4/5
“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Caesar, Caesar, Caesar, I just spent all of the last review hyping up your leadership just for you to abandon your entire tribe to pursue your hate. Yes, calling him the villain is obviously a stretch, but he even admitted to acting like Koba. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Caesar and he is one of the best characters in all of cinema, but let’s not act like he didn’t make some massively selfish decisions. It goes to show what can happen to a man when you take away what is most important to him.
First of all, why did we leave the family in the room when we saw that the soldiers had direct access to it through the waterfall? Also, you are the leader of this massive tribe in the middle of a war, maybe it would be a good idea to practice the second amendment in your master suite? Surely we could afford either having a gun or a guard in there.
Caesar’s hate for the Colonel clearly outweighed his love for Cornelius. He wanted to kill the Colonel more than he wanted to raise his son. It would’ve been a little more understandable for Caesar if he had nothing left to lose, but that just wasn’t the case. He could’ve raised Cornelius to be the next leader of the apes, but that loss of his wife and firstborn was just too much to overcome.
Where did the ape, Winter, come from? This guy came out of the blue and is somehow one of Caesar’s most trusted advisors even though he’s clearly a weakass bitch. Along the lines of Winter, the silverback gorillas have an absolutely horrible survival rate in this world. I swear they are always the first to die.
Despite some of those things that annoyed me, I still really enjoyed this movie and gave it 4/5 stars. I could be convinced of 3.5/5, but I felt like it deserved 4 just from how great the franchise has been and for Maurice surviving. I mean seriously, Maurice is the absolute man. “I might not make it back.” “That’s why I need to come, to make sure you do.” COME ON MAN. Everybody needs a Maurice. I thought that the addition of Bad Ape was fun and I really enjoyed how it ended with the Colonel. Him getting sick from the doll was not something I saw coming (I probably should have), but it was a very poetic ending for him. You have to somewhat admire his commitment to doing what he believed. I did think that the soldier that Caesar spared was going to play a bigger role though. He owed Caesar everything and seemed like a good dude. Instead, he ends up shooting big C and gets blown to pieces for it. What was his deal with arrows too? You do know you have guns?
Overall, what an incredible franchise. Dawn comes out on top for me as my favorite as I thought it was near perfection. Kingdom is up next and I hope I get to see it on the big screen because I know some of those action scenes from these 3 movies would’ve hit differently in the theater.
“Is there anything left of you to save?”