…
And spiders.
Definitely spiders.
But yes, now after watching Director Matt Reeves's Dawn of the Planet of the Apes I can definitely list the possible monkey takeover of civilization as one of my fears that will probably one day come to fruition if we keep spending all our time checking Facebook and Twitter and don't check the lock on the orangoutang cages every once in a while. Reeves previous work includes the found-footage monster movie Cloverfield, and you can definitely see that the director has a great skill in gradually building tension throughout an entire film. In Cloverfield it was the increasing destruction and danger of the monster and the anxiety about what the actual monster looks like until the final reveal at the end. And here, you see him go to work in slowly but surely raising the tension throughout the entire movie between the colony of now-intelligent and advanced apes, and the band of struggling humans who've survived the plague that wiped out most of humanity, as they work to find peace and avoid war. And if you've ever seen any promotional material for the film and this being part-action movie, you know the whole "peace" thing doesn't work out. But that doesn't mean you know exactly where the story's going because there were a couple times that I was caught off guard by the film and it kept me on my toes causing me to think that this was not going to have a cookie-cutter, Hollywood cliche-filled, good-guys-triumph-over-bad kind of ending. One instance is when you see an ape walking through human territory, and the humans pick up their guns and are ready to shoot until they see how innocent the ape is kind of just rolling around and laughing and acting very childish, the humans then put down their guns and begin to interact with the ape. He then jokingly grabs one of their guns and begin to flaunt it around as if he doesn't know what it is still laughing. And then quickly turns on them and shoots and kills one of them, as he stares down the other for a good couple of seconds with a menacing grin and kills him as well. This is a perfect example of taking a situation that the audience might be familiar with ("the two sides comings together to find maybe they're not so different" cliche) and then flipping it on its head and jarring your expectations completely. It also serves as an incredible introduction to the character of Koba, one of the antagonists of the film who wants war and not peace with the humans, and in one scene Reeves effectively shows the menace, intelligence, and brutality of his character and basically everything you need to know about him in one scene.
And yes the movie is an action movie, but it's also a movie about humanity, that has real poignant drama, well-timed small doses of humor, and performances that are Oscarworthy, mainly that of Andy Serkis. The motion-capture technology used to capture an actor's performance and then digitally recreated to turn him into, in this case, an ape, is probably some of the best I've ever seen. And his character Caesar is not just a technical marvel, but he is one of the most compelling characters that I've seen on screen in a while, he has hopes and dreams, he's a loving father and husband with a family, and he's a leader with good qualities and also flaws like any person. Ironically Caesar is the most human character in the movie…AND HE'S NOT EVEN HUMAN!
Overall the film was very well-made and left me with little to no complaints, my only real complaint is that I wish there was little more to the ending after the big conflict/battle, a little more resolution. And that a few of the human characters were a little one note. But other than that, the movie has stellar action sequences, some of the most human characters I've seen on film in a while, a story that is not predictable in any way, some fantastic and tense direction by Reeves, and an incredible performance by Serkis. I'm going to give Dawn of the Planet of the Apes a 4.75 out of 5. It's one of the best movies I've seen in a long time.
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