(This review may contain spoilers).
I’ve seen Rise and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, so when I saw this advertised, I immediately wanted to watch this.
This movie was one of those that drew me easily in almost straight away, but I really didn’t like the humans in this movie. Apart from the little girl, all of the humans were clearly the bad guys.
I really liked seeing Caesar interacting with his family and the other apes. In many ways, the apes were more human than the humans and the battle scene at the beginning was really intense.
There were a lot of contradictions with the apes acting the part of ‘donkeys’. Considering they were initially against humans, though not to the level of their leader, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense they would choose to ally themselves with those trying to eradicate the apes.
I was a bit disappointed not to see more of the individual apes. Lake in particular was one I would have liked to see expanded upon. What was she like, other than a lifemate to Caesar’s son?
I did think that the trailer showed a very different storyline to the one that was actually shown in the movie. Without giving anything away, I’d assumed that there would be more of a moral ambiguity with Caesar. I thought I’d be seeing a lot more darkness with him. And while there were elements of that darkness I’d expected to see, it didn’t cross the line I was expecting.
I felt a lot of sympathy for Bad Ape. I was close to tears when he was talking about his life…and I was very emotional by the end of the movie. In a way, I was thankful there were some elements of humour, as otherwise, the film would have been very intense.
I have to say, while I liked many of the apes, Maurice was probably my favourite. I was glad to see a lot of him in this movie.
While I did find the ending quite difficult to watch, this is a movie I would probably see again and, more than likely, buy on DVD.
Ink of Blood 