The first half works better than the second and the apes upstage the humans. While the look and movement of the apes is effective, I still prefer the old 60s film in this department, where the more human stances and clothes made the apes fascinating and more fun to watch. The human characters are no match for Charlton Heston either. Worst of all is the semi-soap opera feel of some of the emotive scenes and the deadly dull piano music that drones on in the background, adding a wearying portentousness. It aims for an epic quality but forgets that epics require larger than life, ambiguous characters with universal interest, and even the best ones here -Caesar and Koba- are not quite that interesting. In fact, the only truly interesting part was not the fact that apes are proven to be just as capable of evil- their rivalry for leadership, from which human power hunger possibly stems, is well-known; it is the newsreels of the effects of a virus in the prologue. What is happening to the world in the 2020s was clearly predicted back then. How long ago 2014 seems! Back to the film: another issue is it feels long because it saves dull and predictable action for the end, by which time the mind has switched off. How much better and unforgettable was the end of the1968 version when films were still mainly aimed at adults...
Review of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
