In War of the Planet
of the Apes, the special effects
are so good that even the characters themselves have to comment on them. “Look
at your eyes,” Woody Harrelson’s Colonel says from behind polished sunglasses
to the ape leader Caesar; “Almost human.” Where most films go for either
exceptional storytelling or digital animation of the first order, War for the Planet of the Apes manages
to juggle both.Caesar (Serkis) and his ape clan are recovering from the attack of the humans in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes when The Colonel (Harrelson) arrives with his sights on killing Caesar to save the planet from the apes. Filled with bloodlust at the sneak attack, Caesar sends his apes away and pursues The Colonel in search of vengeance.
As the third film (whether it’s the last in the franchise seems to be a subject of some debate, though franchises never really die these days), War does seem to be the best of the bunch in terms of narrative craft and technical dexterity. The storytelling in the first half of the film recalls Wall-E, with long nonverbal sequences that nevertheless advance the story and the characterization. Of course, this is to say nothing of the success of the computer animation itself, which brings the apes to life in a way that is frankly astonishing. While there might be some cognitive dissonance in knowing that these are rendered by computer, there are disproportionately more moments where that edifice fades altogether, and the simian characters are as human as the ones played by live actors. One must acknowledge, however, the human performers like Harrelson, who do equally pivotal work in performing opposite characters that are not actually there, going a long way to selling the conceit to the audience.
Where the first two films had gone for an epic scope, showing the state of the world degenerating toward the dystopia glimpsed in the 1968 original film, War does well to restrict itself to a singularly personal narrative. Early in the film, Caesar strikes off on his own, allowing the film to breathe without the burden of cross-cutting between plotlines. And while some filmgoers might find these scenes unpleasantly protracted, there’s a certain delight in seeing the film play out at its own pace, particularly as it toys with themes left dangling from the last film. Indeed, I greatly appreciated the way this film wrestles with the violent resolution to the Koba plotline, which rightly continues to haunt Caesar. It’s that sort of attention to detail that makes this film seem more thoughtful; I recall, for example, thinking that Dawn had very little connective tissue to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but this one feels properly of a piece with its predecessors, revisiting both Koba from Dawn and the simian flu from Rise.
Gratefully, however, this film diverges from its predecessors by dint of its utopian vision. Rather than continue to amble toward the dystopia of the Charlton Heston original, War instead imagines a happier ending for the shifting paradigm of men and apes. The Colonel’s fear, that men will become cattle on a planet of apes, was seen in 1968, with Heston’s ability to speak alarming his ape captors, but these apes are different; the particularly affective scenes between orangutan Maurice (named for Maurice Evans, he of Dr. Zaius fame) and the mute human girl Nova (get it?) go a long way to imagining a better world, particularly when contrasted with the internecine and self-perpetuating violence the humans enact on the apes and on themselves.
If there is a fourth film, fair enough, though it’ll take a bit of thread-pulling to get us closer to the 1968 Planet of the Apes. If this is the last, however, it’s a fitting conclusion to the trilogy, framing Caesar as part Noah, part Moses, surviving a great flood and leading his people closer to a promised land. And if we get a spin-off, can it please be the story of Bad Ape, the scene-stealing simian?
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