Matt Reeves to direct "War for the Planet of the Apes" - Part 1

[Kane52630]

My review

Spoiler

This was incredible. It's one of the rare summer movie blockbusters that has the budget of a Michael Bay Trashformers movie with a story and intelligence of an Oscar award winning movie. While the movie does has "War" in the title and there is action in it, this isn't a traditional war movie. It's more or less a war within Caesar and his apes. The subtext for this movie is an interesting mixture of a couple different biblical tales along with slavery and the Holocaust. They really do a great job on closing this arch of the story with Caesar. The cast was great as expected, the little girl in particular did an amazing job emoting without any lines of dialogue. Steve Zahn as Bad Ape was great and served his job well by bringing in much needed levity. And of course Andy Serkis is doing some of his best work right here as Caesar. This year has been really good for genre movies and this is no exception.

9.5/10

 

[Broseph44]

My review

Spoiler

This was incredible. It's one of the rare summer movie blockbusters that has the budget of a Michael Bay Trashformers movie with a story and intelligence of an Oscar award winning movie. While the movie does has "War" in the title and there is action in it, this isn't a traditional war movie. It's more or less a war within Caesar and his apes. The subtext for this movie is an interesting mixture of a couple different biblical tales along with slavery and the Holocaust. They really do a great job on closing this arch of the story with Caesar. The cast was great as expected, the little girl in particular did an amazing job emoting without any lines of dialogue. Steve Zahn as Bad Ape was great and served his job well by bringing in much needed levity. And of course Andy Serkis is doing some of his best work right here as Caesar. This year has been really good for genre movies and this is no exception.

9.5/10

Glad you loved it Kane, and yeah like I said on the last page War more so deals with the War within Caesar himself. Love it.

 

[Marvolo]

Wasnt able to watch this this past weekend. Ill try to watch it this coming weekend.

 

[Kane52630]

Glad you loved it Kane, and yeah like I said on the last page War more so deals with the War within Caesar himself. Love it.

Yep... also Bad Ape is a scene stealer and I can't imagine how much darker the film would be if he wasn't in there.

 

[TheVileOne]

Haha right, with a few other biblical stories thrown in?

I did think it was clever how they used the classic X scarecrows and put Caesar on it, obviously heavy-handed but still evocative.

Overall, this movie was good but very predictable. I agree with the comments that the third act dragged and lost its luster. Once again, so much richness is conveyed early of the simians. Maurice is my favorite.

Spoiler

I knew Ceasar would die at the end but still lead his race to a new oasis. How could someone familiar with the series not see it?

Woody Harrelson was really great in the role but he should have gotten more screen time instead of the tedious comedic relief with the rag tag sidekicks. I dunno, I would have allocated that time different but Steve Zahn's character was a great technical achievement.

I'm satisfied with the movie but I came away a smidge let down. I went with a group and everyone was a little letdown I'd say. I might have liked it best despite being paint-by-numbers.

The apes are so wonderful, a pure tribal species with great devotion, I love their society.

I'm down to see more. I caught all the easter eggs I'm sure as I've always been a PoTA geek since elementary days.

Rating was about a 7.5 outta 10. Great atmosphere and the tight frmaing works really well, especially early on.

I'd say this is pretty spot on.

 

[Broseph44]

Yep... also Bad Ape is a scene stealer and I can't imagine how much darker the film would be if he wasn't in there.

Yeah Bad Ape was great, enjoyed him a lot.

 

[scarlet-witch]

I like how Maurice essentially trolled Bad Ape in the tunnels. He knows Bad Ape doesn't know sign, and he is capable of speaking, yet he's just pointing to stuff and making Bad Ape figure it out.

 

[Immortalfire]

Saw it Sunday night, I liked it a lot. But I think Dawn is my favorite of the series.

 

[Bruce Malone]

Where is this series to go from here?

It seems like they either just slowly continue on to where they left off or jump right to a pseudo remake of the originals ala Tim Burton.

 

[terry78]

Maurice was probably my favorite due to him basically being the most sensible out of everybody. That one scene when he first meets Nova though....best CG ever.

 

[Luigi]

Matt Reeves managed to stick the landing, what an incredible film. I'm a bit surprised that this film got greenlit, with it being a bleak slow burn blockbuster with only a few set pieces.

 

[redhawk23]

Pretty incredible movie overall. Stylistically, it was not so much of a jump as between Rise and Dawn but everything that Dawn succeeded in War took even further.

This new series version of Caesar is such a fascinating character. Over the course of the series we watched his entire life from infancy. We saw as he struggled to define himself, trapped between humans and apes. We saw him as an idealistic and in some ways naive leader. Now we've seen him struggle with the weight of his past decisions and the force of his own hatred.

We truly entered Caesar's mind state in this film in a way that was quite unexpected. Caesar struggling with a darker side himself, embodied in the visions of his own enemy is such a classical and deeply psychological story telling device and it was novel indeed to see it applied to a cgi ape.

I can perhaps understand if some felt the film was predictable but if that is the case it is only because the film reached its logical end. The kind of ending that is so perfectly supported and telegraphed by the rest of this series. Caesar is a very particular kind of figure and there is an extent to which that kind of figure more or less has to end. Its less a matter of cliche than it is a type of myth.

Myth. That's the kind of weight that this movie had much of the time. So much of it felt like a kind of bible story. Caesar is that kind of figure, leading his people (later literally through a desert). But even individual moments seemed to take on that kind of weight, like the simple act of Nova bringing Caesar food and water.

I have always been impressed by the effects of these films. The effects of Rise are very much of their time and belie the truncated production and post production schedule fox allotted. The CGI gave us the start of great characters but doesn't necessarily hold up to the eye.

Dawn felt like a great leap forward in terms of the effects and the performances they allowed to shine through. They were able to make the technology for the capture fully mobile allowing them to shoot outside and in the woods. This new film feels like the apotheosis of the technique though. I feel like with the exception of one or two shots with Bad Ape, nearly all of the cgi finally felt like the apes physically existed in the space rather than being painted in. The amount of nuance in the animation is incredible. The texturing and detail is just astounding to see.

 

[spiderman2]

Just got back from seeing the movie a 2nd time about 45 minutes ago and I have to take back what I said before. The movie is incredible and may be my favorite of the Apes movies was just a lot different then I was expecting when I first saw it. Its now one of my all time favorite trilogy's. 1 Dark knight trilogy 2 Star wars 4-6 trilogy 3 Apes rises threw War 4 Spider-Man 1-3.

 

[StormC]

I hope my second viewing will go over better as well. I'm waiting to take my mom to see it.

Dark Knight trilogy will always be numero uno for me, but Nu Apes and Back To The Future rank highly for me. Star Wars would make the list but I'm not the biggest fan of ROTJ.

 

[spiderman2]

I hope my second viewing will go over better as well. I'm waiting to take my mom to see it.

Dark Knight trilogy will always be numero uno for me, but Nu Apes and Back To The Future rank highly for me. Star Wars would make the list but I'm not the biggest fan of ROTJ.

I felt like the part of the movie that felt slow the first time didn't fell slow this time and I cant say enough about how amazing the soundtrack is and the begging of the movie is just something else. To me ROTJ is the best star wars movie ever. As you can see Spider-Man 1-3 is my 3erd favorite trilogy but it would be even higher if not for the fact that while I still like Spider-Man 3 over all it was one of the most disappointing movies I have ever seen and I think 1 has not aged that great. The crazy thing about Apes is that I can normally tell if I am going to like a movie or not like 95% of the time I can tell if I am going to like a movie or not from the trailers and back when the first 1 came out I had zero interest in seeing it but heard a lot of good things about it and ended up watching it when it was on TV one day and I was kind of bored. I ended up likely it and when I saw the trailer for dawn I was like this looks great and went and saw it and ended up loving it. So I got into the franchise late and didn't even care about it at the start lol.

 

[scarlet-witch]

The Apes trilogy is definitely in my top 3 of trilogies. Star Wars 4-6, LOTR and this.

 

[Monochron]

Just watched. I hope Batman fans realize how fortunate they are to have Matt Reeves.

 

[StormC]

My top five film trilogies would look something like:

1. The Dark Knight
2. Nu Apes
3. Back To The Future
4. Star Wars
5. Toy Story

I haven't seen LOTR since theaters but I've been meaning to rewatch it.

 

[spiderman2]

LOTR I could never get into when it comes to Matt Reeves and him doing batman it is hard for me to get excited because with how great the dark knight trilogy is it is going to be really hard for the next batman movies to live up to the dark knight trilogy but we will see.

 

[JeetKuneDo]

Favorite trilogies would be

Star Wars
LOTR
Apes
Toy Story

 

[Kane52630]

1. LOTR
2. Apes
3. Toy Story

4. TDKT

 

[Patchwork Man]

Just watched. I hope Batman fans realize how fortunate they are to have Matt Reeves.

He's the director I wanted DC to add to the stable. Mission accomplished.

 

[Broseph44]

I don't see anyone mentioning the Indiana Jones or Godfather trilogies!

 

[StormC]

I don't see anyone mentioning the Indiana Jones or Godfather trilogies!

Indy trilogy is solid but not my favorite. Only seen Godfather 1 (and isn't the third one terrible?).

 

[Broseph44]

Indy trilogy is solid but not my favorite. Only seen Godfather 1 (and isn't the third one terrible?).

Godfather 3 is definitely not on par with 1&2 at all, but IMO it isn't terrible or the atrocity some make it out to be. It's a pretty good movie, in particular the latter half of the movie. Some really emotional stuff to the conclusion of Michael's story.