JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Yes, a movie that makes us root against our species also shows humanity’s potential for greatness. This humanity resides in Caesar the ape (nurture wins this argument). He is a hero in the classical sense, possessing what the Greeks call arete.

Few had high hopes for a prequel trilogy to a 1960s science-fiction movie that had already spawned a movie series, TV series, a failed reboot (Burton-Wahlberg) and this classic Simpsons musical sketch.

I hate every chimp I see, from chimpan-A to chimpan-Zee…

But they did it. From Rise of the Planet of the Apes, where James Franco raised Caesar the super-intelligent ape and accidentally brought about the end of the human race; to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, where Caesar tries to establish peaceful coexistence with the remaining humans while fighting off the challenge to his leadership from Koba, who believes in total war with the humans; to War for the Planet of the Apes, the trilogy has grown stronger. This conclusion to the Apes trilogy is majestic.

Credit the writers, the directors, the musical score (Michael Giacchino again) and Andy Serkis. If the Academy will not honor Andy Serkis for his acting because it is aided by technology, then it will have to create the Andy Serkis Motion Capture Acting Award, because that is where the cinema is going. (I have loved Andy Serkis since he revealed that his Gollum was based on his cat barfing out a hairball.)

Heroes are not heroes because they are perfect, but because they struggle against their own flaws. In War, Caesar grapples with his consuming thirst for revenge. New characters are introduced: the Colonel (Woody Harrelson) who advocates eliminating all the apes and all the infected humans, Nova (Amiah Miller), a human child adopted by the kindly orangutan Maurice (Karin Konoval), and Bad Ape (Steve Zahn), a chimpanzee from a zoo. Caesar is the hero; Bad Ape is the emotional core, conveying through his halting speech and demeanor what it is like to have lived in a cage and to fear returning to that cage. The Colonel is clearly Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, as the “Ape-pocalypse Now” graffiti reminds us. All directors who grew up in the 1980s aspire to make Apocalypse Now (as we saw in Skull Island, in which Toby Kebbell the former Koba played Kong). That is not necessarily a bad thing.

I agree totally with the movie’s point that the fastest way for humans to fall down the food chain is for them to lose the power of speech.

Given the success of this trilogy, we can expect another Planet of the Apes reboot. If they maintain this level of emotional engagement, it could be good.

Watch it!!!!

P.S. While watching the trailer for Atomic Blonde I was reminded (as I was reminded by the TV series Deutschland ’83) that New Wave (Depeche Mode, New Order, etc) was the music of the last days of the Cold War.