War for the Planet of the Apes is certainly a good film. From a technical perspective it is masterful, and it achieves excellence in many other important areas too. And yet I found myself walking away from the cinema disappointed, based on what the film was compared to what it could have been.
The fact that I was expecting a very different film is one I normally wouldn’t criticise a film for, as in many ways it is my fault for making preconceptions which proved not to be accurate. However, I feel like in this instance, I am justified in my disappointment that the film wasn’t what I was expecting. Based on the escalation of hostilities between the humans and the apes throughout Rise and Dawn and the title of this film, I was expecting a war film. I was really excited about the prospect of seeing a war film told mainly through the perspective of apes, and the potential development of the theme of protecting your own species from extinction.
Yet despite a military presence throughout this film, it never really feels like a war. The level of hostilities don’t seem to have progressed much from Dawn, in fact at the start of the film both sides seem to be in a much better position than they were at the end of the previous film. Even if you accept the word ‘war’ as an accurate description, the phrase ‘War for the Planet’ certainly isn’t accurate. This feels incredibly local, highlighted by the fact that the franchise still hasn’t ventured outside of California. We’re given a few reminders that the simian flu became a global pandemic, but we’re never really given much clarification as to how widespread this conflict is. This took something away from the ending of the film for me, because without knowing what is going on elsewhere, we have no way of knowing the significance of these events in the overall conflict.
When a film doesn’t go in the direction you expect, the hope is that the direction it does take will be rewarding. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case for me. You could take a story about intelligent apes struggling to co-exist with humans in so many different directions, you could explore so many different themes. Yet almost every story beat and theme in War had been covered in one of the previous two films. The only real new addition was the comedy ape, but although I did laugh a few times, the character took me out of the film a lot.
Overall, I was left with a film which looks exceptional, sounds great and features some very good performance, and yet felt like it was playing it safe by going back to what had worked in the first two films in the series, rather than trying something truly new and different. So in terms of whether it is worth watching, I’m struggling to see why you should see this, rather than just staying at home and watching Rise and Dawn again. Oh, and if you do go to see it, don’t do what I did and paying extra for an iSense screening. The improvements in terms of the sound and picture quality over a standard (modern) screen were not noticeable at all, and it was nowhere near an IMAX experience.
Scorpo Stories 