The movie Dawn of the planet of the apes has this dark tone and violence quotient that makes it totally different from the prequel. The emotional side of the story line slightly drags the film into predictable zone, but as we know the acquired smartness of these apes, that also becomes digestible.
The story happens after 10 years from the last movie’s scenario and the human race is facing serious issues because of the virus and they are quite limited in number. In the mean time, the apes under the leadership of smart Caesar has become more awesome by learning sign language and more stuff. The remaining humans are in search of a power source in their quest for a better future and they need Caesar’s permission for that. The anti human feelings of Koba and the maturity in Caesar creates some conflicts and the movie focuses on how things go after these developments.
The best part of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is that its story explores and presents the possible outcomes in a very neat manner that has sensible visual rendering. That apes infiltration sequence with camera clamped on the military tank with no sound was a memorable sequence that had a very real feel. And also the movie doesn’t get hang on anything. A small problem I could sense was in predictability of the plot that plays with emotions. It is true that the evolved apes will have similar egos and issues like humans, but they could have reduced or altered some of it to make it an ape thing.
Well I don’t know the extent to which the motion capture technology can extract the facial expressions, but frankly speaking Caesar looked damn real and hats off to Andy Serkis for making Caesar awesome. Jason Clarke and Garry Oldman were comfortable with their characters. Don’t know the names, but the remaining apes motion captured from other actors were also pretty good.
Matt Reeves succeeds in keeping the movie engaging even with its heavy emotional baggage that may not work for a certain section of the audience. With some of that fresh visualization, he adds sense of seriousness to the franchise that got an ordinary start. The script had that pace in narrating events but as I said they could have worked on the usual style in these gang fights to make it less predictable. Good dialogs and nice visuals. Special appreciation for the entire visual effects team for making it look so real and I believe the motion capturing of this movie is going to set a new benchmark.
Overall, Dawn of the planet of the apes is a really good movie. It is an engaging fiction that has some well written characters. The rating for Dawn Of The Planet of the Apes is 3.5/5. Its thumbs up.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
