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When last we saw Caesar the noble ape, he was in the redwood forest, freaking out his adoptive father James Franco by revealing that he could talk. You’ve always suspected that James Franco would cause the end of the world, and in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, he has (sort of). A deadly virus has escaped from the lab where scientists were testing drugs to cure Alzheimer’s disease, and at the end of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it had begun to spread.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes picks up the story ten years later, with the human population dramatically reduced by the simian virus, and the ape population led by Caesar (and his lieutenants who escaped from the lab with him) leading a utopian, earth-friendly, organic-artisanal existence in the forest. They hunt other animals, but kill just enough for their needs, they teach their young to live in harmony, and their carbon footprint is zero—apes are the new hippies, only less annoying. Caesar is married with children. His right-hand ape is called Koba, and you know what happens when anyone is named after Josef Stalin.

Everything is fine until the humans arrive. They’re from the small colony of human survivors in San Francisco and they’re trying to restart the hydroelectric dam because they’re about to run out of power.

Trouble erupts, despite the best intentions of human and ape. Everyone thinks he’s doing the right thing, but fear and suspicion clouds judgement. The humans are represented by Jason Clarke (from Zero Dark 30, which is officially our favorite hunk lab because it had Jason, Edgar Ramirez, Chris Pratt, Joel Edgerton, even that banlag guy from SHIELD in Captain America: The Winter Soldier), Keri Russell and Gary Oldman, but we’re not looking at them. We’re looking at the CGI apes, who are amazing, led by Andy Serkis the emperor of motion capture, who gets first billing at last.

Caesar learns that there’s little that separates apes from man, except maybe a serious waxing. We miss the quieter moments of inter-species interaction—Caesar with his adoptive human father and grandfather John Lithgow—but the filmmakers have set out to make an action movie and they’ve done it. There’s a great bit where Koba makes monkeys out of a couple of humans by playing to their prejudices; the scene in which Clarke’s teenage son befriends an ape by reading to him from The Black Hole by Charles Burns (a graphic novel about a disease that disfigures teens, turning them into social outcasts) does not work as well.

You can read Dawn of the Planet of the Apes as a parable on racism or as an unofficial spinoff from the opening episode of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or you can watch it as a Man Vs Ape smackdown. Even if the title is a spoiler, we’re still looking forward to the third movie and wondering if Dr. Zaius will turn up in the third movie and how the apes will get to New York to upend the Statue of Liberty.

Rating: Highly Recommended.