Discuss War for the Planet of the Apes
Discuss → Movies → War for the Planet of the Apes → General
Saw it last night...my views
posted by The_FoxcatcherSTAFFMOD on July 15, 2017 at 6:49 AM
Its not as great as Rise & Dawn.
Like how Dawn had a lot of 'The Godfather' influence, War too, borrows influences from lot of other movies for its story telling treatment. And that's one of the reason I liked the first half of the movie.
Unlike Dawn, War turns into an adventure film and borrows influences from lot of films (Star wars, LOTR, some classic westerns, Schindler's List & The Great Escape) rather than a straight action thriller. The film starts with human soldiers attacking the apes' base (which isn't that thrilling or a grand of an opening scene as in Dawn) followed by another attack which kills Caeser's wife & elder son. Blue Eyes' death is offscreen and the audience are slapped with a scene with his dead body. That was way demeaning of his character; atleast they could have shown him dying in a fight. The script perhaps didn't have the flexibility because he was supposedly shot dead in his sleep.
The story follows by having the group getting split; with the majority of apes including Cornelius going to find a new home and Caeser/Maurice/Rocket/Luca leading to find & kill the Colonel who killed Cornelia and Blue eyes. The first half is this amazing journey of Caeser and his friends. They are joined by a cute mute girl and a funny ape (Bad ape) (reminiscent of Gollum) .
The problems with the movie are not very serious but little contrived....Spoilers ahead...
They bring out a new plot device wherein now, the Simian virus doesn't straight away kill people but turns humans into mute & primitive. Its like the Virus has evolved and does a different function then before! This plot device lets the writers create two faction of humans....one who believes that anyone who's infected with the virus are to be killed and others who believe that the infected can still be cured. The first faction is led by a ruthless Colonel played by Woody Harrelson who uses apes as slaves. A sense of 'Apes in the middle of war of humans' is not actually established and its still the same old movie about good vs evil, with a mad Leader as the evil; just another Koba but a human this time. Nothing new infact.
Also, there is no clarity from the movie whether the little girl was born mute or was she infected and went mute. If she was infected, there was no sign of primitiveness in her, rather she was still intelligent, contradicting the new effects of the Simian Virus. Also, How did Woody Harrelson's character got infected? He was surrounded by uninfected people and was in a protected colony!
The device used for letting the ape children escape from their camp was too cheesy. The plan which they thought and worked was, throw some mud on the guard so the guard, all alone in the night, will enter the adult apes' camp with lots of adult apes around, he will walk to a particular point where they'd throw some more mud on his face and just then the apes under the ground will pull him off!
At the end, an Avalanche saves the day, leaving the movie little void of creativity and with lot of re-hashed emotional scenes, yet the movie is strong just because of its characters, full credit goes to the original creators (Jaffa & Silver) and subtle references to lot of great movies from which War derives its influences from.
6/10.
Reply by Midi-chlorian_Count
on July 15, 2017 at 7:54 AM
Yes, it's almost as if the virus has mutated. 🤔
It very clearly showed her dead father (presumably?) with the tattooed markings of the General's unit. I thought the implication that he'd taken her awol was relatively clear from that.
He took Nova's doll from Caeser! It even very clearly showed his freshly coughed up blood on it - I actually thought this was an example of the brilliance of how this film made it's nods at the original series.
i.e. in the original, the talking "mama" doll gives the revelation that the "ancient" humans had talked - here, the contaminated doll literally takes away the human (general)'s voice. That is brilliant mirroring far beyond, for example, Rogue One's idiotic nod via the Cantina guys...
Reply by Rtodd110
on July 16, 2017 at 5:07 AM
movie made it very clear she was mute because of the infection. the doll she had infected the colonel.
Reply by domremy
on July 16, 2017 at 3:32 PM
It is better than rise and dawn. Those are popcorn flicks.
As the previous guy said, Woody was infected through the doll. They gave a huge clue by showing the doll next to Woody.
Reply by The_Foxcatcher
on July 17, 2017 at 5:05 AM
Thanks for your inputs. I missed that it was the doll which infected the Colonel. Its an interesting homage to the original.
But still, the girl was intelligent despite being infected. She didn't turn primitive!
One more thing I didn't like was that the Colonel shot Caeser's wife and declared 'Kong is dead'! I mean, can't he make out that she was female and not male?
Reply by Midi-chlorian_Count
on July 17, 2017 at 8:32 AM
Caesar asked his son Blue Eyes to protect his mother did he not? I just took that declaration to be the Colonel's error when he'd killed him - and it added to the drama at that point as Caeser realised that meant someone else, i.e. his son, was dead...
That's a fair point re the girl though - open to interpretation I guess. I read one suggestion that maybe it was just a misreading by the Colonel & that they just went mute - would add to the tragedy of killing his own son if that was true!
Reply by Taylorfirst1
on July 22, 2017 at 9:22 PM
The other posters have made excellent points and informed you of a couple of oversights on your part. Just one more; that wasn't mud they were throwing at the guard. Simians are famous for throwing a certain substance.
Reply by LastLion
on July 22, 2017 at 11:12 PM
I could not care less what your views are.
Reply by intothenightalone
on August 2, 2017 at 6:02 AM
This thread cleared up a few things for me, like what that doll was about.
Reply by manfromatlantis
on August 3, 2017 at 7:11 PM
it was not to my liking.
Reply by No1
on August 10, 2017 at 11:40 PM
Pretty lucky how the colonel weren't infected by his own sick kid.
Pretty lucky how the little girl's dad/guardian weren't infected either.
Then the girl infects the colonel?
Reply by Midi-chlorian_Count
on August 11, 2017 at 3:03 AM
Wow - How did you manage to overcome your incredulity that the whole of humanity didn't die at the end of the FIRST film in order to come up with such well made, insightful observations about this the third film?
Reply by No1
on August 11, 2017 at 11:57 AM
I guess the entertainment value of first two hypnotized me. Had they sucked too, I probably would have asked more questions.