Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
By: Kendall Haney,
Jr. Infectious Disease Correspondent
AKA: Eldest Siblings Need More Love
Recently, I was forced…I mean I watched, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on family night with my four brothers and sisters, two parents, and I’m sure if the dog had come with us overseas, she too would have gotten a front row seat. Let me give you the rundown.
The movie involves apes, and people, and rah, rah WAR! Humans bad! We should eat them! Well, no. That last part wasn’t in the movie, but a monkey somewhere was probably thinking it. Those monkeys in that movie—armed with guns and at least one Confederate-wannabe ape on horseback—looked angry enough to BBQ Rick Grimes.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, written by Mark Bomback and directed by Matt Reeves, is a 2014 remake of the classic movies made famous by the actor Charleton Heston back in the seventies. Or, was it the sixties? Maybe it was both.
Whatever.
Not much art came out of the seventies, in this writer’s opinion anyway, that is worth repeating…unless we mean do entirely over to make it decent. Planet of the Apes films are the exception. This movie is everything you’d expect from a film about genetically advanced monkeys in a post-apocalyptic world. The story is decent, it highlights man’s inhumanity against himself well enough, and certainly against nature. I think it does a decent job of illustrating man against man too.
No spoilers. Just watch it and I’m sure you’ll pick out those threads of the story as quickly as I did. For me, those overtones were not what made this movie interesting.
The movie starts off several years into the future. Humanity is nearly extinct from the simian flu that was a result of a science experiment gone all wrong, and apes have set up a bit of a civilization for themselves in large forests. The apes are also fluent in English (or at least as fluent as an ape can get), which really shocks our movie’s dear Homo-Sapien survivors.
Throughout most of the movie, a small group of people are struggling to maintain a tenuous peace with the wary and mistrustful apes as they (the humans) try to get electricity back up and running for their camp. The apes’ leader and the story’s main character, Caesar, is slightly more sympathetic to humans than most due to his upbringing. His second-in-command, Koba, was a lab monkey, and questions Caesar every step of the way. Koba only saw the bad side of humanity.
Of course, some things never change.
Now, I’m really not bitter as an eldest child, I swear, and I mean it so don’t read anything into what I am about to say next. However, I’d just like to point out the little fact that this movie highlights how the eldest in a family, frequently, carries a heck of a lot of water for the busy parents, the helpless siblings, and the needy neighbors, and yet, said eldest gets blamed and/or brushed off by just about everyone else in this movie despite the fact that the only reason that peace reigns supreme in the end for all has everything to do with the eldest’s efforts to save his father at every misstep.
One of the best and most underrated characters in this movie was the supporting character Blue Eyes. Blue Eyes is the first son to the Ape King Caesar. He is completely loyal to his father, even when he thought what his father was doing wasn’t the best idea. Early in the movie, Monkey Prince Blue Eyes is mauled by a bear and what do you think his ‘loving’ leader father does? He shrugs, gives him a disappointed look, and indirectly blames him for his injury by saying, “You should think before you act.” THANKS DAD! IT’S SO NICE TO KNOW YOU CARE!
What do the others in the community say? Scars are cool.
Really? Who wants a big trio of rips across your body? If they were so cool, the whole monkey tribe would be sporting stripes.
Shortly after this injury, we cut to the scene where we all run off to embrace the birth of Caesar’s newest son. I don’t even know his name because he is that irrelevant to the story, but that said where do you think you’ll find the eldest standing in the scene? Yep, you got it. You’ll find him at the back of the room being supportive and not being invited in for a hug until after all the hugs have already been handed out to everyone else.
Poor Caesar’s son isn’t given many lines during the movie, or screen time for that matter. He’s just sort of…there. I even had to look up his name before writing this article, that’s how insignificant he was treated despite the fact that his actions were so important to the end results of the story.
Disrespect of this character in his family’s life is everywhere. It started even when he was born! His parents creatively called him Blue Eyes. What kind of name is that? Blue Eyes! Every other monkey and their mother gets an awesome name, like Koba, or Caesar, or Rocket, or Ash, but does Blue Eyes? Nope. His parents came up with one lame name. Eyes…blue…therefore, his name must be Blue Eyes. We don’t care enough to come up with something really special for him. There are monkeys to be ruled!
Blue Eyes is even hugged like an afterthought! There’s a group hug at the end, and it’s like “Oh, hey son…didn’t realize you were there. Fine, you can have a hug too.” How is that fair to Blue Eyes?!
It’s not.
God forbid something happen to his baby brother because he’s no doubt going to get all the blame for the kid’s mistake. Mark my words, my readers. I fully expect and predict now what is going to happen in the next movie. Prince Blue Eyes is going to sit next to his dying father, trying hard to accommodate every last monkey need. His younger brother is going to be off flinging poo and eating bananas in the treetops as he parties like an animal. No pun intended…well, maybe a little. The younger brother will then do something incredibly stupid—probably like hack off the humans and start another war—and guess who is going to have to clean up the mess?
That’s right. It’ll be ol’ Blue Eyes.
Does art mimic life? I’ll make that your call all you first-borns out there.
Oh, and yeah, go see this movie. The complexity of the story rings deeper than the average movie out there that you could waste two hours watching. And in my opinion, if you pay attention, you can learn a lot from a monkey in this movie…particularly the quiet one in the back of the room.