Dawn opens with an extra close-up of Caesar’s eyes. We pull back to find him leading a party of apes hunting for food. His composure is assured, his posture confident. He is, by all accounts, now a leader, steadfast in his values -- namely, apes should be loyal to apes; all humans are dangerous.
Rise of The Planet of the Apes, the 2011 reboot of the decades-old franchise, was one of my favorite films of that year. It was a perfect apple pie of a movie -- a tender, emotionally satisfying center encased in a shell of glitzy, visceral CGI action. Its success stemmed from its ability to surprise, daring us to sympathize with a damn dirty ape over his human counterparts. Caesar was our proxy into this new world; we felt his pain when he hurt and cheered when he succeeded. Dawn is the continuation and maturation of Caesar’s journey from wide-eyed teenager to weary-eyed protector.
Caesar’s lieutenant, Koba, whose body is riddled with scars from experimentations at the hands of humans, is as much Caesar’s brother as he is Caesar’s foil. Only ever witnessing humanity’s capacity for evil, Koba is understandably even more wary of people than Caesar. So when a faction of human survivors stumble upon the ape colony, tempers flare and aggression builds. Chaos ensues.
Caesar and Koba explore a dynamic that is as deep and fruitful as any in storytelling. There are echoes of Professor X and Magneto, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X -- one believes in peaceful coexistence with those who are different, the other insists on exerting its dominance. They are brothers seeking to protect their family through whatever means necessary. It is this exploration of the Caesar/Koba relationship that reveals Dawn’s strongest storytelling lineage -- Shakespeare. Evoking shades of Hamlet and King Lear and Julius Caesar, the film evolves through escalating power conflicts -- a father’s struggle to shield his son from violence, a son’s seduction by the appeal of vengeance, a surrogate brother’s lust for power, a leader’s responsibility to protect his tribe. This storytelling pedigree works tremendously well, imbuing each character with humanistic motives that result in some of the best sketched movie characters this year, be it man or beast.
Science fiction stories have always worked best when they manage to reflect society’s failings. It is the primary way in which entertainment enriches our lives. From our own faults, we learn to improve; from our stumbles, we learn to run. Viewed as a science fiction allegory, Dawn is keenly vague yet practically begs for personal projections -- it echoes the perpetual fighting in Israel-Palestine, the betrayals from the Old Testament, the genocide of the Native Americans, even the persecutions during the Holocaust. Indeed, its central power-shift plays like a historical lesson in how power seeks out vacuums. “Fear will make them follow,” Caesar laments at one point. And seeing the events unfold throughout, it becomes easy to understand how one charismatic tyrant or vengeful rogue or benevolent ruler could come to accumulate such immense power. This exploration of a leader’s malleability and power’s evanescence is scarier than any CGI monster this year.
If this sounds grim and foreboding, it's probably because Dawn is exactly that. This franchise always had a flare for the pessimistic. But unlike some self-serious superhero movies, Dawn takes time to add weight behind motives, consequences behind actions. Injuries inflict pain; death begets grief. At one point, the apes launch a full-scale attack on the human compound. Armed with machine guns and riding on horseback, waves of apes cascade upon the stronghold, falling to the human’s defenses. Gas tanks explode into the night sky; wounded apes scream in primal yelps. Some apes shrink in terror, seeking refuge behind carcasses of old cars; others try to help their injured friends, only to be killed themselves. The horror culminates with a hair-raising continuous shot on top of a renegade tank turret. Drained of all sound effects, the spinning camera move reveals the destruction wreaked on the battlefield as if glimpsed through a dream, unflinching in despair and objective in terror, fleeting yet scarring.
The film ends with another extra close-up of Caesar’s eyes. But where the first frame promised a peaceful and hopeful future, the latter confirms a turbulent and costly fight for survival. Darkness encroaches on Caesar’s once youthful outlook. He doesn't stand as surely as he once did; fear clouds his eyes. Doubt rarely looks this alluring.
