I want everyone out there to know how improbable this was. Planet of the Apes didn’t have any real reason to reboot itself; the story had a solid enough reputation historically. But reboot they did, and crappy sublots aside, Rise of the Planet of the Apes Caesar’s (Andy Serkis) origins were riveting enough to warrant a sequel where just the apes got top billing. Enter Matt Reeves, who’s Dawn gave Caesar some internal threats as compelling as his external ones. And finally, improbably, but undoubtedly, War for the Planet of the Apes sticks the landing and turns this surprisingly good reboot into a great trilogy, giving us a new hip director (Matt Reeves) and cementing Andy Serkis’s eventual lifetime achievement award Oscar for his Shakespearean portrayal of CGI characters in emotional crisis.
When we last left the apes, war was coming to them. Caesar has been leading his battalions to keep the humans at a stalemate; bad for humans, because the virus that created the apes is still killing them. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the humans unleash the Colonel (Woody Harrelson) upon the apes, who sees himself as driven by a higher cause. Caesar pins his hopes to end the suffering at the life of the colonel, and embarks upon a mission through his own personal hell to hopefully end this conflict.
The expected war part of War for the Planet of the Apes bookends the movie. The first few battles are expertly staged and beautifully scary, uneasing us right from the get go. And the 2nd one, though a little spectacle heavy, delivers because of what it earns in the middle and what the characters are actually doing during the battle. But that middle section makes the war basically for humanity and apes (in particular Caesar’s) souls. As the last 2 decades of films have taught us, war forces us to confront our deepest darkest feelings of all kinds. Caesar and the Colonel are also subject to some horrid, heavy stuff. But while a lesser movie might focus on the shock of these things, War for the Planet of the Apes is more interested in the character fallout for the apes due to these events. Caesar, still reeling from the events of Dawn, has to also confront these new personal setbacks, and figure out if what previously drove him actually matters or not. In addition, we see how Caesar’s ape code of conduct has rolled out and led Rocket and Maurice and the rest of Caesar’s inner circle of friends to help Caesar and push the ape cause forward. Will these apes stick together as the situation gets worse and worse? How will other apes helping humans murky the waters for Caesar’s tribe? And what do they do with a little girl Nova (Amiah Miller) living by herself? The War for the Planet of the Apes is less Saving Private Ryan and more Apocalypse Now, with Caesar’s arc reaching absurdly Shakespearean levels to the point that even the bags under Caesar’s eyes feel like they are weighing him down.
No offense to Woody Harrelson, who does the best with what he is given, but the real stars are the actors acting as apes (seriously, none of this is made up, it’s all them). Karin Konoval’s Maurice plays the angel to Toby Kebbel’s Koba devil. Maurice reminds Caesar of the importance of a beating heart, using the ape’s inherent goodness and loyalty to sometimes personally keep Caesar from falling apart. Terry Notary sells Rocket’s surprisingly important arc. Rocket at first is a dimwitted ape fruitlessly challenging Caesar, but he has grown under his tutelage to become a strong thinker and a de facto leader when Caesar gets separated from the group. Steve Zahn’s Bad Ape (that’s his real name) could have become a Jar Jar like comedic relief in a movie this grand, but Zahn and Reeves mine the character pieces we learn early on into a really interesting arc in the context of a war movie. He’s still funny, but Bad Ape fits in this world instead of sticking out like a sore thumb. None of this matters though, if Andy Serkis isn’t cast as Caesar in the first movie. I’ll forever be a fan of the guy since he plays one of the best characters in the best movie on my personal list, but when you watch how Serkis gets transformed into Caesar, you realize that all of that is Serkis, not a computer. The weight of experience can be felt when Serkis talks and walks, but even underneath that is this resolve and belief at the core of the ape that keeps the ape going instead of collapsing under grief, stress, torture, etc. These movies would lack that special something without Caesar’s personal rise, dawn, and war, par for the course for the versatile Serkis.
Matt Reeves, welcome! Thanks for taking a promising franchise reboot, and making apes the stars and humans the bit parts. Thanks for delivering Koba on horseback firing twin automatic shotguns and simultaneously digging into how war can Animal Farm apes and humans, and making both appointment watching. And finally, thanks for putting Andy Serkis on the top of the bill, and letting his talent carry you to superstardom and potentially even Batman. An ape got you Batman! Like this planet of the apes franchise, also bizarre and improbable, but awesome!!