The Distinct Modernity of the New Planet of the Apes

There’s been nothing in movies like the modern Planet of the Apes trilogy. Beginning with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (less dated now than you would expect), cementing itself with Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (the best of all three), and concluding with last weekend’s War for the Planet of the Apes (surprising, hard-to-grasp), it’s likely we’ll look back on these blockbusters with more questions. How were these so successful? Why did anyone approve three summer movies with vast stretches of dialogue-less drama? Was Andy Serkis’ lead performance as chief-ape Caesar prophetic of the future of acting, or a fascinating outlier in cinematic history? These movies are bizarre in concept, scoff-worthy in ambition, but nonetheless exceptional. We’ll be lucky to see a summer franchise this peculiar again.

Is that to say the Apes trilogy is brilliant? No. The first movie really is better than you remember, but try as James Franco might, the human elements ironically can’t keep up with Caesar’s gripping origin narrative. Dawn achieves moments of glory, including an absolutely visceral battle scene and an ape-centric climax that reaches Empire Strikes Back levels of emotional action stakes. Still, though, that movie has a bunch of dumb humans monkeying around in their third of the movie. War takes the boldest leap of all three movies, but it’s really let down by its title. It’s an ape-versus-self movie pretending to be a mass-scale war movie, and that disappointment diminishes some of the flick’s weightiest moments. What’s there is still pretty darn smart and skilled, though.

The best thing about the movement from Rise, Dawn, and, War is that the movies in tandem really do work in alliance with one another. Each movie is improved and affected by having its place in the trilogy, and there aren’t many blockbuster franchises that work that way. Most sequels take a rather TV-ish approach to their storytelling, where we’re encountering a new villain in the same setting to ultimately learn the same lesson. Apes has loftier goals than that. The trilogy is really about Caesar’s ascendance into legend, and as each movie places the next stretch of path for him, we see the character struggle with different, evolving modes of conflict: How does he unify the apes? How does he preserve the apes? How does he preserve himself? Blockbusters aren’t that smart anymore. It’s really, really cool.

And that’s why Serkis’ performance is so revelatory. As the now covered-to-death motion-capture technology improves with each movie, so does Caesar become more nuanced and expressive as a lead, but what makes that work is because Caesar as a character is also becoming more nuanced and expressive. He’s moving from ape to leader to messiah, after all. As the audience, we watch him learn to sign, learn to speak, and learn to lead, and all of these growth points demand new things from Serkis’ performance. He delivers on every single account. It’s one of the greatest movie accomplishments this decade. We talk about Oscar buzz, and he’d deserve it, but a lifetime achievement award seems more appropriate.

Thinking about Serkis and Caesar reaffirms the notion that these movies only could have been made today, and that makes their subversiveness and strangeness all the more surprising. The Apes movies are built on a foundational decision to focus on the monkeys instead of the humans, and in an age where visual effects make us demand photo-realism and pick apart every little crack in the façade, that was an enormous risk. Bad-looking apes meant no emotional investment, no stakes, and no money for the studio. But here we are, three fantastically bold movies later. So often, visual effects interfere and overwhelm story, but Apes chose to leverage its technology to engage in intimate emotion over wild spectacle. The result was something just as gripping. These movies will make you cover your mouth or move in your chair more than they’ll make your jaw drop. That’s rare this time of year.

Twenty years ago, these movies look stupid. Fifty years ago, they’re impossible. Nonetheless, bless the producers involved for putting the core of the Apes vision above the width of their own wallets; it was a decidedly old-fashioned sensibility. Summer movies now try to go for broke, to rake in as much cash as possible so studios can justify the decreased revenues of awards season. This translates to movies with insane set pieces, an abundance of explosions, and gratuitous slow motion. After a while, they all begin to look the same.

These won’t. Rise, Dawn, and War for the Planet of the Apes will always stand apart. They’re quieter, smaller, and built as a predetermined sequence instead of a who’s-to-say-how-many series. Individually, they might not be special movies, but as a trilogy, they’re original and rebellious and a startling blend of old-fashioned movie ethics and cutting-edge visual effects. The new Planet of the Apes movies will cement their legacy as a whole rather than as parts. That’s beautiful and poetic. Apes together strong.