Oh, you want more? Okay.
10 years after the first film, the human race has been devastated by the Simian Flu. A small group of survivors have gathered in San Francisco, where they are trying to get the power back on as a first step to rebuilding civilization. They run across Caesar and his colony of super-intelligent apes, living in Muir Woods, across the Golden Gate Bridge. Koba, a former laboratory ape who was subjected to brutal test and now has a pathological hatred of humans, instigates a war between the two sides. Caesar eventually kills Koba, but not before both new societies have taken heavy losses...and some remnant of the US military is heading to San Francisco to save the humans there. Further violence seems the only likely outcome. The end...until the sequel is released in 2016.
The films looks great. The emerging ape civilization is both familiar and alien. The ape village looks like something a non-human intellect, one that thinks as much vertically as horizontally would build. There also elements that are very human, like the ape midwives wearing woven face masks that look much like the surgical masks they must have seen as lab animals. San Francisco, rapidly being overgrown, is also convincingly realized, although it is not clear why the human survivors would chose a half-built skyscraper as their home except that it looks neat during the final Caesar-Koba fight. The CG work is great. The apes look very convincing and the CG enhancement - or replacement - of the physical sets is seamless. There are a few moments - particularly the opening elk hunt, that look a little flat; but the effects never detract from the story. The soundtrack is effective, with little nods to the original Planet of the Apes and even the "Dawn of Man" sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
There are a few flaws. Probably the most egregious is the under-use of Gary Oldman. His character has very little screen time and his reaction to the apes - that he must do anything to kill them because they are a threat to humanity - is never fully explained. Whereas the ape antagonist, Koba, has fully developed motivations, his human counter-part is much more one-dimensional. Also, the final fight between Caesar and Koba is a little too busy for its own good. What should be just a brutal fight between former compatriots, is muddied by having it set in a collapsing building, involving lots of CG gymnastics and having other apes interwoven in the action, all of which serves to lessen the impact of the fight.
These flaws, however, are minor. This is a great movie, one of the best, most moving films I've seen in a while. Andy Serkis, who provides the motion-capture performance for Caesar deserves an Oscar for his work, as do the CG artists who have created an amazingly detailed, believable world. Go see this film immediately.
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