Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: will it be good?

Koba's performing-monkey stuff for the guys at the armory were my favorite scenes in the movie.

yeah. people in the theater were laughing, but i thought those scenes were among the most utterly terrifying in the whole series.

btw folks who like this film might like "the indian fighter" (and a few other "indian westerns" of the 1950s), it's basically the same plot...

btw i like joshua clover's take on the previous film: http://www.filmquarterly.org/2012/01/fall-and-rise/ (it's the last section of the review)

Will is coded in every regard as the good guy, in comparison both to his avaricious corporate boss and the brutal preserve master, played by Brian Cox, with his yellowed veneer of humanity. Will loves Caesar. Surely this is the moment—an hour in, already!—when good joins with good and the malefactors are given what for, in a rousing finale.

This is precisely what does not happen. His cage thrown open, Caesar spots the leash in Will’s hand and, seeming to reach out to him, he instead closes the door, locking himself in. No pretending that even the most enlightened bondage is more tolerable than an iron cage.

It is a heartbreaking moment: the sorrow of serious politics. To understand the real situation is to understand that the categories of good and evil, of humane and inhumane, of compassionate and cruel—the humanist bedtime tales—do not apply. There is an irreducible antagonism between one group and another, and no amount of moral or ethical grace can remedy it. Love cannot help with it. Working to change things from within cannot help with it. There is no yes that doesn’t come with a leash.

Lest we miss this, the film offers a second fulcrum, ten minutes later. Still in the preserve, Caesar tangles with the gamekeeper’s vile son. After being shocked several times, he manages to grab his tormentor’s arm. “Take your stinking paw off me, you damn dirty ape!” cries the human, reprising in reverse a line from the original. There is a pause, and for the first time Caesar speaks: “No!” He goes on to repeat the word several times as he drags the poor fellow away, sets free his fellow captives, cries havoc, and lets slip the apes of war. Wallace Stevens began one poem, “After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future world depends.” Rise sets that formula on its head, or perhaps its feet, with adamantine force.

there was an audible shudder through the audience when caesar yells "NO!" followed by one woman toward the back appreciatively yelling "damn!".

charles burns must be tickled that black hole is the only comic to survive the apepocalypse.

haven't seen this one yet but I caught the last one on TV again and it's really a good, well-thought out film, it really shattered my expectations (which were quite low, but still)

I haven't seen this one yet (won't unless I hit a discount matinee) and hence skipped the spoilerrific stiff, but...

Reeves’ earnestness is the only emotion you’re given to respond to, and the film eventually stalls out, offering dozens of variations of the same scene in which apes misunderstand humans or vice versa. You twiddle your thumbs awaiting the inevitable warfare, a.k.a. the good stuff. In terms of narrative scope, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is similar to the original film, as both choose to represent Earth’s evolving societies through the conflicts of a handful of ape and human characters. The vistas of the new film are, of course, much larger—and lifeless. You look at these decimated cities and see the toil that goes into making a huge tent-pole summer film....

The evolution of the Apes films is as good an illustration as any of how American pop cinema has evolved. Schaffner’s film was made to make money, and there was no shame in it about that. The film isn’t afraid to be amusing, and, though it’s pitched at children as well as adults, there’s a distinct carnality and liveliness to it.... But Planet of the Apes is still essentially a joke, and a funny and occasionally scary one....

There isn’t a single joke in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and the primary romantic couple is played by the attractive and normally charismatic Jason Clarke and Keri Russell with so little sense of sexual tension that one could easily mistake them for siblings. There isn’t a line of dialogue that’s memorable....

The contemporary blockbuster takes pride in pushing derivative doomsday aesthetic expansiveness at the cost of playfulness—filmmakers don’t seem willing to risk money on the implication that an audience might pay to simply enjoy itself, and it’s easier to numb than to stimulate anyway. The blockbuster justifies that fifteen-dollar theater ticket by pummeling you: You’ve seen something, but what? Are American blockbusters now catering to your sense of nihilism, or vice versa?

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/monkey-business

That last paragraph could be Pauline Kael talking about west side story

Or anybody talking about Cecil b demille

he was an excellent filmmaker (I'm guessing you've seen Ten Commandments '56 and ...?), so you're wrong again

You left off the addemdum to that review, Morbs:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7068/6841249186_627d8fc0f9.jpg

I'm old enough that I'm not without sympathy for "it was better before," just noting that if you're accusing the cinematic blockbuster of being apocalyptic pummeling for the sake of pummeling you don't have to say "contemporary" because that's always been the accusation

There isn’t a single joke in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,

This is very rong.

morbs, i'm glad to hear that you endorse a review of a film that you haven't seen that flatters your own prejudices

the review is pretty vague (it seems to deliberately stay at a very generalized level, without a single citation of a particular moment from either film), but i think it's saying something about the contemporary blockbuster stewing up intimations of "significance" and "seriousness"--and yeah, that's a thing. it sucks much pleasure out of the christopher nolan batman movies foe me. but it's not new to this decade. and i don't really thing it applies to "dawn of the planet of the apes," or at least not to an objectionable extent. i don't see (or enjoy) movies b/c of their "messages" or "significance," i thought this was a fairly engrossing, compelling film that was not w/o its flaws.

sorry for typos, i'm on pain pills and typing is a little strained.

My distaste for the "contemporary blockbuster" isn't centered on this movie, but what I experiences whenever i succumb to seeing one: atomized incomprehensible "action," nonstop high volume, the pompous "darkness" exemplified by the Nolan cartoons, etc. These things have NOT "always" been present in big mersh films no matter how reflexively you claim so.

I quite liked the last Apes film and was surprised this one has a different director (whose Let Me In I like better than the Swedish original).

Morbz just hates when people respond reflexively

let me get my hammer

Go watch the monkeys do their thing, Morbs. It's a terrific picture.

i wrote above that i usually have a pretty bad reaction to contemporary tentpole/franchise movies, and didn't have that reaction to this one. there's a certain kind of self-seriousness present in some contemporary blockbusters (i'd posit the last superman movie in addition to the nolan films as obvious examples) that might be new-ish, but there are other forms of self-importance that beset the blockbuster since its earliest days.

the director of the last film wanted for pre-production time (i.e. more time to write the film) and was replaced since they wanted a new film this year (honestly, three years seems like more than enough time to make a movie to me). it would be easy to use that fact to lambaste the new film but i think it's surprisingly thoughtful. might be even better made, from a stylistic standpoint, than the previous one. the big emotional moments are less unexpected and unusual than in the first one (no big "NOOOOO!" scene, more "so sad, he misses his family").

there's something about the juxtaposition of the sheer size/length, pointlessness, and self-seriousness (or at least bombast) of contemporary blockbusters that causes me to have a really bad reaction in the theater—usually in the form of a temporary existential panic. i didn't feel that way watching either of the recent planet of the apes films.

xpost

wanted MORE pre-production time

sorry again for typos

http://on.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/apes-raises-a-common-question-about-reboots-why-so-serious/2014/07/14/c6682966-0795-11e4-a0dd-f2b22a257353_story.html?tid=hpModule_1f58c93a-8a7a-11e2-98d9-3012c1cd8d1e

I laughed all throughout this movie (double guns kobo on horseback a+++) but Noah was funnier.

So weird to complain about self serious reboots and never actually compare and contrast the current ape movies with the originals

Haven't seen the Heston but I'm under the impression the ending is a little self serious at least

also bet jj abrams was flattered to learn he has a deft touch

You should see the Heston. And yea, she doesn't really compare this one to the originals, just to other reboots (Star Trek and Batman)

Haven't seen the Heston

check, please

promise you won't hang around asking for water refills?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjcpRHuPjOI

yeah nothing self-serious about that opening text

Screenplay by Rod Serling, definitely not know for self-seriousness.

*known

love OG planet of the apes

Most important scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udDZ2PTGs3o

as somebody who read and loved the book as a kid, i can tell you it is pretty self serious and occasionally funny.

are there any good books about the making of it?

original film has plenty of adolescent monkey jokes too.

who is crushed that croup and i didn't meet up in LA?

I think the criticism involving Batman being self[sic]-serious is BATMAN IS BULLSHIT DONE BEST BY ADAM WEST.

not a making-of story (tho that's covered), but a splendid book I own, oft cited by Armond White too:

http://www.jewishjournal.com/images/made/30031e0e49eb3602/618155-L-1_233_356_c1.jpg

There's also a doc emceed by Roddy McDowall about the original five's production that was made for a '90s video release, Behind the PotA, which you can probably find fairly easily.

Cool, thanks Morbs :)

Screenplay by Rod Serling

Apparently mostly concepts, Liberty ending and a few lines left from Serling's script -- he bowed out when the budget was slashed and the movie would no longer take place in a mechanized society. Ex-blacklistee Michael Wilson did the major rewrite.

heston would have made for a good serious-but-leavened batman

picturing that in my head...it's super weird

"villains are a superstitious, cowardly lot..."
http://parallax-view.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/1345_still01_small.jpg

So I ended up watching this last night

The idea that 'the apes are like people!' doesn't come across very well when the apes are in fact, not just 'like people', but 100% the same as a sentimental blockbuster's sketch of a person.

That undercuts the thing the film seemed to want to do, which was to ask, in blockbuster language, whether two different types of being could ever live peacefully together ... but that question falters a bit when the two are so similar

i liked this a lot! but I also realized afterwards that I was so transfixed by the apes I didn't really notice that there's really not much character development going on, the people are v one dimensional, even cesar is kinda one note. oops

also mr veg was all "wtf why would you stay in sf. nothing works!! why not go to the central valley where you can at least grow food"

The movie establishes that humans and apes agree that the most desired things are watching family photos and videos on iPads or cameras and graphic novels, so maybe there are still apple stores and comic book shops in post-apepocalypse SF

honestly Skull Island handled the Vietnam angle better

And yet in Skull Island it was afaict totally pointless.

ape nudity

There is a steamroom scene w/ Dr Zaius and the gorilla general in Beneath, the first sequel to the original.

And yet in Skull Island it was afaict totally pointless.

I disagree! I think "pointless military adventures are bad" worked just fine as a throughline. Hell, the residents of Skull Island were basically commies.

meanwhile this movie literally has "Ape-Ocalypse Now" scrawled on a wall

In any 2017 movie about voyaging to a distant secret island to capture a giant ape, Vietnam allegories are totally superfluous.

I'll take that over 100 minutes in Ape Auschwitz.

"There is a steamroom scene w/ Dr Zaius and the gorilla general in Beneath, the first sequel to the original."

yes. sadly the conservatism of the time made them edit out the mutual ape massage scene that was in there.

"meanwhile this movie literally has "Ape-Ocalypse Now" scrawled on a wall"

that was so good. obv the references are over the top and over done but it is a movie with sentient monkeys

how subtle do you want it to be

I would watch a "The Doors" movie with apes.

love me two times baby
pnce cuz i'm an ape

about Jimbo, the ape king.

The Doors movie could only have been improved by more ape

how subtle do you want it to be

I don't need subtle, I just found that the wink-nod stuff and the extreme grimness made for a really odd and kind of offputting tonal mismatch

The Doors movie could only have been improved by more ape

honestly I would watch just about anything remade with the humans replaced w/ photorealistic apes. instant improvement

i can't wait until we can get rid of SAG completely and make all upcoming movies with CGI ape

don't even need to get rid of the acronym, it can be the Screen Apes Guild

will no one think about the live apes who are losing jobs?

why does Donald, for instance, wear a top but not a bottom ? anything else would make more sense (fully dressed, wearing only a bottom or nothing...) !

This is a good joke in Friends: something like, why does Donald wear a top but no bottoms, yet ties a towel around his waist when he gets out of the bath?

Invisible pants

Porky Pig Style

ahah, topic covered (and very good point about the towel) !

I was reading that AV Club thing with David Warner, and they mention his role in Planet of the Apes, and I kept thinking, huh, I don't remember that character at all. Then I realized I had completely forgotten the Tim Burton movie existed.