Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - Grading & Discussion

The apes were specifically said to have their territory in Muir Woods which featured in both films. The lakes and dams on the map are adjacent to Muir Woods. Seems pretty solid to me, regardless of whether you consider it north or south Marin.

Considering most of Southern California is mountains or desert that would dry up rather quickly without a continuous water supply infrastructure, and most of Central California wouldn't have easy access to the ocean for major fishing expeditions needed to feed the colony, and since you'd have a whole city to scavenge for food, supplies, fuel, and shelter, San Francisco seems like an ideal location to me. The climate concerns are mild compared to much of the rest of the country.

Also, there's the fact mentioned in the film that the city housed major National Guard posts/armories (where they got all their weapons, ammo, and armored vehicles) and FEMA relief camps during the spread of the disease (since SF was ground zero for the Simian Flu, it's reasonable to assume it got more attention than other areas) and in the aftermath where civilization broke down and humans fought among themselves.

 

There are several aquifers in SF, such as the Westside Basin Aquifer, which would be enough to support a colony. SF had to rely on its own water supply for quite a while in the pre-pipeline days, after all.

That said, Oakland is warmer. Berkeley gets the fog coming straight through the Gate.

 

Meanwhile, in other Dawn commentary, director Matt Reeves - the guy who spent several years of his life living and breathing the movie - is utterly bumfuzzled when Vulture asks a simple question: where are all the women?

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes director Matt Reeves spent several seasons as an executive producer on Felicity, and when I spoke to him last week, he told me, “The idea of exploring the emotional lives of female characters is one of the great pleasures and interests of my career.” Still, when I asked the brainy, talkative Reeves why there was so little for women to do in Dawn, he fell uncharacteristically silent. “It wasn’t a conscious decision. I don’t know,” he finally admitted. Reeves mentioned the motion-capture actress Karin Konoval, who plays the male ape Maurice in the film: “This is a ridiculous answer to the question, but I always thought of Maurice as a [female] character because a woman plays Maurice. Gosh, I don’t know … it’s sort of a shame that, as you say, that’s sort of true.”

Ultimately, Reeves arrived at an explanation: The movie is in part about fathers and sons, which is why lead ape Caesar, who has two sons, is mirrored by our lead human (Jason Clarke), who has a son as well. “I think Keri does a beautiful job and I love her in the movie,” Reeves said, “but it obviously is not her film.” And yet, couldn’t it have been? Keri Russell is still a lot more famous than Zero Dark Thirty breakout Jason Clarke, and it’s not as though the parallels between ape and human would have been lost on the audience if Caesar recognized his parental equal in Russell’s character instead of a man. Countless other characters could have been gender-flipped, too: The film would have lost nothing if Clarke’s son had been a daughter, or if a few of the many subordinates to Gary Oldman’s beleaguered human leader had been female. Hell, even Oldman’s character could have been a woman: We’ve got an entire population of terrific character actresses who’ve got nothing to do because these big summer spectaculars rarely offer more than one female role, and even that part usually goes to a hottie under 40.


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I don't ask that every major movie have gender parity, but the fact that he hadn't even thought enough about the matter to have a ready answer is troubling, especially if it's indicative of Hollywood as a whole.

 

There are only three human characters of any real significance in the film: Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, and Keri Russell (you could arguably make a case for Clarke's son and Kirk Acevedo playing an asshole idiot like he did on The Walking Dead, but just barely). The rest of the people are just bit characters at best, with plenty of men and women. It seems an odd choice of film to hang a gender inequality label on considering it's mostly about CGI apes (played by men and women, as mentioned). Also, the director didn't say anything negative, he seemed to consider the point and express some regret about it. You act as if he had nothing to say or dismissed the issue.

But then again, it just seems like you're playing your usual role of finding whatever reason you can to take a dump on a popular film without seeing it or apparently having any intention to. When one of your complaints falls apart, you just find another. I'd respect your opinions a bit more if they came from less of a position of ignorance.

 

My geographic complaints didn't "fall apart"; even if there is one, the notion of relying on a fairly small dam in Muir Woods to power a colony all the way down in SF is silly. (Why not use wind? SF isn't exactly short on it.) As for starting a colony there instead of Oakland/the East Bay, I assume the only reason for this is that SF has more name recognition to movie audiences outside of the Bay Area.

As for gender, you name 3-5 important human characters, depending on what one considers important. Either way, that's one out of five important female characters - not exactly balanced. And as for the movie being about apes, the article has you covered there also:

Ellie’s counterparts at the colony of apes don’t fare much better when it comes to representation: There, too, we meet countless male apes but only one female, Caesar’s love interest, Cornelia. This motion-capture character is played by the talented actress Judy Greer, who has a dancer’s background, studied simian movement for months, and yet has about 90 seconds of screentime in the final film. No one even calls Cornelia by name in the movie—if you wanted to know, you’d have to look it up later.


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I may well wind up Netflix Disc-ing this movie eventually, as I do have some interest in it, weird geographical premise and all; it's not on my automatic crap list like Transformers. I would, however, be more interested in it if Russell's character were lead human role. (And didn't Rise also background women? I haven't seen it either, but I can name several important characters: Franco, Franco's dad, the jerk neighbor, Caesar, Franco's boss, Draco Malfoy, that abused male ape, and Franco's girlfriend. So out of nine important characters, one is female, and she's sleeping with a male protagonist, just as Russell and Cordelia are in Dawn.)

 

You mean he didn't have a ready-made PR answer ready. He gave the most honest answer first.

 

Wait a second; you're arguing about the content of a movie based on hearsay alone? You are arguing about the characterizations and role depth in a movie that you have not seen? You are arguing about the geography of a location represented in a movie (a set of moving pictures) that you have only envisioned and not seen for yourself?

Plonk.

 

Because the dam is a plot device in order to force the humans into contact with the apes. If they raised windmills locally, there would be no conflict, hence no story worth telling.

 

Saw it today in 2D. (Was glad to not have to see it in standard 3D, though disappointed that there was no IMAX version.)

It was very impressively realised, especially in the scenes with apes doing things en masse out in the open. There are levels of detail on the apes that would have given special effects people a coronary just a few years ago. Also, it was great to see apes riding horses and toting machine guns (mounted and otherwise).

Caesar, though, seems to be almost a different character; there's little evidence of the keen intelligence we saw in the first movie, and much of the tension between the humans and the other great apes could perhaps be put down to his unreasonable and perhaps unwise behaviour earlier in this one. But I guess it's realistic in that common chimps can get much more aggressive as they age. Nice to see him own up to his mistakes, though.

It'll be interesting to see how things develop in the next movie. Presumably the uplifting of ape intelligence is, or will become, a global occurrence; so the localised scuffle we've just seen will be a precursor to a species-level power struggle. Maybe Caesar will end up doubting if Koba was so wrong after all.

A- overall for now. Looking forward to seeing it again before the year's out.

 

META POSTING!!!

 

I completely agree. We are now finding sexism in a movie about talking apes just because the creator didn't think about it? This is silly. If he came out and said "Well I just don't like women taking screen time" then I'd call him out. But he has a good point, he worked with women and never really thought about the fact the ape was a male.

 

Where the Heston movie warned us where we might end up if we kept up our petty and warring ways, this movie pretty much just took the cynical route of saying it doesn't matter, not only does humanity suck but so do the evolving apes, we will all be betrayed by our kind eventually, and even the noblest of us will have to learn to break our sacred rules and kill the opposition (Caesar had a disappointing character arc).

 

Citing an article published by a reputable source isn't hearsay; it's research.

I grew up in San Francisco and have been to Muir Woods many times. I assure you, I have a better handle on SF geography than what the movie may show.

It's funny how some posters would rather get defensive and hostile rather than just acknowledge this and move on. Many great movies have absurd elements - example: the villain's completely ridiculous scheme in Vertigo. But no, for some, the fact that they enjoy the movie means that it simply can't have glaring headscratchers and baffling plot points, and must therefore be attacked and ridiculed.

The under-representation of women in Hollywood is nothing new; ergo, it's something filmmakers should have in mind when they shape movies, especially big-budget ones. For a director who's spent several years working on a movie to have thought so little on the matter as to be at a loss for words when asked why there's so little for the movie's female characters to do is sexism, plain and simple.

So no, his lack of a PR answer isn't the problem. The problem is that the question needed to be asked in the first place. Note that even the director said the dearth of roles for females was "sort of a shame".

 

Loved the movie overall but the apes were the only compelling characters for sure. The humans were very vanilla, unlike the last movie.

Yeah the only significant things that struck me about the movie was why the humans went back to a city to start wasting energy instead of going to farmland to grow both sustainable crops for food & bio-diesel and why the hell we had Princess Leia syndrome for both humans AND apes. When I saw the line stating that the women and young ones should stay behind while the male apes went to war I almost choked on my own bile. I mean seriously ludicrous. I'm currently watching Utopia and the Honourable Woman on British TV - fascinating dramas and they have as many women as men in various different roles. It really should not be that hard to do. The original movie in the sixties had an astronaut (albeit a deceased one, which was a shame), an ape scientist, and a character that functioned as our eyes into the world of modern humanity. All we got in this one was one passive love interest apiece. That's the result of fifty years march towards gender equality in entertainment. Yikes.

 

It's a complete waste of money to see this movie in 3D. Post-production 3D is usually just a way to charge higher ticket prices anyway, but there was barely any 3D in the movie. You would've gotten more money's worth out of the 3D trailers than in the entire movie.

 

Yeah, someone warned back on an early page of this thread that the 3D wasn't necessary for this one, I heeded the warning and caught a 2D screening.

Btw. thanks for that info, whoever you were. <checks> ElimParra

 

Did they do 3D on the scene where Koba accurately dual wields machine guns while standing on a horse riding through fire and being shot at?

That scene was simultaneously awesome and ridiculous. It was Awediculous™.

 

It might've been but I don't remember. There was so little 3D, and what was 3D didn't exactly pop off the screen. It was mostly depth 3D with characters standing around. I think the opening hunt was in 3D. So were the end credits.

 

FWIW, CinemaBlend gave the 3D a very high rating...

 

There was maybe 5 minutes of 3D in the movie at the most, so I don't know what the Cinemablend writer is smoking.