War for the Planet of the Apes
Composite Score: 84.53
Starring: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn, Karin Konoval, Amiah Miller, Terry Notary, Ty Olsson, Michael Adamthwaite, Toby Kebbell, Gabriel Chavarria, Judy Greer, and Sara Canning
Director: Matt Reeves
Writers: Mark Bomback and Matt Reeves
Genres: Action, Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, thematic elements, and some disturbing images
Box Office: $490.72 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
War for the Planet of the Apes is the third film in Matt Reeves’s Planet of the Apes prequel trilogy that also includes Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. The film picks up two years after Dawn with Caesar and his group of apes still on the run from the humans who want to wage war against them, now led by the charismatic and ruthless Colonel McCullough (Woody Harrelson). The film again stars Andy Serkis as Caesar, alongside Karin Konoval as Maurice, Steve Zahn as “Bad Ape”, Amiah Miller as Nova, and Terry Notary as Rocket. The film’s visual effects garnered it an Academy Award nomination, and it has been heralded as one of the best sci-fi films of the 2010s, bringing Reeves’s trilogy to a satisfying close.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
War for the Planet of the Apes is a film with few actual flaws, executing its story, character development, and themes with excellence for the most part. The one place it struggles is in its messaging. Where Rise had a clear anti-animal testing stance and Dawn was about coexistence and getting rid of hate and bigotry, War leans more into a warning against demagogues or a general message about humanity’s inevitable self-destruction, but those messages don’t necessarily come through as clearly as in the other two films in the trilogy. While this probably still is the best of the three, you’re left with a great story but a fairly generic message.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
War for the Planet of the Apes hits so many different great action notes that it has cemented itself as one of the best sci-fi action films of the 2010s. The opening sequence is one of the most harrowing battle scenes in recent memory, delivering twists and turns and intimate looks at the destruction wrought by the apes and humans on each other. Then the film turns to an intimate revenge thriller with Caesar setting out with just a chosen few to find and kill the Colonel. Those intimate and intense scenes of sneaking and seeking feel every bit as intense as The Count of Monte Cristo before the film again turns to a new genre of action. In its final form, War acts as a breakout film, featuring the apes working together against the humans to escape captivity. The war and revenge aspects remain in the background, spicing things up along the way, but the central development and execution of the escape plan still work on their own as well. The development of the trilogy’s (and film’s) secondary characters and villain in this sequence helps cement the film as an all-time action great. The tension created in every interaction between Caesar and his captors keeps you on the edge of your seat, and the final conclusion of the film (and trilogy) brings it all home in a beautiful moment of satisfying catharsis.
War for the Planet of the Apes is not just an excellent closing of a trilogy, it is a fantastic representation of the action genre in three of its subgenres, delivering some of the best of all three – war, revenge, and breakout – by the time it’s all said and done, earning a spot alongside the greats. Its thematic drawbacks keep it from achieving true perfection, but that barely overshadows how great of a film it truly is. It is currently available to stream with a Fubo or DirecTV subscription or to rent on most streaming services if you need a place to watch it.
