WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES

PLANET DER AFFEN - SURVIVAL

 Shown in 3D in select theatres

 © 2017 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved

A Film by

MATT REEVES

http://www.warfortheapes.com

Movie review by dalia di giacomo 

Release in Switzerland

Director
Matt Reeves

Cast
Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn, Amiah Miller, Terry Notary, Judy Greer, Karin Konoval, Ty Olsson, Sara Canning.

Genre
Sci-Fi / Action

Web
http://www.warfortheapes.com

Official Synopsis
In War for the Planet of the Apes, the third chapter of the critically acclaimed blockbuster franchise, Caesar and his apes are forced into a deadly conflict with an army of humans led by a ruthless Colonel. After the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind. As the journey finally brings them face to face, Caesar and the Colonel are pitted against each other in an epic battle that will determine the fate of both their species and the future of the planet.

You are impressive. Smart as hell. You're stronger than we are. But you're taking this all much too personally. So emotional!

Review by dalia di giacomo

I say at once that this another great movie that will make our summer 2017  better, as well as our DVD/Blue ray collection afterwards. This is the an optimal sequel of Dawn, which was already a huge success. This movie is full of action yet is "so emotional". You will be caught in the story immediatelly and already from the very beginning of the movie you automatically will look at the apes as they were true humans. The 3d version (that I could attend in the press screen in Zürich) is a discrete 3d rendering that underlines the many feelings that this movie will arise. In this film happens something that I didn t feel in the previous chapters of the saga: this time you totally feel and have compassion for Cesar's Apes. They are indeed the true human beings, maybe they are what humans have forgotten to be and in your mind you will fight and support them till the end of the film.  The plot takes place two years after the events of the last film. Caesar's comunity have retreated to the woods and they know that the enemy, the ruthless Colonel McCullough (Woody Harrelson), will show no mercy. And they know that they must seek a new place, not imagining that the new place will be the planet. 

 “The film is much bigger than any of the others in this iteration of the franchise – and at the same time, we don’t lose the core, which is that emotional story that relates to Caesar and the apes,” says director Reeves. “So how do you do something grand scale in the background and something tremendously powerful and intimate in the foreground? And something like David Lean’s River Kwai was a good inspiration for that, because it's very much a battle of wills and in a certain way, this story becomes a battle between Caesar and the Colonel…The stakes are very personal, and what hangs in the balance are the lives of these apes. So, that was a lot of fun, and we spent a lot of time dreaming and playing in that way, as if we didn't have to write a screenplay, and then the script came into being. We were very excited and so was the studio.”

Director  Reeves crafted the story of the previous film with writer Mark Bomback. Then, Reeves and Bomback started to design this next chapter: “We got a theater at Fox and a big part of our work was we'd spend part of the day talking and then spend another part of the day watching movies. And we watched The Bridge On The River Kwai, we watched Apocalypse Now, we watched The Outlaw Josey Wales, we watched Unforgiven, we watched all the Planet Of The Apes movies, we watched The Empire Strikes Back,” Reeves explains. “It was incredibly fun but it was also very rejuvenating. And we were searching for what this war movie should feel like. Because the one thing that was clear was that's what the movie was going to be, that was what the apes were on the precipice of at the end of Dawn, war.”

Indeed I think that humanity's last warrior, the Colonel J. Wesley McCullough (Woody Harrelson), reminds somehow of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando) in Apocalypse Now.  The Colonel  realizes that apes are evolving, while the Simian Virus is having the opposite effect on humans:  they are devolving, losing speech. Although the Colonel is brutal, I dont see him as villain. He is just fighting a holy war in the worst way. I am sure that  you all , as human beings, will not identify yourself with him, and not because of his actions, but because Caesar appears more human  than the rest  of the humanity that has survived till now. Andy Serkis, the actor who gives life to Caesar in the movie, says:  “Woody and I really got in each other’s heads, which we had to do for these characters pitted against one another.  Caesar and the Colonel both have some insight into the other despite the fact that they are the heads of species which are going to clash terribly. There is this bizarre respect between them that Woody also understood. Woody helped me find Caesar’s ambivalence because his Colonel is not the straightforward villain he might have been. Woody brings so much honest emotion that he creates someone very beguiling in the Colonel, and Caesar has to reckon with what they share.”  

The storyline is dramatic, intense, at times even painful, spectacular yet intimate. For me, Caesar reaches a new dimension.  In my opinions he is no longer a surprising and wise leader, he becomes a father figure, a war-time general, a prisoner that will set his people free, an authority, a kind of new Moses, that will  show the way to the "promised" land. 

“On this film, we're going into the snow and dealing with pretty extreme conditions in terms of just battle testing all the gear,” says visual effects supervisor , Weta "veteran" Dan Lemmon, who has worked on Rise, Dawn and Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy, and James Cameron’s Avatar. “So, that's probably the single biggest challenge. We've got a lot more characters, new actors, andnew places they're taking the story, which is always fun and exciting.” And while the dramatic storyline is front and center, the film will also offer spectacular combat sequences as humans and apes slip into even deeper, more dangerous conflict. “There are a lot of battle scenes and explosions and high stakes action,” adds Lemmon. “The apes feature prominently, but this is a post-apocalyptic world, so there is a lot of that environment. The setting is almost a character in the film and has an emotional component to it.”

“We used the design of the story, the sets, the technology, 65mm cameras, to capture a much bigger story,” says producer Dylan Clark. “We saw a test of the 65mm camera with no lights and it just captured so much. Matt fell in love with it and I knew we'd have to figure it out.” “We're constantly trying to be as ambitious as possible,” says Clark. “The last movie we shot with native 3D, the new one we're shooting with wide lenses. We have more sets outside, bigger sets outside, we're using snow in this movie. Motion capture has done bits and pieces in the snow before, but not to the extent we're doing it. The purpose is to give the audience the biggest experience you can get but with characters and a theme that resonate emotionally.”

You will surely enjoy the  new characters : Two-time Oscar® nominee Woody Harrelson as the Colonel, Steve Zahn as Bad Ape, who brings  humor in the story and Amiah Miller as Nova, the lovely and compassionate human child,  unexpected link between Caesar's apes and humanity. 

very surprising is indeed  the mute, virus-ravaged little girl who comes to be known as Nova and his marvellous  bond with the orangutan Maurice (Karin Konoval). And orangutan Maurice is simply fantastic in this movie as well as chimpanzee Lake (Sara Canning), Blue Eyes' mate and Cornelius's caretaker.

Last but not least, I would give a major shout out to Andy Serkis' performance (the actor "behind" Caesar) . Serkis is renown also for bringing another digital character, Gollum, to life in the Lord of the Rings series . He says  “To be able to play such a complex and complete character as Caesar all the way from infancy to this most profound juncture in his life as a leader has been incredible.”

Enjoy this involving and even touching last chapter of the trilogy where smiles and tears go hand in hand!!

dalia di giacomo