don’t turn into jungles.
-Like the first one I still don’t know where the apes get their mass numbers from. It was a couple dozen from a shelter, a dozen from the lab, and maybe a dozen from the zoo. Then they turned into hundreds.
-The whole ‘top of a building under construction’ setting for a finale seems a bit overdone. Some other SanFran landmark would have been nice.
-The only way they could think of to distinguish Mrs. Ceasar was eyebrow jewelry?
-The image of double-armed firing Koba on horseback through flames almost crossed over into shark jumping territory for me.
All the human characters are totally shocked when the apes show up.
Wouldn’t they have remembered them from the days just before the plague? Sapient apes riding horses, killing cops and making good their escape from captivity is the sort of thing that would merit dinosaur-killer headlines all across the world.
I saw it yesterday before work. It was definitely worth seeing and we will buy it on DVD or Blu Ray when it’s available. Caesar’s baby was freaking ADORBS.
I just saw it without having seen the first one. I didn’t even realize that this was a direct sequel to another movie until I was discussing it afterwards with the friends I saw it with. I thought it was very good.
I saw it this morning and I agree. I can put up with plot holes - honestly, it’s a summer movie, I don’t expect anything that’s supposed to make me think. That’s on top of the fact that the overarching plot of the series is known, so there weren’t going to be surprises there - I knew that going in.
But every big moment was telegraphed, and there wasn’t enough action to keep me engaged - I almost left at one point, and I can count on one had the number of movies I’ve been close to walking out on after paying for them. It also didn’t help that I absolutely thought Gary Oldman was Tom Skerrit for a lot of the movie.
I agree with the 2/10 rating on this one. And I liked the first one.
One would imagine that the first thing someone would do, on finding an armoury, is move the weapons so as to be under their control. Keeping it off-site is just asking for an invasion of apes. Or whatever.
On the other hand, how could the people have known that apes have a magical ability to instantly learn how to load, aim and fire assault rifles, despite never having seen one before? Two-handed on horseback, even.
Yeah, I wondered that as well. More specifically, guns are not usually stored fully loaded. So they would have had to grab guns, ammo and magazines. And learn how to put one into the other into the third to make it work.
Also, since it was implied that the humans didn’t know the apes were there, why were they living in a fortified city? They didn’t even know if any other people were out there. Who were they thinking was going to attack? That bear?
You would suspect people would be, you know, growing stuff to eat, rather concentrating in a fortified place inside town ruins. And if they did fort up, why store their arms outside the fort?
None of it makes any sense, in-movie. Or at least, it is not explained.
The notion that wildly firing assault rifles from horseback is an effective siege tactic against a fortified enemy also needs some work.
I saw it on Sunday and liked it but upon thinking about it, am wondering about the number of intelligent apes. Caesar was made more intelligent because of the drug James Franco was testing on him in the first movie. He used a gas canister to expose the apes in the ape sanctuary to the drug. But in this movie, there were many more apes, including ones born since the last movie. So presumably the greater intelligence is something inherited?
