A surprising and infuriating murder early on is more or less what gets the movie’s gears going. Only late in the movie does shit really hit the fan, and even then, it all remains remarkably depersonalized. Early on, a barrage of arrows shot at soldiers is barely seen to rip into any flesh. There’s a tasteful shyness in its depiction of some of the violence, too. There’s the soft trickling of its piano-led score, a funeral dirge in minimalist clothing that’s trying to tell us how tasteful this all is. It’s an empty shell of a movie - but it looks great, and it’s very good at appearing to be more than it is. War has little to add to its references besides shadow and grit. It’s that darkening the palette, extending the runtime, fleshing it all out with polite melodrama, and regurgitating respected non-genre movies ( Glory, Spartacus, Apocalypse Now) doesn’t make a film inherently serious. It isn’t that a Planet of the Apes movie can’t raise appreciable moral questions. But blockbusters - and all other movies - should resist conflating moral seriousness with taking themselves too seriously. There’s no rule that says a genre movie can’t aspire to moral seriousness. The movie is bait for those of us who want to feel like our time spent with blockbusters should be somehow enriching, and not merely entertaining. War for the Planet of the Apes is being hailed as "the best franchise film in recent memory," which is in large part, I reckon, because it tries so hard to seem more thoughtful and relevant than other franchise movies. But why go there? I’m not offended: I’m bored. Some day, I’m sure I’ll be in the mood to tease out just what’s so pathetic about a rebellious black former slave getting reimagined as a humanoid ape in a blockbuster. That’s the takeaway in War, too, as we watch Caesar get whipped in much the same way, the camera closing in on that prideful, implacable face. Maybe you remember it: a stony Denzel, his face toward the camera, wincing with each stroke of the whip but, memorably, trying to avoid showing his pain. reenact a scene from an actual slavery movie: Denzel Washington’s Oscar-winning whipping in Glory. This status is fairly unambiguous from the get-go, but the movie wants to make sure you feel the weight of its subject.
#War for the planet of the apes full movie free free
The Colonel needs the free labor to build a border wall - never mind why - and the apes (among them the still-young Cornelius, hero of the original franchise) get beaten, starved, and forced to work.
They get captured by the military and sentenced to labor in a prison camp run by an erratic, nameless colonel (Harrelson). In it, we see the apes become a true underclass. War for the Planet of the Apes is a basic allegory that flirts, dangerously, with becoming an outright social issue drama. If the humans had only accepted, they’d have saved themselves, and saved us from this movie. "Leave us the woods and the killing can stop," offers Caesar. Led by the valiant, mean-mugging Caesar (Andy Serkis), the apes want to live separately, but equally. It’s a war "for the planet," but the apes aren’t colonizers, really.
It is about the fight for the survival of two rival species: humans, who are still being wiped out by the lethal Simian flu, which originated as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and apes, who were once the test subjects for said treatment, but who were accidentally made hyperintelligent, and thus threatening, by it. More urgently, however, War for the Planet of the Apes has got heavy themes, bolstered with references to other heavy movies. It’s got the Serious Movie Starter Kit™ color palette, too, its hues averaging out to something between gray and grayer, as if the director, Matt Reeves, had consulted a mood board composed of a slab of wet concrete when dreaming up the movie. It’s got a runtime of two hours and 20 minutes, but it wasn’t directed by Judd Apatow, which means it’s definitely not a comedy, because who else in comedy would dare. This is a capital S, capital M, Serious Movie. But here comes War for the Planet of the Apes, the final volume of the rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise, out to spite me. Here’s a movie pitch: Woody Harrelson rules over a kingdom of CGI apes.