Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Plot summary (story synopsis): It has been 10 years since Caesar (Andy Serkis - Gollum in The Lord of the Rings) led the ape revolt against humans. The apes are now peacefully settled in the forest. A virus, part of the experiment conducted on Caesar and designed to cure Alzheimer's disease, has wiped out most of the humans. Some resistant humans have survived and have banded together in a fortified group of buildings in the city, led by Dreyfus (Gary Oldman).

The humans are running low on fuel. Malcolm (Jason Clarke) leads an expedition into the forest to restart a hydroelectric power generator. They stumble onto some apes and shoot one out of fear. An enraged Caesar lets them go but warns them to never come back.

Desperate for electricity, Malcolm returns and manages to convince Caesar to allow the humans to restart the power generator. Koba (Toby Kebbell) still hates the humans from his years in captivity, and tries to convince Caesar to stop cooperating with the humans. Caesar refuses to change his mind, causing Koba to take matters into his own hands.

***

Dawn is an entertaining but ultimately shallow sequel to 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The characters are just as rich and sympathetic as Rise's, making it an engaging drama, but not much more.

There's a new director - Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In, Felicity) replaces Rupert Wyatt. But Rise's writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, together with new writer Mark Bomback (Live Free or Die Hard), worked on Dawn too. This probably accounts for the continuity in feel from the first movie. If you liked Rise, you'll like Dawn.

Most people would classify Dawn as a science fiction action/adventure but it's more of a drama. It's about Caesar as the non-violent leader, reluctantly dragged into war. It's a character study. It's a good character study, but that doesn't change the fact that the movie is not really about apes.

One test of a "real" science fiction story, is to take out the science fiction element and then see if the story still works. Dawn still works as a story if the apes were replaced by an oppressed racial minority. That's because the story doesn't explore the consequences of intelligent apes - for example how apes come to terms with human technology, or how apes regard their less intelligent predecessors, or how apes relate to their former masters (Dawn touches on this shallowly), or how presumably inferior apes could defeat humans (the two sides fight, but again, the apes could be replaced by a racial minority and the story would be the same).

Like too many movies, Dawn uses its post-apocalyptic premise mainly as cool background. It doesn't think through its ramifications and the scenarios are not convincing:

• They need electricity mainly to power their radio, to contact other survivors. You need at most a few kilowatts for that. You can get that from a single car engine - which they do have. You don't need a freaking hydroelectric dam. That's megawatts.
• You can't so easily restart a hydroelectric power station that has been abandoned for 10 years. It's not just the power station. The electrical distribution system to the city will also be a complicated mess.
• They can't run their cars on methanol or ethanol? Sure, ethanol corrodes some engine parts, but this is fixable. Or at least address this option in the story.
• The human survivors are shown crowded in a few large buildings. They aren't out in the fields, growing food or hunting animals or scavenging for leftover technology?
• The apes are shown to easily start using guns, even out-shooting the humans. All without any training. In reality, even untrained humans will have difficulty shooting straight and keeping their guns working. Yet Koba is shown expertly shooting his automatic rifle in short bursts (without being startled by the sound or recoil), and switching to single-shot (semi automatic) mode when necessary.

It's not just this lack of science fiction and technical rigor that makes Dawn feel shallow. There is no arc for the characters. The good guys (both ape and human) are consistently good, and the bad guys (both ape and human) are consistently bad. Even Dreyfus, who acts more unexpectedly than the other characters, doesn't change in the course of the movie.

Call it a formula if you will, but this lack of a character arc makes Dawn feel like a kiddie movie. Caesar is an interesting character. The audience is kept wondering whether or not he will turn to the dark side. But in the end Caesar's big insight is that apes are too much like humans - they can be evil and violent too. That's trite.

I'm not saying that Caesar should have turned to the dark side. I'm saying that at least one of the characters should have changed.

Don't get me wrong. This is an entertaining movie. But it mainly engages your heart, not your head.

Visuals from Director of Photography Michael Seresin (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Mercury Rising) and Production Designer James Chinlund (The Avengers) are good - the ruined buildings where the humans hide out, the apes' peaceful hillside village.

Andy Serkis is fun to watch as the brooding Caesar. Jason Clarke is also convincing as the decent, brave, pacifist Malcolm. But he's too plain vanilla. He's like some mild-mannered TV sitcom dad. Too unbelievably nice.

Dawn is mainly about these two and their relationship of trust. Keri Russell (Felicity) makes an appearance as Malcolm's girlfriend, but she's barely supporting cast. Gary Oldman, also in a small role, is as good as always but he doesn't have much to do.

Rise was released 3 years ago. I liked it, but I'll have to admit that I don't remember the details. Did the apes ride horses at the end? I can't remember. They do ride horses in Dawn, which is cool because one of the strongest images from the old Charlton Heston Planet of the Apes movie, is apes riding on horses.