War for the Planet of the Apes

DIRECTOR:  MATT REEVES   LEAD CAST: ANDY SERKIS, WOODY HARRELSON, STEVE ZAHN, KARIN KONOVAL, AMIAH MILLER  SCREENWRITER: MARK BOMBACK, MATT REEVES  PRODUCER: PETER CHERNIN  EDITOR:  WILLIAM HOY, STAN SALFAS  MUSICAL DIRECTOR:  MICHAEL GIACCHINO  GENRE: SCI-FI ACTION ADVENTURE  CINEMATOGRAPHER: MICHAEL SERESIN  DISTRIBUTOR: 20^TH CENTURY FOX  LOCATION:  UNITED STATES  RUNNING TIME:  2 hours 27 minutes

Technical assessment:  4

Moral assessment:  3.5

CINEMA rating:  V14

MTRCB:  PG

Enhanced primate Caesar (Andy Serkis) and his apes are forced into a deadly conflict with an army of humans led by a ruthless renegade colonel (Woody Harrelson).  After the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind. As the journey finally brings them face to face, Caesar and the colonel are pitted against each other in an epic battle that will determine the fate of both of their species and the future of the planet. (mrqe.com)

After Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), War for the Planet of the Apes which is derived from Pierre Boulle’s novel (1963) begins two years after humans and primates fight for existence.  With characters created by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, the film is scripted by Mark Bombeck and director Matt Reeves as a character-driven action adventure.  Award-winning actor Serkin’s performance resulting in motion-capture visual effects is flawless.  Serkins as Gollum in Lord of the Rings is unforgettable; as Caesar here he stirs human empathy.  The colonel himself (Harrelson’s character), in an eyeball to eyeball scene with Caesar, says of the ape’s eyes “They’re almost human”.  Of course, Serkin didn’t do it alone—credit also goes to the team of effects artists who create the digital characters from the computerized 3D images of their actions and facial expressions.  Thanks to Seresin’s evocative cinematography and the stirring musical score by Giacchino, the total product is so convincingly real that only the most skeptical would doubt the story’s probability. 

Is it possible for an animal to have scruples, like human beings?  In War for the Planet of the Apes, we see an ape with a conscience and a human being without a heart.  Have man and ape switched roles?  No, and neither is depicted to be judged harshly, for the plot and the dialogue clearly unveil where each is coming from.  In this installment, Caesar is drawn to the dark depths of his heart, wanting revenge more than anything else—but has the discernment to realize that he is becoming more and more like the human-hating ape Koba (Toby Kebell).   The colonel wears a cross and a brown scapular around his neck, displays a small cross on his wall, and yet remains conflicted.  This thought provoking movie offers many topics for discussion, such as leadership, animal rights, compassion, loyalty, friendship, and vengeance as the result of being wounded (whether human or ape), etc.   While plumbing the depths of simian and human creatures, the movie also provides comic relief  through the antics of the zoo chimpanzee self-named “Bad Ape” (Steve Zahn), CINEMA—with due respect to MTRCB’s rating of PG—thinks that’s not enough to let your young children watch it.  The theme and its accompanying violence might scare and scar more than entertain them.

CINEMA TAKES A CLOSER LOOK AT REAL LIFE APES

CINEMA thinks the Planet of the Apes trilogy may also bring to focus the implications of real life scientific research utilizing primates, as its plot revolves around the scientists’ search for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease that created instead an ape with human-like intelligence.

It’s a fact that primates are being experimented upon by humans for medical purposes.  According to US-based PETA—People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—“over 105,000 primates every year are imprisoned in US laboratories… abused and killed in invasive, painful, and terrifying experiments…”  (See https://www.peta.org/) Primates are prime targets for experimenters because they share important biological and psychological characteristics with humans, such as sensitivity and intelligence.

In July 2011, as Rise of the Planet of the Apes hit the theaters—showing, among other images, a chimpanzee that fired an AK47 towards humans—the Academy of Medical Sciences of Britain (AMSB) said the dangers of disturbing animal-human experiments are real.  In a hard-hitting report the academics warned that research is close to pushing ethical boundaries and urged the government to create tough new rules to prevent such a scenario (of gun-toting primates) from becoming a reality.  Professor Martin Bobrow, a medical geneticist at Cambridge University and lead author of the report, said society needed to set rules before scientists began experiments that the public would find unacceptable.   

Three particularly “sensitive” areas in animal research, the report stated, are cognitive, that of reproduction, and creation of visual characteristics that would make them see themselves as human.  Relating to reproduction, the report recommended that animal embryos produced from human sperm or eggs do not develop beyond a period of 14 days.  The most controversial field, according to the report, deals with animals with “uniquely human” characteristics; the report called the experiments here “Frankenstein types with humanized animals”.  Thus, the AMSB report called for a ban on extreme attempts to give laboratory animals human attributes—such as injecting human stem cells into the brains of primates—and called for a closer monitoring of the experiments by a new body of experts.  “If a monkey that received human genetic material begins to acquire capabilities similar to a chimpanzee, it’s time to stop the experiments,” said Bobrow.

A co-author of the report, Professor Thomas Baldwin, said: “The fear is that if you start putting very large numbers of human brain cells into the brains of primates suddenly you might transform the primate into something that has some of the capacities that we regard as distinctively human—speech, or other ways of being able to manipulate or relate to us. These possibilities are largely explored in fiction, but we need to start thinking about them now.”