Wes Ball brings fresh blood, new ideas and superb motion capture to this top-quality summer blockbuster
ith this muscular instalment of the consistently impressive rebooted Apes franchise, director Wes Ball, previously best known for the propulsive but somewhat generic YA dystopian
series, graduates, with honours, to the big league of Hollywood helmers. This is a top-quality summer blockbuster, bringing fresh blood and new ideas into the series while staying recognisably within the worlds so meticulously created in the previous three movies.War for the Planet of the Apes and the conclusion of the story of Caesar, who is now regarded as a Moses-like legendary figure. But the thing about legends is that they get appropriated and twisted to fit the current narrative. Wise old orangutan scholar Raka follows the word of Caesar to the letter; Proximus cherrypicks the primate unity theme but disregards the bit about ape not killing ape. And youngster Noa , son of the leader of a chimp clan that trains and hunts with eagles, hasn’t even heard of Caesar.
It’s Noa that we follow, after his father is murdered and his clan enslaved. He joins forces with a young human, Mae , who, unlike most of her species , can speak, reason and plot against the ape oppressors. The picture looks phenomenal, with nature aggressively reclaiming abandoned human spaces – tower blocks jutting like broken teeth, the decaying carcass of a container ship. But most impressive are the motion capture performances, which are among the finest I have seen.
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