The Review of the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

It’s ten years after the events of the first film, and most of the world’s population have been wiped out by ‘simian flu’. The few survivors living in San Francisco (which now looks like Playstation 3’s The Last of Us; towns covered in greenery, walls overgrown with vines etc.) blame the apes for this apocalypse. The apes are living in the woods they took in the first film. Caesar, the main ape from Rise’ who lead the revolution against humanity (Andy Serkis) is the leader of their ape community and they are doing well. They have a school and can all speak ape sign language (and more and more verbal English as the film goes on). When an ape is shot by a human explorer, things start to spiral out of control, and war between man and ape looks increasingly likely.

Dawn of The Planet of The Apes (a friend of mine criticised the title; too much ‘of the’s) is somewhat humourless and bleak, though not without a few pleasures (Andy Serkis). The CGI of course is amazing, as is Serkis’s performance, but if you’ve seen the first film the awe of seeing realistic talking apes with lifelike expressions is old. The strength and weakness of this film is the focus on the apes rather than the humans. It’s Caesar’s movie, and you empathise with him much more than any human. I don’t know if it’s intentional but the human characters are very underdeveloped; there’s a guy who wants to give the apes a chance and talk to them (good guy, has son and hat), a jerk who just hates apes and wants them all dead (bad guy, has stubble and gun) and Gary Oldman (bad guy, has Gary Oldman glasses and beard, doesn’t hate apes that much but wants to protect his people). Nobody has any discernable traits; it’s like they spent so much time on everything else they forgot to give the characters character, and seem to have turned up from some B movie, which wouldn’t be a problem if the film didn’t take itself so seriously.

It’s a dark film, with almost no laughs. This would be fine if the film wasn’t about monkeys, the funniest animals on the planet. There is one scene in which an ape is trying to steal weapons, and so pretends to be a normal, comedy style monkey, to the amusement of the humans he’s fooling. This would have been great, possibly the best part of the movie if I hadn’t seen an advert showing pretty much the whole scene on telly. Like most trailers, it spoilt the best and funniest part of an otherwise humourless film.

At over two hours though, it was never boring. The film is unique in that it focuses on a different species while managing the delicate balance of not anthropomorphising the apes too much, while keeping them relatable. It’s not like an animated film where you have animals with human brains; the apes are very apey; they have their own culture distinct from humans. The whole theme of the film though, is basically apes and people are the same, and there’s a lot you could read into it if you could be bothered. The visuals are amazing; CGI is in fact so good most of the time you don’t notice, apart from a few lingering monkey eyes close ups which serve more to show off motion capture technology than to say anything about the characters.

Dawn is unique and you have to take your hat off somewhat for it daring to focus on apes rather than humans. You then have to put it on again somewhat for the film taking itself so fucking seriously, and end up with a hat that’s just kind of resting on top of your head, and you look like a dick.

The Wolverine Review

I reviewed X-Men; Days of Future Past last week so I thought I’d follow up with The Wolverine.

 The Wolverine is the 6^th X-Men movie, and Logan’s second stand-alone feature. Long before The Avengers, The X-Men movies has offered an ensemble team of superheroes to varying degrees of critical and commercial success, starting with Bryan Singers X-Men in 2000. You have Storm, Cyclops, Rogue, Jean Grey, and Iceman to name a few, but really it’s all about Magneto, Professor X and Wolverine.

 Wolverine one of the most compelling super heroes on screen; a soldier who forgot his identity, a man who is cursed with eternal life and a badass with an indestructible adamantium skeleton and twelve inch retractable claws. Like if Jason Bourne was a vampire and a victim of military experiments. Wolverine has seen so much; The American Civil War, World War One and Two, Nagasaki and Vietnam. Wolverine’s story trumps any other superhero. He’s not an orphan (Batman, Spiderman, Superman), and he doesn’t struggle to hide his identity from the world (Batman, Spiderman, Superman). His pain comes from his power; he is cursed with eternal life, which is so much more interesting than having no parents. Wolverine’s condition asks questions about the importance of death, how it gives meaning to life; the thing we fear most pushes us to live.

These themes are explored in The Wolverine, directed by James Mangold (Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma), theatrically released last year, and currently showing on Sky Movies. So at the start we see a younger Logan held captive at a POW camp in Nagasaki, just before the atomic bomb is dropped. He saves one of the guards, Ken Yamamura’s Yashida, who becomes indebted to him for the rest of his life. Fast forward to present day and Logan is now a hermit, living beardy on a mountain, alone.  He is found by Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a kick-ass mutant who sees people’s deaths, and an associate of the now dying Yashida. She tells him to return to Japan to honour his promise of seeing the dying Yashida before he dies. He reluctantly agrees, and on arrival in Tokyo becomes entangled in a web of conspiracy; facing The Yakuza, a venomous mutant scientist who tries to take away his power  and a giant adamantium samurai robot. All while falling in love with Yashida’s daughter Mariko, as he protects her from The Yakuza.

So Logan loses his power in this movie, becoming mortal, which is a great trick. With most protagonists despite being mortal you know they’ll be ok; James Bond for example is never going to die. However something outside of traditional Hollywood narrative ensures Wolverine’s survival; his healing powers stop him from dying. Take them away and suddenly anything could happen. Every bullet and blade is now dangerous, and there’s real fear when for the first time we see Logan limping from bullet wounds and bleeding for hours. His power also brings weird movie believability to the action. Most heroes simply don’t get shot or stabbed, and if they do it’s always in the shoulder or leg, maybe they’re unconscious for a bit but they’ll wake up just in time. Wolverine however, is always getting sliced open, and despite healing almost instantly, it’s more believable than when henchmen can’t shoot a target a few metres away, or when average Joe takes on massive scary monsters (e.g. Sam vs Shelob in Return of The King).

One let down is a fight scene atop a 300pmh bullet train. None of it looks real, and any tension is dissolved by the obvious green screen. Trains are great in films; they move really, really fast and have real potential for claustrophobia, but the CGI just doesn’t work; maybe it would’ve looked better twenty years ago with practical effects. The scene is completely unnecessary but too ugly to get away with it.

Despite its flaws, there’s a lot to enjoy with The Wolverine. Hugh Jackman is just the right amount of gruff, just on the edge or caricature. The film is lifted every time his sidekick Yukio is on screen; clad in platforms and stripy tights, wielding a samurai sword, her humour and charm lift her above nerd wank fodder. The action in this is better than most superhero films; Wolverine’s powers necessitate hand-to-hand combat, which is much more exciting than robots shooting lasers from huge distances (which is the biggest problem with X-Men; Days of Future Past). The locations are great, and although the cinematography is pretty standard blockbuster stuff, the Tokyo scenery and lighting give the look a cool blue finish, and pretty backgrounds.

Apart from some rubbish CGI The Wolverine is fun, although lacking a decent baddy. It’s pretty much what you’d expect if you’ve seen the trailers, but less dull than you might think.

X Men: Days of Future Past Review

The premise of X-Men: Days of Future Past is great (Wolverine goes back in time to the ‘70s). The film doesn’t really deliver though, underusing the best actors and characters, suffering from a lacklustre plot and no real villain.

So the future is really bleak. For some reason it’s cloudy and dark everywhere all the time, and robots are chasing the last surviving mutants across the globe. The old favourites are back, and it’s a real treat to see Iceman, Kitty, Magneto and Xavier for the first time in eight years. They’re barely escaping the scary robots who were invented by Peter Dinklage's Bolivar Trask in the 70s, and so send Wolverine back in his own consciousness (with his memories intact but into his younger body; unfortunately there aren’t two Wolverines knocking about) to stop a chain of events that causes the mutant apocalypse. Wolverine finds Xavier at his worst, without his powers and stumbling around drunk like Kurt Cobain or Jim Morrison, bearded and robed. There’s a neat bit later in the film in which the two Xaviers (Patrick Stewart and James MacAvoy) meet, but it’s one of too few ‘new meets old’ moments in the film. It’s disappointing how little this happens, and the huge potential for self-reflection, and seeing two actors play the same role in one shot would’ve been great, but it’s underused.

The first third of the film is fun, the future is depressing and scary, and it’s great seeing Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart back together.  Stewart still brings wisdom and authority to a ridiculous world, even managing to retain dignity in a leather suit and a flying wheelchair.  They’re not in it enough though; you would think they would use the two best actors in the movie a lot more. This is partly because they’re passing the franchise on to the First Class crew, so really it’s got to be about the young actors who can actually do all the action stuff, and there’s no Rogue, Cyclops or Jean Grey to run around either. It’s sad to see Stewart and McKellan go, but at least they can keep Hugh Jackman, and X-Men: Apocalypse will be set in the ‘80s, which should be cool.

The film’s biggest problem is its plot, which is kind of boring. There’s no space time continuum stuff, and they don’t really play with time travel at all. It doesn’t really feel like an action movie - there’s a lot of talking – but action set pieces are stuck in there anyway, and it’s all CGI nonsense. Big action scenes come down to lifting giant things like Superman, which is really, really boring to anyone who’s ever seen a movie before, and giant flying robots, which are unremarkable, and  have been done to death in the last ten years. The film also lacks real villain; Lawrence’s Mystique is fine, as is Dinklage’s Bolivar Trask, but there’s too much sympathy for both characters. The threat comes from the robots in the end, and they have no personality.

Evan Peters’ Quicksilver is the highlight of the movie, a slacker teen mutant who can move in bullet time. The section of the film in which he appears is the best; he’s funny, cocky and reminiscent of a young Johnny Depp. Again he’s not in it enough, and you’d think the X-Men could’ve used him in the last third of the film.

Despite a fantastic cast and some shining moments DOFP underuses its best bits, instead going for  all out CGI, or boring talking bits.