Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Proves that Sequels and Reboots can Still Kick Ass

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a sequel to a reboot of a classic movie (that already had a failed remake once before) which was itself based on a book. Given that, the film doesn't exactly sound promising because, as everybody knows, films based on an existing franchise are inherently bad, or at the very least uninspired. Conventional wisdom tells us that movies today are all unoriginal, which is why we have so many reboots and sequels, and why the film industry is going downhill fast. Unsurprisingly, convention wisdom could not be more wrong, and nothing proves that more than Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which is arguably the best film of the year.

As always with this type of post, SPOILERS:

It’s understandable that there has been a lot of backlash against reboots/remakes and sequels. A lot of the time it’s a studio trying to make a quick buck by giving us a totally unnecessary sequel, like turning good movies like Hangover and Taken into a disappointing trilogies, or the Spider-man reboots, which I’ve made my hatred for known before. The thing is a few bad eggs don’t mean that every sequel or reboot is a hollow money grab. Unfortunately, because of these films, sequels and reboots tend to get a bad rap.

What many people fail to realize is that some of the best films of all time are reboots and sequels. Perhaps the best known “better sequel” is Empire Strikes Back, but history is littered with them including classics like; Dawn of the Dead, Terminator 2, and Bourne Supremacy. On the reboot side of things, look no further than Nolan’s Batman trilogy, which reinvigorated a franchise that had fallen almost into self-parody. Of course, this trend is nothing new, it goes all the way back to classic Hollywood. Some film buffs are aware that Ben-Hur, often hailed as one of the best films of all time, is a remake of a silent film, but few know that the classic film noir from 1941, The Maltese Falcon, is also a remake, and the list goes on. Restarting a franchise is nothing new for Hollywood.

As long as a film is crafted with care and precision, with an emotional core, regardless if it is an adaptation of a previous flick, it at least has a chance to be something great. This is the difference between Tim Burton’s 2001 Planet of the Apes remake and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn's predecessor. One is obviously a shallow attempt to cash in on the title, while ignoring much of the social commentary of the originals, and the other is a complex and indicate tale with; subtle callbacks to the original, a setup for a potential sequel, but still managing to tell its own self-contained story.

Dawn took many of the best elements of Rise and improved upon them. It is one of the most powerful and poignant anti-war movies released in recent years. It gives us complex characters; the film foregoes traditional good guys and bad guys, and presents both sides as having both honorable and questionable individuals. It’s a film where we root for peace instead of one side over another. Despite it being thought provoking and beautiful, it still manages to be one of the most badass action films around, proving you can have the best of both worlds.

Apes isn’t the only film to dispel the notion that good huge budget films are a thing of the past; 2014 was absolutely chalked full of awesome intelligent movies, including Guardians of the Galaxy, Interstellar, and The Lego Movie, just to name a few of the blockbusters. Sure there were a few crappy ones, like Transformers 4, but these days there are just more films released every year, which means both more good and bad movies are released every year. Of course, there is the illusion that the past had a smaller ratio of bad films simply because we remember the good films as time passes and forget the bad ones, since (generally speaking) only good films are memorable. Anyone who has seen an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 knows that the past is overflowing with terrible forgotten films. After all, who five years from now is going to remember Pompeii? It was a huge release early this year, but chances are that you’ve already forgotten about it. Films like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on the other hand are here to stay.

In fact, an argument could be made (and I’m about to make it) that because of modern advances, films today have the opportunity to be better than they were in the past. Andy Serkins is once again getting some much deserved Oscar buzz for a motion capture performance as the ape Caesar, and it would not have been possible without today’s technology. Consider the original Planet of the Apes films, where actors wore rubber masks. Frankly it looked incredibly cheesy, and severely restricted the actors’ performances. Today we can turn an actor into an ape and preserve every subtle motion on his face, while allowing him to move freely and naturally in way that was never possible before.

There is a shot near the beginning of Dawn where Caesar jumps in the air, killing a bear with a spear. Something like this would never have been possible in the original Apes movies. This is not to say that simply having this technology in a film makes it inherently better, because when a film exists to prop up its effects (as I discuss in my review of Gravity) the film fails. However, when the effects are just one part of an entire formula, it can create a mesmerizing film.

All of these parts truly come together in Dawn. Serkins isn’t the only actor in the film to give an amazing performance, as both the motion captured apes, and the regular human characters are preformed beautifully. Everyone in the film manages to portray a character that has lost something, as their world is one rocked by tragedy. Some of the best moments in the film are the silent ones where a live action actor interacting with a motion capture one. One that particularly sticks out in my mind is the scene where teenage human Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and the orangutan Maurice (Karin Konoval) reading a comic book together. These kind of characters, which see beyond being ape or human, and come together, are film’s real heroes.

In contrast, the characters who simply see the world in black and white are the ones that cause the conflict in the film. While the Caesar and one of the human leaders, Malcolm (Jason Clarke) are able to relate to each other, Caesar’s lieutenant Koba (Toby Kebbell) and the other human leader Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) are only interested in their own group’s interests. Koba, while selfish and traitorous has a tragic backstory, once a laboratory ape, covered from head to toe in the scars from those days where humans constantly sliced him open. Along with his need for power, Koba’s hatred for humans is his defining character trait. Dreyfus on the other hand is a much more noble character. He also has a tragic backstory, with his wife, children and friends, all long dead. Dryfus only wants to protect humanity, even going as far as to sacrifice his own life to do so. Like Koba, who sees humans as all evil torturers, Dryfus sees all apes simply as wild, uncontrollable, unreasonable animals. Their refusal to listen to reason leads us to a climax where it seems that peace will be a thing of the past. Although Malcolm remains optimistic about peace after the dust has seemingly settled, Creaser knows that they have reached a point of no return, and he blames himself for putting his faith in Koba simply because he was an ape.

None of this would have been possible if it weren't for the foundation of the films on which Dawn is based. Instead of a blank slate this film had an remarkably strong point to build on.The audince isn't simply thrown into jump a post-apocalyptic world, we had the first film to set up the events of said apocalypse, as well as introducing characters, including Caesar and Koba. Dawn owes more than just it's basic idea from the original films, cherrypicking all kinds of themes and even Caesar's name from the movies. It also blazed it's own path though, incorporating new ideas with the old, touching on poinent themes in bold new directions, exceeding all of it's source material and becoming the best Planet of the Apes of all time.

Gravity is a Hollow Spectacle

Awards season is over, and I breathed a sigh of relief when Gravity failed to take home best picture at the Academy Awards. Still, I couldn't help but be a bit bothered when it grabbed an award it definitely did not deserve in the best director category, as well as being nominated for a ridiculous amount of others. Meanwhile other far better films like; Place Beyond the Pines, Elysium, and Rush were not even nominated for a single Oscar. Gravity follows in a recent tradition of films that put special effects above story, along with Life of Pie, and of course the one that started the craze, Avatar. All of these movies are visually stunning but lack compelling plot. However, none of the previous offenders have been so devoid of interesting story, characters and social commentary as Gravity.

Now I don’t want anyone to get the impression that I have something against modern special effects, far from it, I love them. They allow filmmakers to do some amazing things, things they would never have been able to do in the past. Many of my favorite films from the last few years, like Inception and Hugo, have been loaded with special effects. The problem arises when the plot exists to prop up the special effects, instead of the other way around. Gravity might look amazing, but when the audience can’t connect to the characters in a character based film, there is a big problem.

I remember the first time I saw a trailer for Gravity, which I believe consisted of about 90% Sandra Bullock’s annoying cries, I laughed in the middle of the theater because it looked so terrible. Instead of setting up the plot or introducing the characters the trailer was a single scene that told viewers all they would need to expect from the movie; Sandra Bullock is in space and things go wrong, oh and the movie looks amazing. Then I saw that Alfonso Cuaron was directing and I realized right then and there what kind of movie this would be. After seeing Children of Men and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban I felt like I had a pretty good feel for the kind of movie he makes. Both Harry Potter 3 and Children of Men are some of the coolest looking movies around, but seem to sacrifice plot for stunning visuals. Even so, both are still pretty good movies (although not as good as they should have been) because they have an advantage Gravity does not, they are based on novels. The novels have complex plots, and even while those plots are partially removed or changed they still are the backbones of the movies. Without a strong starting point like that the plot of Gravity is paper thin and is made up entirely of Sandra Bullock’s character moving from one destination to the next.

The movie’s runtime is only about 90 minutes but somehow it manages to feel longer then the second Hobbit movie. The reason for that is simple, nothing happens. The second half is worse than the first because (spoilers) at least in the first there is some dialogue between characters, while in the second it’s just the ever aggravating Sandra Bullock talking to herself. Of course there is nothing wrong with a solitary character struggling conceptually speaking; it’s the execution in Gravity that is wrong. Cast Away, for example, is a brilliant movie because Tom Hank’s character, Chuck Nolan, is one that we as an audience cared about on a deeper level. In fact I actually care more about Wilson the volleyball than Sandra Bullock’s character, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way.

The reason we can connect more with a volleyball than Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock’s character) is due to the fact that Chuck treats him like a real person, he has meaningful conversations with him and Wilson floating away is one of the saddest moments of the film because he has kept Chuck (relatively) sane for the past five years, and was his only friend. Once Wilson is gone Chuck has lost the only thing in the world he had left, we see him at his lowest, which makes his salvation more spectacular. At some point in the movie Dr. Stone reveals she had a son who died, which explains why she is such a sad mopey character. It also explains that she lost her only motivation in life, which makes her struggle to get back to Earth alive more symbolic and meaningful as she decides she has something to live for. Regrettably, her change from mopey astronaut who has given up on life to mopey astronaut who wants to live happens, not over the course of the movie, but in one scene where she hallucinates/dreams about George Clooney and has a brief interaction with someone she can't understand.

The rest of the movie is just Dr. Stone getting from one place from another while we are hit over the head with how visually stunning the film is. She travels from one space station to the next, each one is miraculously intact until the moment she needs to leave it, when the cloud of space debris return and destroys the station she is currently on, but luckily for her, not the next one she needs to get to, until of course she reaches it and the process starts again. Basically Dr. Stone travels at the speed of plot, but makes sure to take breaks to do things like pose for an overly long shot where she looks like a child in a womb, which Stanley Kubrick did better back in the 60’s.

So really, why am I so upset by the success of Gravity? It’s because despite the fact that it is a terrible movie, it still was received overwhelmingly positively by; critics, moviegoers, and the Academy. Its success is a bad thing because it means that the thing that really matters in a movie is not plot or character development, but special effects. The more that films like Gravity and Avatar succeed, the more they dominate the film landscape and other more original thought provoking films are passed over in favor of simplistic hollow films. Think I’m exaggerating? Well, Avatar 4 has already been announced despite Avatar 2 not even having entered pre-production. On the other hand Blade Runner, one of the best science fiction films ever made, actually lost money at the box office back in 1982 and Ridley Scott’s planned sequel still hasn’t arrived after 32 years.

Gravity’s message comes across sloppily; Cuaron attempts to make us connect to Stone by giving her a child who died pointlessly, and then having Clooney’s heroic sacrifice awaken her once again giving her life meaning. Clooney’s death scene is nearly identical to a scene from the much reviled Mission to Mars, and it’s just as unmoving. Even Michael Bay pulled off a better scene where a character sacrificed himself to save someone else in Armageddon. For the life of me I can’t understand why such a poorly acted, thinly plotted excuse for a movie has such universal renown other than this; it was a great experience. However, film isn’t about taking the viewer on a cool ride; it’s about telling a story, or at the very least making a connection to the audience.

There are all kinds of theories about the deeper meaning of the film, which isn’t surprising to me; when something is particularly shallow it can be interpreted any number of ways. The film certainly provides a sense of awe, but for all the wrong reasons. The only way Cuaron seems to be able to connect to audiences is through visuals, so instead of having a relatable character we can root for, or even like, the things that are meant to move us are include Stone crawling from the mud in some kind of weird visual metaphor for evolution. Gravity totally fails when compared to the films it emulates, (or rips-off if I'm being honest) movies like; Moon, Apollo 13, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or even Wall-E. All of these films deal with many of the same issues that Gravity touches on like; isolation, hope, making a connection to your fellow humans and dealing with your own humanity, but these better films address these themes in a much deeper and more profound manner.

It’s honestly extremely saddening to me that the movies which often boast such incredible new special effects are so bland in terms of plot and character. It doesn’t have to be this way of course; Jurassic Park was groundbreaking in its use of CGI, but that wasn’t what made it great. It stands the test of time because we connect to the characters and relate to the movie on a deeper level than “Man, those dinosaurs look cool.” Gollum in The Two Towers is another great example. Modern technology brought to life a classic literary character and it let us see his tragic story in a way we never could before. Special effects are one of the greatest tools a director can use, but the danger comes when the film exists just to show off its own technical merit and simply look pretty.