Ever since the first Planet of the Apes movie came out in 1968, the series has been among the headiest of adventure/fantasies. Back then, all it took to seem heavy intellectually was to cast a cynical although displaced eye on the vanity of human desires and aggression. Now 49 years later, it’s only more obvious. Human beings in the new series are murderous dopes, and apes are the ones with the so-called humanity. And War for the Planet of the Apes is considered weighty and significant because it shows human beings as the bad guys bent on destroying their supposed enemies as well as themselves. It’s got a point.
War for the Planet of the Apes, the third in this recent series, looks deep into the eyes of Caesar (Andy Serkis), the good leader of the apes, and finds a thoughtful, soulful being caught in a terrible bind. Caesar wants peace on Earth, but the American soldiers who want to wipe the apes off the face of the planet, refuse his accommodating gestures. Caesar is a good thinker, as well as an ape who feels deeply the pain of others. He’s also a family ape and wants nothing more than to care for them and establish his community in stable harmony.
So, War for the Planet of the Apes is a typical melodrama in which the other – in this case the apes – suffer grievously for our sins. And do they ever. They’re under constant attack from U.S. soldiers, and have to combat high-tech weaponry with spears and a few old rifles. They’re tricked and betrayed and slaughtered. And just in case you miss the profound significance of the suffering of the apes, your psyche will surely connect the prison devised by the soldiers to a Nazi concentration camp and the eventual escape of the apes to the Exodus from Egypt right down to the drowning of Pharaoh’s army. I am not giving away anything the audience will not have figured out well in advance.
War for the Planet of the Apes gets wordy. It seems that one of the achievements of evolution for the apes – at least movie apes – is the gift of gab. Caesar has long, although fruitless, conversations with the Nazi-ish commander of the soldiers known only as The Colonel (Woody Harrelson). But the picture also jumbles itself between incompatibles – is it a discussion about decency, survival, brutality and generosity? Or is it a straight-out action picture?
As a companion pointed out, the movie gives out many – many – explosions when a couple would do. They are lively and spectacular – balls of fire rising into the air and down tunnels, and all the other explosive possibilities most of the audience knows well. The real conflict in the movie may be between appealing to the adolescent boys who will buy most of the tickets, and the adults the movie may entice into the theater with word-of-mouth about headiness and concern for important things, writ large.
War for the Planet of the Apes also doesn’t know where its heart of hearts lies with respect to the people versus ape’s dilemma. The surface of the movie and the words of wisdom all favor the apes as far better practitioners of the beloved humane values than these people on screen. Yet, for all their melodramatic goodness and innocence, these apes are still treated cinematically like Native American characters in westerns of the ‘40s and ‘50s. The ones who speak, speak slowly and with that hint of formality that suggests they’re not as quick on the uptake as human beings. Caesar has to weigh complex alternatives, but he tends to look a little behind the game. And you might get the sense that for this movie, goodness itself is a little slow-witted. Human beings may destroy themselves and the planet, but they’ll do it with style.
