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Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is set ten years after humanity has been mostly knocked out by a
Simian flu. This was created in a lab during the brilliant Rise Of The
Planet Of The Apes and although it makes monkeys smarter, it simply causes
us to cough up blood and die. This is all summarised in the opening few minutes
of the film which was like listening to somebody explain the plot of Contagion
whilst occasionally throwing in the word ‘monkey’ for good measure.
Speaking of which, it was also interesting to see the difference between how
Americans and the British react differently to this situation. When the
Americans are infected by a mutated monkey, they just puke up some heart juice
and then drop dead. However when we Brits were infected in 28 Days Later, we
instead just got proper pissy before legging it through the Channel Tunnel to
twat some French people. Anyway, so here we have a pocket of human survivors
who suddenly find themselves without electricity. We might be faced with having
to live in shit before starving to death but obviously a lack of internet is
the biggest tragedy. The apes on the other hand are living peacefully in the
woods under the assumption that we're all dead and even if we're not then balls
to us because who cares. Sadly, they're also sitting on top of some sort of
power station and there's fucking nothing that will stop a human from being
able to charge their iPad and update their Facebook status.
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| Got to love a good cup of PG Tips... |
Still, who gives a fuck about all that when
you're watching a film in which a pissed off monkey fires two machine guns
whilst straddling a horse. It goes without saying that the effects are amazing
in this movie and I think we're almost at a point now where, for all I know,
even Gary Oldman might have been played by Andy Serkis. The first half of the
film is all quite ‘slow burn’ and dramatic but the second is just balls-to-the-wall
action. To be honest, I really don't think I could be friends with somebody who
didn't like seeing monkeys shoot guns and so if that doesn't sound literally
brilliant to you then what the fuck? I actually re-watched Rise Of The
Planet Of The Apes the night before and thought it was interesting to see
how quickly the effects have already dated. I mean, it still looks amazing for
the most part but there are certain scenes in which Caesar is swinging around
tree-tops in which it's clear that literally everything on screen is CG. It's
sort of like watching a much hairier cut-scene from Assassins Creed, I
guess. One of the great advances since then however is that now it seems we're
able to film people in the motion-capture gimp-suits whilst they're actually
out on location. Perhaps the apes themselves will date in time still, but for
now at least it looked even more amazing- which isn't even mentioning how great
the performances are.
Yes, pretty much every character who isn't
Caesar is slightly neglected however that's not to say that I don't completely
believe in them when they're on screen. There's an Orangutan that I loved and
who I bought so completely that every time it spoke, I was shocked that it
wasn't just doing the usual monkey thing of sticking a potato sack on its head
and taking a shit. It also has to be true that even if everybody else is a bit
ignored, that could be because Caesar is one of the most rounded characters of
the last few years. We've literally seen him turn from a baby into Spartacus
and then to the leader of a war that he doesn't believe in. After eight whole
films, Harry Potter was still banging on about his dead bloody parents and yet
in a fraction of that time, Caesar has achieved so much more and not once
started milking the Orphan card. We should also remember too that as he's
developed as a character, both he and the filmmakers have had to start him
speaking like a human. In the previous film he screamed “No!” and with the
exception of when the projector fucked up during Les Miserables, it was
possibly the only time I've heard a cinema audience gasp. Some people seemed to
have a little problem with the way in which the apes go from using sign
language to just having full on chats but it seemed fine to me. Imagine Stevie
from Malcolm in the middle and that's pretty much where they're up to so it's
not like they've just woken up with the oral skills of Quentin Crisp...
Obviously I don't mean that in a rude way!
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| CHIMPS WITH FUCKING GUNS!! |
You can also visit the blog picture artist at _Moriendus_
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