My favourite film of the summer

 

My favourite film of the summer is Dawn of the planet of the apes. This is the sequel to the 2011 film, Rise of the Planet of the apes. Dawn of the planet of the apes stars Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell and Toby Kebbell.

It  starts 8 years after the first movie, and after having a war, both the apes and the humans live away from each other. However, a few humans go into the forest which the apes live in, searching for a dam for power/energy. Caesar understands and allows the humans to work on the generator, as long as they surround their guns. Koba, doesn’t like this and starts having an arguement with him which resulted in Caesar badly hurting Koba. Later on, Koba shots Caesar and Caesar sees him do it. Then, Koba starts a war with the humans, destroying the city and killing unarmed humans. Eventually, Caesar and Koba meet onto of a tower, meanwhile Gary Oldman’s character Dreyfus blows a C4 bomb on the tower, trying to protect the humans. Caesar kills Koba despite this going against his principle of not killing other apes. Malcolm, Jason Clarke’s character, warns Caesar of an attack from a military warship. The film then ends.

I loved this film for so many reasons. Firstly, I love the dynamic between Koba and Caesar, the main 2 apes. They are the polar opposites of each other.  Caesar believes that the humans are good and is willing to let them use the dam. This is because Caesar knows that there is good in the humans, because he was raised by a good man in the previous film.  However, Koba believes that humans are evil and that the apes should start a war on them. This is because Koba has only ever seen the bad  in humans, when they were in a war. This is why he is wary and doesn’t like the humans. And in effect, both of them are correct, there is both good and bad in humans. These characters are similar to batman and the Joker in the Dark Knight, where they also are 2 complete opposites, believing in different things.

The second reason why I enjoyed this film is because of Andy Serkis’ performance. Although Caesar is a CGI ape, you believe and care for him. This is all because of his  brilliant motion capture performance. Caesar has so many different emotions throughout the film, and we feel every emotion. Although he is an ape, we care for him as much as we would if he was a human.In addition to this, Gary Oldman’s character Malcolm is brilliantly written and performed as well. We understand and indeed sympathise with him even know he wants the apes. Malcolm wants to kill the apes to protect the remaining humans and because he lost his family. Therefore, we connect with him and understand why he wants to kill them. He isn’t your average 2D villain, he has layers and great character depth, unlike villains in other similar movies like Avatar’s villain.   

Another reason why I like the movie is how it’s written and directed. It’s directed brilliantly, giving us excellent visuals of a destroyed, battered earth in the future. In addition to this, there are brilliant action scenes, which are tense and well done with both CGI and practical stunts making it look epic but also realistic and it could happen in real life. I particularly like the final battle between Koba and Caesar on the tower. It’s darkly lit implying that a death is going to happen, and we all don’t want it to be Caesar. It’s made even more epic knowing that the tower is going to blow up, meaning both of them could die. The film is also written very well, it makes us care for both the apes and the humans in the film. Also, the writer makes the apes realistic and makes them grounded, making us believe in them.

I also enjoy the ending of the film. If you listen closely, you can hear breathing and something moving things. I believe this could be Koba and he has in fact surived the massive fall. This would be brilliant because we could see him again in the third movie. The third movie should happen because the film has made a massive profit and is loved by critics and fans.