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Jaded, maybe. "I knew what would happen" alone is lazy and isn't of much value as criticism. Thing is that most movies are predictable—particularly summer blockbusters and especially with established franchises. And sometimes it's part of the point the film is trying to make: we know where we're going and that's what's heartbreaking. Events mirror those familiar to those we experience too commonly in reality. Caesar's dismayed acceptance at the end of the film of what's to come was maybe its most emotionally devastating moment.
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Jul 11, 2014 21:58
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Bolocko posted:Jaded, maybe. "I knew what would happen" alone is lazy and isn't of much value as criticism. Thing is that most movies are predictable—particularly summer blockbusters and especially with established franchises. And sometimes it's part of the point the film is trying to make: we know where we're going and that's what's heartbreaking. Events mirror those familiar to those we experience too commonly in reality. Which was beautifully followed by the guy who's name I never bothered to remember resigning himself to his fate, and perhaps the fate of his species, and stepping into the shadows while Caesar steps forward, Sun rising in the distance and shining its light on the myriad of apes. In that moment, the age of man ends and the dawn of the age of apes begins. My only complaint about this movie is that the gorillas were relegated to a support role instead of shock troops. At the very least, they should have at least catapulted chimps into combat.
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Jul 11, 2014 22:12
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The cinema where I saw this hosed up the projector and the first 10 minutes or so before the humans showed up had the subtitles for the apes cut off. There were several scenes of the ape dialogue where you had no idea what was going on, and I thought that was a very bold choice for the movie to make. Then the video cut out entirely and there was nothing but a dark theater with the sound of screaming primates, which was when I realized they just screwed up.
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Jul 11, 2014 22:43
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Wow another excellent film, I never would have thought that a reimagining of the Planet of the Apes films that this would be so drat good. At first your like " Oh it's CG" but then it's just " WOW". Holy crap the special effects in this were amazing and the movie really was emotionally moving. I did not think they'd be able to repeat the tone of the first film but it was still just as good. Wish they had explained what happened to James Franco's character. Hollismason fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Jul 11, 2014 |
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Jul 11, 2014 23:53
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He's dead. From drat dirty ape flu.
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Jul 12, 2014 00:09
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I liked the previous movie and went into this one thinking I might not like it as much. I was wrong, I like it more than the previous film. Koba is a great villain.
Spacebump fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 00:27
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Mantis42 posted:He's dead. From drat dirty ape flu. I actually like that they don't exactly dwell on it at all. Pretty much what they give for the run down in the beginning tells you anything you need to know. poo poo got bad. They just focus on Frank being patient zero and that's it. Spoilering it because why not. Just going to say again that Koba dual wielding the M249s was amazing. Koba worked as a good villain that you didn't need to delve super deep in it because, well, he hates humans for good reason.
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Jul 12, 2014 00:28
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Just saw this last night. The scene where Koba takes control of the tank was so, so well done and shot. He's an absolute monster of a character.
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Jul 12, 2014 01:09
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Mantis42 posted:The cinema where I saw this hosed up the projector and the first 10 minutes or so before the humans showed up had the subtitles for the apes cut off. There were several scenes of the ape dialogue where you had no idea what was going on, and I thought that was a very bold choice for the movie to make. Then the video cut out entirely and there was nothing but a dark theater with the sound of screaming primates, which was when I realized they just screwed up.
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Jul 12, 2014 01:42
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I thought the human element was much better in this film than the first film. Less time was spent on them, but their motivations and actions made sense based on what was happening. If you're in this thread and haven't seen it, go see this movie so I can get a sequel.
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Jul 12, 2014 02:01
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Yeah one of the things I did like was Gary Oldmans character was not a loving cartoonishly evil villian, dude legit believed he was saving the human race and if the had succeeded he would have , Also Koba's motivation is completely and utterly justified , I mean he was literally tortured for years by humans for medical experiments etc.. Where did they say James Franco's character was patient zero? Did I miss that?
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Jul 12, 2014 02:18
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Hollismason posted:Yeah one of the things I did like was Gary Oldmans character was not a loving cartoonishly evil villian, dude legit believed he was saving the human race and if the had succeeded he would have , Also Koba's motivation is completely and utterly justified , I mean he was literally tortured for years by humans for medical experiments etc.. Where did they say James Franco's character was patient zero? Did I miss that? They said Franklin was patient zero. One small thing I found kind of interesting is that Franco's character is just flat out not mentioned at all, because world-wise why would he be? poo poo got crazy at that time.
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Jul 12, 2014 02:21
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Hollismason posted:Yeah one of the things I did like was Gary Oldmans character was not a loving cartoonishly evil villian, dude legit believed he was saving the human race He has a almost-throwaway line* that I really liked, paraphrased: the humans literally need the dam's power, and if you think humans were horrible in this movie, whatever they did before they formed that gas-reliant colony was much, much worse. I loved Oldman's moment where when the power comes on, his tablet starts charging and he's able to look at pictures of his family. Incredibly powerful. The only downside to it came from my own  : The tablet showed a 3/4ths charged icon and not a bare sliver from being presumably dead this whole time. * Was it Oldman's character who said it?
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Jul 12, 2014 02:38
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dreffen posted:One small thing I found kind of interesting is that Franco's character is just flat out not mentioned at all, because world-wise why would he be? poo poo got crazy at that time. He was mentioned in the film, though. Or do you mean just in the opening segment with all the news reports?
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Jul 12, 2014 03:16
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Lord Krangdar posted:He was mentioned in the film, though. Or do you mean just in the opening segment with all the news reports? Er, yeah, I'd misspoke I meant the opening segment.
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Jul 12, 2014 03:23
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Saw this today and really enjoyed it. Decided to go for 3D since it was shot in 3D and not added in post and it I think that was a good choice. It wasn't overbearing and gave nice depth to a lot of the scenes. Mirroring everyone else's statements: I'm glad that the sway of good/bad was handled the way that it was. Oldman's character wasn't a "bad guy" for the sake of being bad. Kabo betraying Caesar and basically setting poo poo off was a good catalyst for Caesar to really understand the value of individuality and not just Ape vs Human. The fact that the Apes started the war by starting conflict amongst themselves is a nice angle. Definitely excited for the followup. Also, can someone settle a dispute between my friend and I about the previous film? I was sure that they touched on the manned ship being sent into space to return much later (hinting at the first original film) but was that during the movie proper or after the credits? I haven't seen it at all since it debuted in theaters a few years back.
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Jul 12, 2014 04:00
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ShoogaSlim posted:Saw this today and really enjoyed it. Decided to go for 3D since it was shot in 3D and not added in post and it I think that was a good choice. It wasn't overbearing and gave nice depth to a lot of the scenes. It was in the middle of the movie when they mention the Icarus taking off but I'm like 90% sure there was something more later where there's an update that says the ship was 'lost in space'.
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Jul 12, 2014 04:07
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dreffen posted:It was in the middle of the movie when they mention the Icarus taking off but I'm like 90% sure there was something more later where there's an update that says the ship was 'lost in space'. This is correct.
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Jul 12, 2014 04:10
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One touch that I really liked is that Caesar is walking more erect as the film goes on. I first noticed it when he enters a room out of focus, and it was hard to tell if it was a human or ape. Something I'm curious about for the sequel is the spread of the virus had any impact on apes around the world. It might be interesting to see Caesar have to deal with other communities of apes that have sprouted.
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Jul 12, 2014 04:17
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Timeless Appeal posted:One touch that I really liked is that Caesar is walking more erect as the film goes on. I first noticed it when he enters a room out of focus, and it was hard to tell if it was a human or ape. It would have, right? It spread all over the world, and Earth can't really become the Planet of the Apes if the only smart apes are in the Greater San Francisco Area of the Apes.
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Jul 12, 2014 04:26
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Timeless Appeal posted:One touch that I really liked is that Caesar is walking more erect as the film goes on. I first noticed it when he enters a room out of focus, and it was hard to tell if it was a human or ape. When he had Koba grab his arm on the mountain was the first time I noticed it. The divide got more obvious as the film went on. Did anyone else love Blue Eyes performance as much as I did? I felt like everything he did was very subtle but extremely effective. He did so little physically, but got so much across. I hope they get the actor back for the sequel. Speaking of sequel, what does everyone want to see? I'd love if they fast forwarded 50 or 100 years just for the sake of starting to make it even more sci-fi and hurtling the story forward, but I think we've built up too good of characters with Caesar and Blue Eyes, and I'd love to see Greer get something to do in the sequel. Caesar at the end of his reign, being overthrown by a generation of apes who are totally disconnected from the world before the virus would be excellent. Seeing the beginning of man's enslavement, and maybe seeing what other human survivors have been up to would be really fun. Since an Apes movie generally covers some real world social commentary, I'd love to see war-torn Africa tackled. Small communal tribes with far too many guns and too much to lose battling over a wasteland in hopes of attaining peace, power, and prosperity? Yes please. Bonus points for starting to segregate the Apes from each other. I felt we got a hint of that with the Gorillas all living in one area. e: Also, one last thing: was anyone else BLOWN AWAY by how amazing Maurice always looked? I can honestly say, that's the first time that a 100% CGI creature has every fully, absolutely tricked my brain into thinking it was real. Caesar and Koba both had a few shots that were on the edge, but every time Maurice was on screen I was absolutely fooled. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 04:38
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feedmyleg posted:e: Also, one last thing: was anyone else BLOWN AWAY by how amazing Maurice always looked? I can honestly say, that's the first time that a 100% CGI creature has every fully, absolutely tricked my brain into thinking it was real. Caesar and Koba both had a few shots that were on the edge, but every time Maurice was on screen I was absolutely fooled. Without a doubt. I remember this from the last film, as well, but especially in this one. Are we sure it wasn't a real Orangutan?
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Jul 12, 2014 04:52
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They really should've found better writers for this. I find it amusing how Apes on horses wielding AK-47's can defeat the post-modern militaries of the U.S., Russia, China, and NATO in 2014 but I guess thats just me.
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Jul 12, 2014 06:37
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Kaytwo posted:They really should've found better writers for this. I find it amusing how Apes on horses wielding AK-47's can defeat the post-modern militaries of the U.S., Russia, China, and NATO in 2014 but I guess thats just me. Most humans are dead. The ones who know how to work the weapons of war are dead. The weapons of war are in bad shape. The apes are smart. This really isn't the thing to complain about. The movie is all about the rise of ape society: it's not even about the decline of humanity, because a declining humanity doesn't deserve its own story. Humanity is only interesting insofar as it informs the rise of the apes.
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Jul 12, 2014 06:50
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Another kinda-spergy thing that slightly bugged me. Not spoilering it because it's mentioned early in the film: Assuming the world's population is about 7,250,000,000 (I used the approximate data from this pretty interesting site) and the 1-in-500-is-immune-to-the-Simian-Flu thing mentioned early in the picture, there's about 14,500,000 million immune humans in the world. Even counting unseen inter-human conflicts, that's an awful amount of immune humans walking around capable of making more immune humans.
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Jul 12, 2014 07:28
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MisterBibs posted:Another kinda-spergy thing that slightly bugged me. Not spoilering it because it's mentioned early in the film: Nope. Immune humans don't make more immune humans. That's why Keri Russel's daughter died. I feel like that subplot was created to directly address your issue.
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Jul 12, 2014 07:37
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You also have to account for all the fighting for resources that come with the fall of civilization. That and the lack of hospitals to treat wounded and sick. Lots and lots of sick even without the virus. VV Beat my ninja edit. WE DOIN IT NOW fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 07:42
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WE DOIN IT NOW posted:You also have to account for all the fighting for resources that come with the fall of civilization. Also the simian flu isn't the only disease that exists. Considering the poor conditions everyone is living in and the scarce food supply, there would be further declines in population from that.
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Jul 12, 2014 07:44
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dreffen posted:Just going to say again that Koba dual wielding the M249s was amazing. Yeah, that scene was just ridiculous in the best possible way. 
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Jul 12, 2014 07:45
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For perspective: the last time Earth had a population like 14 million... Attention Horse posted:Attention Horse's spoilered image Bolocko fucked around with this message at 07:55 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 07:48
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Attention Horse posted:Yeah, that scene was just ridiculous in the best possible way.  I gotta see this fuckin' movie.
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Jul 12, 2014 07:50
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Rageaholic Monkey posted:
It is an amazing scene. This movie is just really great. The apes are fantastic, the characters are all pretty good, and I really like that the whole human/ape conflict was very tragic and reasonable from both sides, honestly. Also about Koba Of course he's going to try to seize power and co-opt the ape revolution for his violent ends! His name is literally the name Stalin took before, well, Stalin. I noticed that in the last movie and so was wondering if that's where they would take him. MisterBibs posted:Another kinda-spergy thing that slightly bugged me. Not spoilering it because it's mentioned early in the film: I don't think you realize the domino effect that would occur. Violence, famine, other diseases, etc, that would follow from the absolute complete collapse of civilization would not be just negligible numbers. BlackJosh fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 09:08
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Kaytwo posted:They really should've found better writers for this. I find it amusing how Apes on horses wielding AK-47's can defeat the post-modern militaries of the U.S., Russia, China, and NATO in 2014 but I guess thats just me. Did you not pay attention to the opening of the movie where they explained that humanity turned on itself after everyone started dying from the virus? The humans allude to this throughout the movie as well.
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Jul 12, 2014 12:40
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feedmyleg posted:Nope. Immune humans don't make more immune humans. That's why Keri Russel's daughter died. I feel like that subplot was created to directly address your issue. I don't think they fully explained this one. I imagine that its probably a recessive gene thing because Malcolm's son is still very alive.
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Jul 12, 2014 14:05
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In terms of ape segregation, I really liked how Maurice foreshadows the orangutans becoming the intellectual elite of the apes. I also think they had an interesting take on the gorillas as military. In the original film, the gorillas were usually depicted as brutish. But in this film, the gorillas are very much depicted as defenders. There is that one little bit where the gorilla is just trying to carry as many chimps as he can. It's seems to paint the gorillas as not using their size and strength to be brutes, but seeing a responsibility in their size and strength to act as defenders. Getting back to my earlier statement about Caesar walking more and more like a human. That final close-up of his face really made him look closer to Roddy McDowall's Caesar.  It did seem like the movie was putting some thought in how these apes become something similar to what we see in the original film. There is even an interesting throw-away line about how the apes don't really need electricity which is a bit of an eloquent explanation for why the village in the original film is the way it is. It also seems like Caesar has given up on the pretense that he and his people are apes in the traditional sense. He's perfectly capable of speaking English, but he seems to distance himself from it because he doesn't want to associate with humans. But by the film's end, he understands that pushing out human culture isn't going to stop bad things from happening. So, now we have a Caesar who cares a lot less about not acting human. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Jul 12, 2014 |
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Jul 12, 2014 15:44
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Timeless Appeal posted:In terms of ape segregation, I really liked how Maurice foreshadows the orangutans becoming the intellectual elite of the apes. I also think they had an interesting take on the gorillas as military. In the original film, the gorillas were usually depicted as brutish. But in this film, the gorillas are very much depicted as defenders. There is that one little bit where the gorilla is just trying to carry as many chimps as he can. It's seems to paint the gorillas as not using their size and strength to be brutes, but seeing a responsibility in their size and strength to act as defenders. Yeah, I love the way these films have reacted to our understanding of actual ape behavior.
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Jul 12, 2014 16:44
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Shards of Fate posted:I watched this movie last night and I was bored by it. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a way better movie in term of building emotions, attachment and entertainment. Gary Oldman was wasted. The whole movie seemed so small scale compared to the original. I liked it a pretty good amount but I get where you're coming from, it doesn't have the spark or the richness of Rise. Rise was somehow more intimate and yet also felt like it had more scope. The human perspectives in Dawn dilute rather than enrich, the people in Rise were no great shakes either but you didn't mind so much because they were more interactive with Caesar, they were supporting players on his journey - when we cut away to humans in Dawn it feels more like a TV show attending to a B-plot. Caesar goes through a change in Dawn in that he realizes by the end that apes can be treacherous too, but his throughline isn't nearly as strong. I think they could've made up for that by giving us richer relationships (especially between Caesar and Jason Clarke - when Caesar says "a good man, like you" we realize how cold their relationship is, it's like Caesar's complimenting a co-worker), or by being more adeptly plotted or by giving us more factional nuance - give us more of a sense of shape and dynamics to each side instead of keeping it at the bare level of primary motivation, which is mostly where we're at for the whole film. That said I did like a lot about it. The patient approach, not being uptight about having long sections just being apes talking in sign language, is good. Everything in the movie leading up to Koba's charge is really involving. I dug that the apes were de-powered from Rise, in which they were constantly hurling themselves through plate glass windows and pulling off Spider-Man esque swinging moves. That stuff was exciting but I appreciate the restrained approach. Like if you look at the first fight between Koba and Caesar, another movie may have done it as some epic choreographed sequence with a virtual camera flying around and lots of swinging and swooping and fancy ape moves. Instead of that, Caesar just jumps on him and grounds and pounds him. The way it plays around with your sympathy is interesting but after a while I wasn't sure if it was courting a kind of intriguing Miyazaki-ish ambiguity or if it just had a muddled point of view. You start the movie rooting for ape supremacy and begin to feel a bit bad about that when Koba is taking over the humans, but there's not really any sensitivity towards the experience of being a human and having sentient apes with guns enslaving you (the closest it comes to acknowledging that is Gary Oldman's really wonderful facial reaction when he first hears Caesar speak, just this brief note of immediate terror and disbelief). A more sharply experienced horror is when Koba's rejection of Caesar's philosophy is dramatized as he hurls a pacifist ape to its death. So that makes me wonder if the film would've been more effective if it stuck entirely to the ape POV. Just a thought.
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Jul 12, 2014 23:52
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Days of Future Past is still my favorite move of this summer and I'll maintain that it was the better film as well. But drat, was this a good movie. Especially the end where Ceasar looks over the mass of apes bowing down to him as the sun rises, signifying the dawn of the age of apes. But in his eyes, he's horrified. He doesn't want to lead his tribe into open conflict against humankind but even he realizes that conflict is at this point inevitable. Caesar is more Robert E. Lee or even Sitting Bull than his namesake in this film..
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Jul 13, 2014 01:55
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I'm really excited to see where this franchise goes, what a stellar movie. I hope that the next movie isn't JUST a war movie between the military base to the north and Neo Ape Francisco. Granted, that's probably (definitely) where the story will go, but I feel like it would just be a rehash of this movie. Maybe it would depict apes becoming more human-like donning combat equipment from their new armory, and I suppose they need to explain why/how humans become enslaved, but it all feels like a slow build up to the ultimate climax of the Icarus mission returning to earth which I hope at least gets touched on in the third movie.
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Jul 13, 2014 05:19
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Justin Tyme posted:I'm really excited to see where this franchise goes, what a stellar movie. Maybe they could remake the original? I'm not really sure how much more they could go other than more fighting with the leftover humans. I mean that's basically this version halfway through. The built up tension is great and all the characters have such great reason to do what they think is right.
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Jul 13, 2014 06:43
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