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

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

And I thought they didn't really follow through on the threatening first sight you get of the apes swinging silently through the trees hunting deer - if they were that scary all the way through, then the question 'Can humans live with these beings' would have been sharper

cardamon, i like the spice that is your namesake. i really had rice flavored with cardamon at a persian restaurant and it was really good. just so you know.

I try to live up to that spice

I'm willing to admit that I might not have 'got' this film

I enjoyed this. Not as much as Rise which is great because of the sweetness and the character development. This seems very much a second-in-a-series film, and it's over the top with the explosions and action, but it was still awfully good. One, it looks amazing. This is the best CGI in a film so far, the only poor point being when Felicity interacts with the baby ape (presumably there was no mo-cap for that). I'm interested to see what the 3rd movie does; if it's just an all out war, I think that will be boring, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are going to go somewhere unexpected.

ok, this diplomatic mission is our one last desperate chance to rescue this whole sorry affair. i want my gf, my kid and let's see we need one more guy... hey! you! hotheaded dude with a rifle, a hair trigger and a massive chip on your shoulder who got us into this mess! get in the truck big shooter!

yeah the more i ponder this the stupider it seems

if it's just an all out war, I think that will be boring

maybe not if it was directed by james cameron... in 1987.

the climactic crane'n'girder fight was very die hard i thought

(no bad thing of course)

They handwaved that with some mumbo jumbo about needing his technical knowledge but yeah, that just underlined that it was BS

they explained he was the only one who knew how to fix the hydroelectric dam, otherwise they would have gotten rid of him

i guess it's a screenwriter's trick but it didn't bother me too much

that didn't really bother me as much as having injured wheezing caesar talking instead of signing.

so many criticisms about a movie about monkeys fucking ruling the SF Bay

never wanted to go to muir wood til now THANK U CAESAR

protip: "muir woods" is in vancouver

buzzkill much rog?

pretty sure yr buzz will not be killed in vancouver

I loved the first movie, was pretty much unmoved by this one. I got a modestly at best important text message 10 or 15 minutes before the end and decided, hey, fuck it, I'm just going to bail. I hate that every blockbuster these days just leads up to two groups shooting machine guns at each other. Also, almost every human being in this movie was miscast and poorly written. People make fun of Franco, fine, but he was essential to the first movie. This, half the dudes seem cast for their punchability. And really, gah, "hey, there's this paranoid hot-tempered guy who hates apes and wants to shoot them, let's take him along to negotiate with the apes, who requested no guns and don't trust humans!"

I was also amazed that Keri Russell was in this, but didn't get anything close to a close-up like 20 minutes in. I kept thinking, oh, is that Keri Russell? And then after I realized it was her I didn't care, because who was she in this? Some doctor? A barely-written cog in an ape-wheel machine that didn't need her?

Great ape effects, though. Hope the next one is all apes and sign-language, because I hated how these smart apes essentially spoke like cavemen crossed with Tonto. "Me no like this movie. This movie tread familiar ground. Me do something else with time."

i will raise my hand in favor of more keri russell, more keri russell close-ups

"ape no like helping verbs!"

THIS TIME IT'S WAR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEP1Mk6Un98

At this point I will watch Woody Harrelson do anything, so.

well, yeah

this was so close to being a good trailer until the quasi-title drop

if all big Hollywood CGI fests were as good as the previous two Apes films, we'd be in paradise. hoping this one doesn't let us down

although I'm concerned this will be more like just the last 30 mins of the last one. too much shooting and not enough cool ape stuff

this was so close to being a good trailer until the quasi-title drop

that was the best bit

Never saw Dawn until last night; pretty good, even though the war-movie last act is too long and familiar, and Keri Russell is just doing her concerned-mom thing from her TV show w/out the lethal edge.

that scene with the two guards and the ape is straight out of "Prometheus" dumb behavior.

Never saw Prometheus, but that was one of the more knowing bits of social satire I thought.

Serkis has pioneered this motion-capture thing for actors, obviously. I might even pay to see the new one.

why wd you title the first movie Rise and the second Dawn, rather than the other way round?

that bothered me too lool

the new one is the least of the three though it has its moments

yeah the naming struck me as a bit weird too

Brunch of the Planet of the Apes

Return Of The Planet Of The Apes: Apes Webinar

Redistricting of the Planet of the Apes: Tenderloin

although I'm concerned this will be more like just the last 30 mins of the last one. too much shooting and not enough cool ape stuff

No doubt I have a post saying this upthread, but the last film I made it until maybe up to the last 10 or 15 minutes or so, looked at my watch, then just decided I was so sick of watching monkeys shooting machine guns that I just left.

Planet of the Apes: SoPA

the new one mostly features apes using arrows and shit

Planet Of The Apes Lite

they could do a faithful mid-budget version of the original novel now, w/ a high-tech CG Ape City, but of course it is a talky satire and hence of zero interest to Fox.

I was so sick of watching monkeys shooting machine guns

does not compute

yeah cannot comprehend

I recognize that on paper it makes no sense. But perhaps the monkey CGI is so good that I stopped thinking of them as humanoid monkeys and more just people firing machine guns like any other action movie.

still not following u

this was great, good ending to this part of the story. if they go on it would be interesting to see what they do, but they don't need to, as this kind of sets things up for the original film.

a few questions: 1) I assume that guy wasn't the girl's father because she shows no emotion at seeing him dead, as compared to the tears she sheds over the dead monkey about 20 minutes later 2) the virus robbing people of speech: she seems fine despite having no speech, so my guess is that it only affected the ability to talk, it didn't do anything else. but how long do we think she was like this? 3) it's never really clear how bad the rest of the world is. they seem to be travelling across Utah to Colorado at the end and don't encounter any people, so by this point, is most of humanity wiped out?

it's never really clear how bad the rest of the world is. they seem to be travelling across Utah to Colorado at the end and don't encounter any people, so by this point, is most of humanity wiped out?

honestly despite the annoying opening crawl there was a lot about the world and even just the spatial logic of the movie that was completely lost to me

^^ this. i'm like are they headed to tahoe?

i assumed this took place between northern california and washington (it looks like Muir Woods again at the beginning and looked like Muir Beach where they found the girl) but they seemed to move very far north pretty quickly, I guess monkeys have faster velocity than I thought.