War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
Directed by Matt Reeves
Caesar and his apes are forced into a deadly conflict with an army of humans led by a ruthless Colonel. 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 their species and the future of the planet.
45 connections found
View:
45 films that influenced War for the Planet of the Apes
What critics say influenced War for the Planet of the Apes
The final act is derivative to a fault (think “The Great Escape” or “The Grand Illusion” with a few more big explosions), but the apes’ perseverance freshens up the formula.
As in episodes one through three of the “Star Wars” franchise, Reeves is operating in revisionist-prequel mode, filling in the calamitous backstory that leads to a depressing present reality — except that in this case, he’s less concerned with mythology, approaching this chapter as an elaborate homage to such manly classics as “The Great Escape,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Apocalypse Now,” starring monkeys.
"War for the Planet of the Apes" references many films - "The Great Escape," "Apocalypse Now" and "The Searchers" to name a few - but its larger grasp is historical, a new civilization forming as an old one wanes.
“We watched The Great Escape.
“War” follows their long journey through the woods until it shifts in its second half to a riveting prison camp thriller, with heavy overtones of previous war films, from “Apocalypse Now” to “The Great Escape.”
There’s even a slice of “The Great Escape” thrown in as the knuckle-dragging prisoners scheme to outwit their upright captors.
As in episodes one through three of the “Star Wars” franchise, Reeves is operating in revisionist-prequel mode, filling in the calamitous backstory that leads to a depressing present reality — except that in this case, he’s less concerned with mythology, approaching this chapter as an elaborate homage to such manly classics as “The Great Escape,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Apocalypse Now,” starring monkeys.
This small army is led by The Colonel (Woody Harrelson), a bald, sadistic military leader who found a role model in Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now.
"War for the Planet of the Apes" references many films - "The Great Escape," "Apocalypse Now" and "The Searchers" to name a few - but its larger grasp is historical, a new civilization forming as an old one wanes.
Playing against type, Harrelson is understated and terrifying channeling Brando in Apocalypse Now as the ruthless, deranged Colonel.
Here, he’s pitted against The Colonel, played by Woody Harrelson, and if Caesar is in “A Man Escaped,” Harrelson is planted firmly in “Apocalypse Now,” down to the black face paint and ‘70s rock (the film even has some fun with the reference, with “Ape-pocalypse Now” graffiti’d on tunnel walls).
Led by the brutal and skilled military commander known only as the Colonel (Woody Harrelson channeling Colonel Kurtz from “Apocalypse Now”), the goal of the military forces is complete ape genocide.
"War for the Planet of the Apes" references many films - "The Great Escape," "Apocalypse Now" and "The Searchers" to name a few - but its larger grasp is historical, a new civilization forming as an old one wanes.
Caesar is akin to Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, driven by vengeful hatred of a race/species to an unbecoming brink.
Picking up 15 years after the outbreak of the population-decimating simian flu, the film feels like a primate hybrid of The Searchers, The Great Escape, and Apocalypse Now (with lone human movie star, Woody Harrelson, in the gonzo Kurtz role).
Combining the premises and conceits of two earlier 2017 blockbusters – Kong: Skull Island and Logan – War will also remind viewers of classic tales like The Searchers, Apocalypse Now, The Empire Strikes Back and Spartacus.
As in episodes one through three of the “Star Wars” franchise, Reeves is operating in revisionist-prequel mode, filling in the calamitous backstory that leads to a depressing present reality — except that in this case, he’s less concerned with mythology, approaching this chapter as an elaborate homage to such manly classics as “The Great Escape,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Apocalypse Now,” starring monkeys.
The movie is also profoundly indebted to the cinema of David Lean, specifically The Bridge on the River Kwai, as the apes are gathered into work camps to build a massive wall at the insistence of their human captors.
The movie branches off onto an unexpected route, taking inspiration not only from the other Planet of the Apes films but from classic war pictures like The Great Escape and The Bridge on the River Kwai .
Most of the spoken dialogue, by contrast, falls to Harrelson’s Colonel, a worthy new adversary who at one point gets a deranged, nihilistic monologue that further underscores his resemblance to Col. Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now.” That’s just one of a few classics that Reeves has cited as overt influences, including the Clint Eastwood western “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” biblical epics like “The Ten Commandments,” and the World War II-era classics “The Great Escape” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”
Reeves and cinematographer Michael Seresin have combined to make a film in which every single moment—whether it is a quiet contemplation of Caesar and his surroundings or one of the massive action sequences—is striking to the eye and even contains sly visual homages to such classics as “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Apocalypse Now” for good measure.
It’s a movie packed with powerful set pieces—escapes, rescues, fights to the death—majestically shot by Michael Seresin and staged in a dazzling panoramic style that recalls the masterworks of director David Lean, especially The Bridge on the River Kwai, and more popcorn-oriented stuff like The Great Escape.
Advertisement
Nothing, to my taste, beats the 1968 original "Planet of the Apes," but then again, few sci-fi films have matched that movie’s mix of thrills, high camp, and high concept, plus that great kicker of an ending.
This homage to the 1968 Planet of the Apes film will be remembered and respected for decades to come.
Something else that I really enjoyed about War is this idea that the Simian Flu had mutated, leaving any survivors susceptible to new, horrific effects, which is a nod to the type of humans we meet in 1968’s Planet of the Apes .
War for the Planet of the Apes, which caps this science-fiction trilogy, is not only the best installment of the new Apes films, it’s one of the best summer blockbusters in year — and the best Apes film since the original classic Planet of the Apes in 1968.
I am sure we will be seeing an all new trilogy in the coming years that will bring us back to the world of apes closer to that one depicted in the 1968 classic Planet of the Apes.
Several characters from the 1968 film appear here in younger form: Cornelius (played in Planet of the Apes by Roddy McDowell) is an infant and Nova (Linda Harrison) is a young girl.
This scene looks like something out of “Platoon” or “We Were Soldiers” or “Full Metal Jacket” — and it’s hardly the only time “War for the Planet of the Apes” will remind us of a superbly crafted Vietnam war film.
Their leader, Caesar (Andy Serkis) , is now the most wanted beast in the nation, and Reeves wastes no time getting to the interspecies mayhem, opening his sequel with a siege on the apes’ remote stronghold that’s carried out by grunts whose helmets are emblazoned with Full Metal Jacket-esque slogans like “Monkey Killer” and “Endangered Species.”
Desde el arranque, queda claro que Reeves se ha inspirado en clásicos como Apocalypse Now y Full Metal Jacket.
Playing with genre, the filmmaker takes his cues from the cold austerity of “Full Metal Jacket,” Clint Eastwood‘s Western tropes, “The Great Silence,” and the same wintery Westerns that informed “The Hateful Eight.”
And this one ends up being betrayed by its homages to Apocalypse Now (there’s an “Ape-ocalypse Now” scrawled on a dilapidated wall at the midpoint, just in case viewers missed the other references), Schindler’s List , The Great Silence , and other classics; the sum of their ambitions can’t help but cast the formulaic, over-extended wartime prison-break that is War’s third act in an unflattering light.
Cool shout-outs to Schindler’s List though, bro.
Some "Schindler's List."
It’s more Schindler’s List than Hogan’s Heroes.
The Colonel himself stands on the balcony, looking down on the suffering apes just in the way that Ralph Fiennes’ Amon Göth took stock of the prisoners in Schindler’s List.
As Caesar becomes obsessed with taking out the Colonel after a deadly strike against the apes’ camp, the film becomes a riff on classic Clint Eastwood revenge westerns like The Outlaw Josey Wales and Unforgiven.
Most of the spoken dialogue, by contrast, falls to Harrelson’s Colonel, a worthy new adversary who at one point gets a deranged, nihilistic monologue that further underscores his resemblance to Col. Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now.” That’s just one of a few classics that Reeves has cited as overt influences, including the Clint Eastwood western “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” biblical epics like “The Ten Commandments,” and the World War II-era classics “The Great Escape” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”
There are scenes that feel straight out of a Clint Eastwood film – look for visual homages to The Outlaw Josey Wales and Unforgiven – and there are no rousing feelgood action-beat moments.
Like the recent Kong: Skull Island , it’s a half-hearted allegory for the Vietnam War, the war that has to stand in for all wars, because it’s the only one that American culture has deigned it okay to hate on; and like Logan , it’s a stealth Western passing itself off in a more marketable genre, with Serkis, the Lon Chaney of mo-cap, playing the graying, gun-slinging Caesar as an obvious, grimacing impression of Clint Eastwood circa The Outlaw Josey Wales .
Advertisement
The second entry directed by Matt Reeves following 2014’s “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” the dynamic finale continues Reeves’ ability to transform the man-versus-simian premise into a fiery war movie, but finds a way toward a related genre in the process — the prison escape drama.
Whereas 2011’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (directed by Wyatt) offered a cautionary tale about genetic engineers playing God, and Reeves’ 2014 follow-up “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” coincided with growing racial unrest (somewhat problematically equating apes to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.), “War” fails to delivery a functional allegory.
Reeves, who directed 2014’s excellent Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, brings this trilogy to a rousing conclusion.
Cowriter (with his "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" collaborator Mark Bomback)/director Matt Reeves ("Cloverfield") caps the trilogy with an epic story, but it is Andy Serkis's interior battle, Caesar's humanity dueling with his simian instincts, that is the single most spectacular element of the film.
Some years earlier (in the previous film, 2014’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), an ape traitor named Koba deliberately provoked a battle between Caesar’s forces and his allies among humanity’s survivors (because, again, conflict in these movies is as brutal as it is unavoidable).
This many grand artistic and cinematic influences crammed into a single movie would typically prove disastrous, but director Matt Reeves, returning after Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, has stretched his canvas wide enough to contain it all.
The original Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, from which the entire new trilogy draws most of its inspiration, was decidedly on the fence about humanity, indicting us for slavery and racism while also suggesting that maybe killing everyone isn’t the best response to same.
War for the Planet of the Apes, like its predecessors, is primarily an original tale but takes elements from Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the two 1970s prequels.