So I saw the movie Planet of the Apes.
Overall I give this movie 3.5
out of 5 stars
Also, keep an eye out for a video review on my channel. Subscribe to it here
Let me preface with this that I did enjoy the last one with
James Franco. I thought it was good;
however, not so good to have any recollection of it as I watched this one. And simply as a movie go-er, this movie was
definitely entertaining. It had plenty
of action, you cared about the main characters, etc.
The movie starts off with watching the apes all hunting deer
for food. Including the gorillas… who are herbivores by
the way, so that makes a lot of sense. And
then after they show some serious father-son bonding between chimps, the one (male) orangutan in the
film is shown teaching young apes letters and words, etc. Throughout the movie, all the apes sign to
each other (ASL) as well as making natural ape sounds and eventually speaking
English, which I thought was interesting.
But now for a moment I appreciated, being someone who knows
a little about the anatomy of apes.
When the apes come into contact
with humans for the first time in years (within the same generation from the
James Franco movie) the main ape, Caesar, yells at them “GO” which makes them
run away. And when the humans meet up
with the leader scientist of the colony (Gary Oldman) in San Francisco, and
tells him that Caesar spoke, he says “that’s impossible!” which I praised the
writers for because they put in just a little bit of truth in this impossible
story. We know apes are capable of
language, and understanding it. We also know that the anatomy of their voicebox
doesn’t allow them to speak any of “our” human languages.
Now for the list of moments I wanted, and sometimes did,
facepalm myself:
AND SO THE SPOLERS BEGIN
Caesar, his son, and his “wife” or “partner” were all
light-faced. There’s no such thing as a
light faced chimp (as an adult). Chimps are born with light faces and when they
reach maturity, their faces get as dark as their fur. So basically that family
is a sub species of chimp that doesn’t exist.
That’s cool.
Caesar has a wife. Or assumed monogamous relationship with a
female (who is sick for a lot of the movie).
Chimps, and most ape species, do not maintain male-female
relationships. The male chimp who is
leading the community will mate with all females of the group who are
mature. The strongest bonds in a chimp
community are mother-child. Mothers will mourn for their children if they
die unexpectantly, and children will do the same if/when their mothers die,
whether or not they have reached maturity.
Sibling bonds are also strong.
But father-son bonds are non-existant.
The 3+ times Gary Oldman’s argument for warring with these
apes was “THEY’RE JUST ANIMALS”
We humans
like to forget that we are animals. We
are part of the animal kingdom. We are
mammals. And to make it even more
exciting, we are 97% genetically identical to chimps (and bonobos).
Not to
mention that Gary Oldman’s character is supposed to be a scientist. So he
should know these things, and that pisses me off even more.
With all
that being said, can we point out the fact that the apes in this movie aren’t
“just animals” either… so why the actual fuck does this argument keep popping
up.
That one random guy Carver being an asshole and bringing a
gun with him when they go to fix the dam electricity and the baby finds it.
Idiot.
Now for the few things I did like:
I really loved that every time the “bad” ape, Koba,
disagreed with Caesar and eventually lost to Caesar’s dominance, Koba bent down
with his hand raised waiting for Caesar’s touch. That was very realistic in
what goes on in a group of chimps.
I also had a love/hate response to the scene with the
humans, when they’re camping out waiting to start working on the dam they need
to fix, and Carver, the man who is very afraid of these apes, and is very
hostile towards them, starts blaming them for what’s happened to humanity and
all the deaths that have occurred, and is basically calling for war and why
don’t we just kill them, etc. And Ellie,
the love interest of the leader of the outing, reminds him that the genetic
mutation that caused the deaths of billions of people were made by scientists…
humans… and the apes didn’t really have a say in the matter of the beginning of
this whole thing. It was just a really
good moment, even though Carver ends it by calling her a “hippie dippie animal
lover” which is the negative part for me.
Right now, there’s this negative association to “hippies” and so calling
her that might make people watching this movie not want to side with her, which
is where you’re supposed to be (at least in my opinion).
No comments:
Post a Comment