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At
the beginning of War For The Planet Of The Apes, the ape leader
Caesar suffers a devastating blow which sparks him off on a mission
of revenge, putting his very soul at risk. At a pivotal moment in
this movie, some dumb motherfucking bitch that was sat near to me got
her stupid twatting phone out, lighting the cinema up and distracting
me from an otherwise emotional scene. My soul has already been well
and truly lost and so I wish nothing but the most carnivorous of
parasites to latch itself onto that simplistic bint's brain and to
chew its way through to her fucking spinal cord. Caesar, however, is
more thoughtful than me. The focus of his revenge is the leader of a
cult-like band of military fuck-wits that are being led by the
Kurtz-a-like Woody Harrelson, who looks like how a fat Marlon Brando
might have done had he posed in front of a complimentary circus
mirror. Along for the ride are a couple of Caesar's ape-friends who
act as his confidants and voices-of-reason. My friends, however, are
as bad as me... so fuck that ignorant fucking pig and her stupid
fucking phone. I hope she was getting bad news at the fucking time.
In
preparation for this film, I thought it'd be interesting to blitz
every previous Planet Of The Apes movie by starting with the 1968
original. I figured it'd be one classic followed by four cheap
knock-offs. However, the result was that I loved every single one of
them more than I've ever loved the majority of my family and it's now
one of my all time favorite franchises. Except the Tim Burton one of
course... that one is a little like the cousin we keep locked in the
attic and on a diet of fish-heads. We don't like to talk about it.
What I did find interesting though was the way in which the first of
the two reboots, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and Dawn Of The
Planet Of The Apes so closely followed the templates of Conquest and
Battle For The Planet Of The Apes, which were the final two of the
original series. I was therefore interested to see if this new film
would continue their path and therefore do something completely
original, or if it too would borrow from one of the originals and
simply go for an earlier entry. For anybody curious then in my humble
opinion, it's actually Beneath The Planet Of The Apes that this one
takes from. Both films center on a small band of crazed humans
worshipping a killing machine with a giant shiny top which in the
original is a nuclear missile and here is Woody Harrelson.
I
feel it's also here that I should point out that I think this film,
and therefore I suppose, this new Apes trilogy as a whole is near-perfect in every way. The film critic Mark Kermode said of Beneath
The Planet Of The Apes, “It's one of the darkest films I've ever
seen”, and, “It's a film that starts at the point of no hope and
goes downhill from there”. This is by no means an understatement
either, with the original franchise being one of the most nihilistic
series of films since Screech from Saved By The Bell released his
porno. In keeping with that, this film is also one of the most
downbeat and thought provoking, big-budget blockbusters I think I've
ever seen in my life. In terms of sex, swearing, and violence, the
film has been rated 12A in the UK by the BBFC. However ignoring its
more superficial aspects there's a maturity to this film that I feel
makes it about as appropriate for children as forcing them to listen
to their parents fight about how they'd have been better off using
contraception. They won't fully understand what's going on but they'd
be too upset to cope if they worked it out. Sure this film is about a
monkey that carries a gun but it's also one of the most painful,
downbeat, grim, and just out-and-out upsetting films since.. well, probably Screech's porno again.
However,
the flip side to that is that any act of kindness that the apes show
therefore has the impact of a million pre-curried farts in a bus full
of fat people. The apes adopt a young human girl that will otherwise
die without them and their treatment of her proved more dangerous to
my heart than my own diet of eating butter straight out of the tub
with a wooden fucking spoon. At one point a gorilla tenderly puts a flower
behind the child's ear to make her feel a little safer and a little
loved and I thought I was going to die. At my own granddads funeral,
I was genuinely pretending that I was James Bond because I wear a
suit so infrequently. However seeing a giant monkey attempt to
comfort a little girl and suddenly my eyes are face-pissing with
enough water to solve the world's drought problems. The film might be
entitled War For The Planet Of The Apes but the fact is that there
isn't really much fighting in this movie at all. The real war is that
going on internally within Caesar as he begins to lose hold of,
ironically, his own humanity. Having spent hours investing into these
characters and even more with the entire franchise.. when seeing the
agony on screen, any sign of empathy or glimmer of hope was the
emotional equivalent of finding a sweetcorn-like diamond in a
cavernous cave of darkness and shit.
If
I were to criticise this new trilogy in any way then perhaps I'd say
that its subtext doesn't draw quite as much from our reality as the
originals did. Originally the movies drew heavily on Cold War fears,
the Vietnam war, and the rising racial tensions. However here the
message seems to be.. “don't test Alzheimer drugs on animals. It
might lead to the destruction of humanity and all you've done is cure
the one disease that would let you forget it was your own fucking
fault”. However, in War For The Planet Of The Apes, we do have
Woody Harrelson as a deluded and megalomaniacal despot who thinks the
answer to his problems is the construction of a wall. The only
difference between this and reality is that Woody Harrelson looks
like he's in pretty good shape whereas I suspect Donald Trump's dick
has retreated so far into his own disgusting, lardy, body that he
probably needs a she-wee to take a piss. As with Gary Oldman in the
last film, Harrelson's crazed human character is also fleshed out to
the point that we can kind of empathise with him too. So I suppose
the other message of the movie is that when it comes to war there's
not really any winners. Just dead people and people who've been left
completely fucked up. Kind of like those that chose to watch
Celebrity Love Island.
Although
Woody Harrelson gives an excellent performance, the effects are
impossibly perfect, and director Matt Reeves has made a phenomenal
movie... I feel there's one person who deserves credit over everybody
else and that's the real Caesar himself, Andy Serkis. Visually, WETA
has made him look completely photo-real as an ape and yet you can
still see his performance and humanity underneath. Having seen some
behind the scenes footage in which the effects were yet to be
completed I still buy into his performance which must be one of the
most soulful and considered ever committed to screen. Reckon any
other actor could convince you they were an ape without the aid of
computer effects? Maybe Stallone I suppose, but never intentionally.
People always talk about Serkis as being a pioneer of motion capture
technology and this is obviously true. However what sometimes gets
forgotten is that he's probably also one of the finest actors working
today with War For The Planet Of The Apes arguably being his finest
work. After seeing the 1967 original you'll be turning to your
friends to say, “Get your paws off me you damn dirty ape”.
However, after seeing this new film you'll simply say, “this film was
perfect and no I'm not crying, there's just something in my eye you
prick... so fuck off!”. Thanks for reading and see you next time, motherfuckers.
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