Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the second movie in the second reboot of the campy 1970s film series which produced far more failures than successes, but this latest entry is such an astonishing accomplishment that it made me forget about its questionable pedigree and abandon my general dislike of modern, CGI- laden, blockbuster cinema. The 1956 science fiction novel La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle (who also authored The Bridge over the River Kwai) spawned a sizable pop-culture franchise, which so far comprises eight films, two television series, and a comic book series, as well as the usual magazines, dolls, and action figures. Besides Boulle's marvelous book, the crown jewel in this entertainment empire is the classic 1968 film version, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, written by Rod Serling and Michael Wilson, and starring Charlton Heston. That film represents a high-water mark in the sci-fi cinema of its day, for its sharp social commentary as well as its groundbreaking use of prosthetic makeup techniques to create the ape characters. The four sequels to that movie, as well as the various live-action and animated TV spin-offs, range in quality from mildly amusing to practically unwatchable. In 2001, Tim Burton directed a dismal remake of the original film, the less said about which the better, and in 2011, the series was launched anew with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, an adequate but greatly overpraised re-imagining whose narrative approach hewed reasonably closely to the original five-picture canon. But until now, no new incarnation of the series has come anywhere close to equaling the original novel and film.

Set ten years after the events of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes forgoes big-name human stars almost entirely, apart from Gary Oldman’s beefed-up cameo as the leader of the remaining human survivors. This time, it's all about the primates. That's the first of several strong choices made by the husband-and-wife writing/producing team of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, who also wrote Rise, screenwriter Mark Bomback (The Wolverine, Unstoppable, Live Free or Die Hard), and director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In), who takes the reigns from Rise’s Rupert Wyatt. The best aspects of the previous picture were the convincing digital ape characters, most notably the alpha male Caesar, played by Andy Serkis in a landmark motion-capture performance. (The human actors in that film, including James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, David Oyelowo, and Tom Felton, were forgettable to embarrassingly awful.) In the new film, Caesar is the leader of the apes and also the bona fide star of the movie, with Serkis deservedly receiving the top billing, while the most prominent human performers, Jason Clarke and Keri Russell, fall somewhere around fourth or fifth on the call sheet. A summer action movie sequel starring mainly CG non-humans sounds like a recipe for a film I’d loathe, but there’s no denying Dawn's power. The digital environments and motion-capture characters created for the film feel infinitely more believable, relatable, and organic than those of James Cameron's Avatar (2009), which is still considered the gold standard for this type of movie-making. Credit for Dawn’s monumental achievement is due not only to the skilled special effects technicians and talented actors who bring the apes to life, but also the director and writers, who have managed to craft a simple and well-constructed story with a confidence, patience, and grace that have been conspicuously absent from most Hollywood blockbusters of the past twenty years.

Though many of the apes in the film can speak, they communicate primarily through sign language, and there are long passages in which these subtitled exchanges comprise the only discourse. As a result, our primary window into these characters' feelings and desires is through their physicality and their remarkably subtle and expressive facial gestures. Modern commercial filmmakers are getting worse at using dialogue to create tenable, nuanced relationships and engaging narratives, but their ability to make digital creatures seem more lifelike and sympathetic keeps improving, and Dawn's quasi-silent-film approach to storytelling plays to this strength rather than the weakness. We accept the apes as full-fledged personalities with their own character traits, and there's no difficulty in telling them apart and keeping track of their alliances and entanglements. In a more typical CGI-based movie, I'd be relieved when more relatable human characters finally showed up, but in this picture, the humans' presence feels almost like an intrusion into the film’s perfectly crafted narrative ecosystem 

Fortunately, the ginned-up backstories and ham-fisted scenes of character development that usually pollute these action blockbusters are handled with care and muted finesse. Clarke, Russell, and Kodi Smit-McPhee play a man, his girlfriend, and his son--a nuclear family for a post-apocalyptic world ?--who enter the ape domain with the hope of restarting a power generator that will keep the remnants of the human race alive and at peace inside the ruins of San Francisco. As with nearly all movies that follow the well-worn storyline of a small band of well-intentioned protagonists who have one chance at avoiding an unnecessary war, there’s a bigoted, trigger-happy supporting character that plays into the hands of a violent, power-mad villain. But the filmmakers even prove adept at handling these ubiquitous characters. They devote far less screen time than typical sci-fi action movies on the defiant xenophobe that all human heroes seem required to bring with them on missions of unity with an unknown other. More impressively, they flesh out a complex and compelling personality for the evil ape antagonist who challenges Caesar's non-violent leadership 

Reeves’s direction is inspired. His work flies in the face of my conviction that modern digital summer blockbusters are so homogenous that it no longer matters who directs them. The quieter scenes are every bit as strong and plentiful as the action sequences, and the pacing is a revelation. The narrative arc unfolds patiently and coherently, but never drags or lingers long enough to make us question the viability of a plot point or grumble about the film’s regrettably unprogressive gender politics. The movie makes allusions to sources as diverse as Shakespeare and Kubrick that are neither forced nor self-congratulatory. The visual style rarely draws attention to itself, and on the few occasions in which it does, including some breathtaking shots in the lean, efficient battle sequences, the nimble camera moves place us squarely in the characters' perspectives, rather than waving the filmmakers' inventiveness in our faces. Sweeping digital overhead shots are few and far between, and close-up, quick-cut, shaky handheld camerawork is almost entirely absent 

The picture’s only disappointment occurs in its final few minutes. The conclusion Caesar comes to at the end feels like a betrayal of everything he has experienced and learned over the course of the story. The final sentiments aren’t germane to the rest of the film, and are seemingly driven by the need to lure viewers back for the next sequel. But unlike recent open-ended middle-chapter movies like The Hunger Games: Catching Fire or The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a captivating, self-contained summertime action flick that delivers the goods with punch and flair, pushing the envelope of digital technology without renouncing traditional cinematic craftsmanship or skimping on storytelling.