Last weekend I rewatched both Rise and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and finally saw War, since I missed it this summer. I can look back on this trilogy now and I'm impressed how consistently good this series is. Not only that, but the quality goes up with each movie. It's rare to have a series where there's no obvious dip and each successive film just builds on what came before.
- Rise: even though the cgi in this film was already great, the next two movies offer a pretty big leap in that department. Still, even in this first part Caesar's already a very believable character and seeing him come of age and establish himself as a leader was the best part of Rise. After those early happy years with Will, it was painful to see him move to the shelter.
- Dawn: Caesar's conflict and Clash with Koba is fantastic and is what drives Dawn along. The interplay between the apes has become so strong, that the scenes with the humans seem weak in comparison. The relationship between Will and his dad in Rise was done better than anything involving the camp survivors. But everything involving Caesar, his family and Koba more than makes up for it.
- War: even though the title implies plenty of action and there is enough to go around, this film doesn't stray far from the core of the previous movies and still has a strong emotional core. It's impressive how it balances the two and manages to make both the spectacle and character moments work. Here you clearly see influences from Apoc. Now, FMJ and prison escape films. The 'monkey killer' helmets and 'ape-ocalpyse now' grafatti were a bit much, but those are nitpicks. The only real weakness in this film comes from Bad Ape, because his comic relief function is laid on a bit thick. A few scenes with him openly played for laughs and it felt a bit out of place. I watched the Double Toasted review yesterday and Martin said that he liked it as it brought some light into the darkness but I didn't feel it was needed. The moments of despair and agony were done so well that attempts at comedy came off as a bit jarring.
War's conclusion was as predictable as you could get, but I didn't really mind. Seen as a whole this trilogy is an achievement in quality, but it also shows how far cgi has come. Sometimes you have to remind yourself that you're just watching cgi characters and that's astonishing. Especially since it's so easy for effects to take you out of the movie because they're a bit off or just not good enough. This is a series that took pride in that mastery and as a result we have something rare: a trilogy that's delivers from the first movie all the way to the end of the third. It also helps that we're following one character's journey, which makes it easier to stay involved and care about the story.
The trilogy excels in consistency and quality, but at the same I don't feel like it reaches classic status at any point. I never watched the original PotA and now it'd probably feel more dated if I watched it after this trilogy. Have no idea if it still holds up. Have any of you watched all the old movies? It'd seem that unlike this prequel trilogy it peaked with the first and only declined as the series went on.
Now, what do you think of the new trilogy?
