Monday, July 17, 2017

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

Director: Matt Reeves
Writers: Mark Bomback, Matt Reeves
DOP: Michael Seresin
Cast: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson

After the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Ceaser wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind.

It is the third installment of the Apes franchise with the first one exploring the origins story and second one showing the ascendancy of apes over humans. Quite naturally one would expect that the third one will have the apes establishing full control over the planet but nope, they had to do a filler one to stretch out the franchise. You have Ceaser still struggling having to take his tribe to the promised land while battling a renegade colonel in 'Ape-ocalypse Now'. Rise was a film that I liked, especially the latter half of it, while Dawn was really great, getting my hopes up for this one. I was incredibly disappointed and bored by it and am bemused by the universal praise it is getting from everywhere. It is such a shit film with glaring plot-holes and overall blandness that I was thinking of quitting on it thirty minutes into it. The fact that I was sitting there with a fucking 3-D glass, which constantly gives me headaches, also contributing to it. I was not actually planning to watch it on 3-D but that is the only way you can watch it at the cinemas in third world countries like India because studios and cinemas think we are neanderthals who gets enamored by gimmicks.  3-D and superhero franchises are the worst things to have happened to Hollywood. Fuck you, James Cameron!!!

My biggest problem with this film is that it doesn't take the story forward enough. The expectations from studio films are so low these days that mediocre ones like this one gets highly praised. The special effects and the apes are very convincing and you don't feel all the CGIing. Snowy setting is also very effective as I was longing for the desert that they were talking about pretty quickly. Matt Reeves had also directed the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and this is very much like Spectre, Sam Mendes' disappointing followup to Skyfall.

Rating: 1.5/5 

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