Puts hair on your chest

When Planet of the Apes came out in 1968, it was instantly one of the most iconic films of the decade and as can be the case with originating movies of such power, the plotlines proved strong enough to sustain a half-decent sequel – Beneath the Planet of the Apes. The subsequent three outings in the franchise proved very sorry affairs though, seemingly only released to retain the copyright. Tim Burton offered a very poor remake in 2001 with Mark Wahlberg, his now wife Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Roth and Michael Clarke Duncan – all the wonder and mystery was stripped away in favour of a ‘chase movie’.

Still, the Tim Burton remake can still stand as the end point for a new take on the story, Monkey Planet, written by Pierre Boulle. Rise of the Planet of the Apes takes as it starting era the same as the fourth of the original series of Planet of the Apes – Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. This is clearly outlined by the ape character Caesar and the extermination of much of mankind at the end of the movie (this is not much of a giveaway as people really should know this anyway). In Rise, Andy Serkis was the big draw, animatronically portraying Caesar to give a most lifelike ape. He shared screentime with James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox and David Oyelowo. This was a picture of outstanding narrative, drama and tension. As with Deep Blue Sea (and, in some respects, I am Legend), the search for a cure to Alzheimer’s Disease precipitates the apocalyptic outcome. There are some excellent small moments such as when the Dodge Landon (Tom Felton), the son of ape-handler John Landon (Cox), utters the immortal Charlton Heston line from the very first film or the newspapers reporting on a missing manned mission to Mars (which will contain the human characters of Tim Burton’s remake) – little nods and winks to those in the know. The climatic battle on the Golden Gate Bridge outdoes both A View to a Kill and X-Men: The Final Stand. Instead of the launch of nuclear weapons by a vengeful Caesar, humanity is brought to the edge of extinction by a global pandemic.

This is the starting point for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which mirrors the fifth of the originals, Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Like Sharnado 2: The Second One, this sequel outdoes its predecessor slightly by going deeper into the issues. Dawn is very profound and savagely tragic, leaving a deep impression long after leaving the cinema. The way it deals with racism is quite unique as the heroic Caesar admits that the disastrous sequence of events that overtakes him is his fault because he trusted apes over humans because they were apes, rather than gauge their personalities – he concludes that apes with enhanced intelligence and humans are not so different, which is a bit pat but is necessary for his headstrong son to understand. Dawn has some unfortunate timing with the spread of the ebola epidemic in West Africa and the death of a Liberian in Lagos, Nigeria after taking a flight there – it is quite a topical and terrifying scenario. Issues of credibility emerge when the survival rate is identified as one in 500 – a very low immunity, even for a bio-engineered virus, given that apes can survive it and our very similar genetic makeups. That leaves 14m humans alive who are further decimated in conflict as law and order collapse.

One surviving outpost is in San Francisco and for those who live in this city, it must be a hoot to see famous landmarks getting the ravaged treatment, given that other US cities, especially New York, are usually given the destructive treatment first. This holdout is topped by a half-constructed tower that looks not unlike the cover for Civilization III and is run by Gary Oldman’s Dreyfus (an ironic name for a person of supreme power, given the oppression of the real-life namesake). Everybody here has lost some or all of their families to ‘Simian Flu’ and has to form new contacts and liaisons with the survivors. Jason Clarke’s Malcolm leads a party of humans to restart a hydroelectric dam to bring power ‘the colony’ which is running low on reserves of fuel and inadvertently trespasses on Caesar’s ape domain (which has as a symbol for 'home' the window of the attic where Caesar lived in Rise). After some misunderstanding, apes and humans work together to restore power to the circumscribed part of San Francisco. But the embittered Koba (portrayed via computer by Toby Kebbell), who was tortured by humans through experimentation in Rise, becomes an agent provocateur, sowing seeds of distrust between the communities before attempting to assassinate Caesar and lead an ape onslaught on ‘the colony’, just as the humans celebrate the electrical surge and Gary Oldman finally gets to see pictures of his dead family again on his iPad (which he didn’t think to unplug for many years; also a video camera in Caesar’s old house was handily plugged in when the power flooded the neighbourhood). The moment of possible harmony between the two is torn asunder by the exhortations of the evil Koba, who really is a bit of a Hitler figure, not above imprisoning fellow apes or violating the scared law of ‘ape not kill ape’. As Caesar taunts pointedly, “Koba belongs in cage.”

This story really affected me in a way few films have recently done. The third instalment (and there surely shall be one) must be called 'War of the Planet of the Apes', as it ends, like Dawn, on a moment of triumph and tragedy. As it stands, it is hard to see the standards falling away as it did in the original five – the creators of the modern series have flair and stunning imagination.