Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

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Re: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Post by Ben » August 3rd, 2014, 4:57 pm

I took Randall to see this at my local flea pit on Tuesday evening as part of his London trip, and we differed on our reactions. He pretty much liked it (a lot), while it often frustrated me in how convoluted the story and situations were. He'll likely add his comments here when he's back from flying above Canada aboot now, but I thought the CG was a mix of absolutely terrific...and crushingly bad, often in the same shot.

The whole opening didn't impress me at all...the bear animation was near embarrassing, for me at least, in how rubbery it all was (and the apes chasing it really didn't help!). Plot holes, inconsistencies and too many coincidences didn't help either, though it wasn't a bad film overall. Which was what was most frustrating about it...it was largely good, but then had these several moments that just collapsed the whole thing down for sometimes brief sections, sometimes longer stretches.

I'll get the BD, probably, and I'd be up for a third, although I don't know how long they can keep going with not *actually* capturing the humans and making then subservient to the apes without the franchise becoming tired out and/or ridiculous...

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Re: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Post by Randall » August 3rd, 2014, 11:02 pm

I did enjoy it a lot, as it gave me exactly what I was expecting (and I had high hopes). Of course, doing "exactly what's expected" doesn't necessarily make it a "great" film. But I did enjoy it a lot. And it was scripted a whole lot better than other blockbusters we can all mention. I felt that Apes was at least trying to be good, with a relatively complex look at the evolving war, and it did have a lot of fine moments to it. A few coincidences bothered me a bit, and overall it kind of played out as one would exect, but I never noticed the animation issues Ben mentioned. Of course, I'm not a professional film editor either. To my eye, the film looked great, and i thought it was well directed in terms of following the action of many similar looking characters.

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Re: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Post by Vernadyn » August 6th, 2014, 7:45 am

I liked it more than Rise of the POTA, particularly the direction.

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Re: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Post by ShyViolet » March 31st, 2017, 11:53 pm

Looking forward to War (especially since the apes speak more in the new trailer) but can't help wondering when the apes will just finally build their own dominant society and truly make humans subservient instead of constantly fighting them on horseback in one similar fight scene after another. Loooooved the parts with Caesar and his family in Dawn, hope there's more scenes like that here. (Scenes where the apes appear, well, more human! No pun intended. Lol. :) )
Last edited by ShyViolet on April 1st, 2017, 9:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Post by Randall » April 1st, 2017, 1:17 am

This has been a classy reboot series so far. Looking forward to Part 3.

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Re: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Post by EricJ » April 1st, 2017, 2:26 pm

ShyViolet wrote:Looking forward to War (especially since the apes speak more in the new trailer) but can't help wondering when the apes will just finally build their own dominant society and truly make humans subservient instead of constantly fighting them on horseback in one similar fight scene after another. Loooooved the parts with Caesar and his family in Dawn, hope there's more scenes like that here. (Scenes where the apes appear, well, more human! No pun intended. Lol. :) )
If "Rise" was supposed to be "Conquest of POTA" only without the whole "Escape" setup (Caesar's mother died in the lab), I'd assumed "Dawn" was supposed to be "Battle For POTA", only they didn't...really...do all of it.
The 70's Battle For POTA opens with the humans and apes living together in primitive peace--and only hints in the closing shot that things might get bad generations and generations later--
and Dawn only had a little of Severn Darden's crazy military-bunker general trying to defeat them, only here it was just a guy with some guns and a grudge.

Looks like they had to squeeze out one more film to get ALL of the Battle finale-setups out, and because it's all Fox has left for a franchise besides that new Alien reboot.

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Re: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Post by ShyViolet » May 16th, 2017, 1:21 pm

Sort of liked the trailer (especially the sub-plot with the little girl) but other than her the humans still seem remarkably uninteresting...same "this is war no matter what!" vibe from the last film. The apes look great and I can't wait to see more of them, but I'm getting more and more of a "second half of Avatar" feeling from the battle scenes, if that makes any sense. I really think there should be more unique humans in the picture, or at least more memorable ones, (like James Franco in Rise).
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