{"id":12827,"date":"2014-07-18T14:31:42","date_gmt":"2014-07-18T19:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/?p=12827"},"modified":"2014-07-18T14:31:42","modified_gmt":"2014-07-18T19:31:42","slug":"dawn-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-gorillas-vs-guerrillas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2014\/07\/dawn-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-gorillas-vs-guerrillas.html","title":{"rendered":"Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Gorillas vs. Guerrillas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>I was going to write a review of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes which I saw earlier this week, but this review<\/a>\u00a0by Tim Robey at the Daily Telegraph says what I would have said and it coins the very smart summary of the film: \u201cGorillas vs. Guerillas.\u201d Steven Greydanus also sums up what I would have said about the spiritual and moral dimension of the film.<\/p>\n

Robey writes:<\/p>\n

From a design and effects point of view, the film builds splendidly on what was achieved last time. The sets for both the ape encampment and human fortress are stunningly persuasive. Landmarks of derelict downtown San Francisco, caked in creeping moss, put this environment on a par with the urban jungle of I Am Legend (2007), which is a high par. When all hell breaks loose, incoming director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In) and his crew make it dark, hellish and disorientating \u2013 there\u2019s one magnificently show-offy panorama of night-time mayhem, as Koba seizes control of a rotating tank turret, and the camera follows it through multiple 360-degree turns, taking in all kinds of sound and fury.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s evident patience and intelligence to the filmmaking all over, as well as an engagement with genuine ideas about diplomacy, deterrence, law and leadership. However often it risks monkey-mad silliness, it\u2019s impressively un-stupid. Virtuoso flourishes aside, not once does Reeves feel like he\u2019s constructed a scene merely to flaunt how good the effects are \u2013 a regular fault with even this summer\u2019s most enjoyable competing entertainments.<\/p>\n

Masterminded once again by Peter Jackson\u2019s WETA effects team under Joe Letteri and Dan Lemmon, the great virtue of the amazing motion-capture work is how essential it is to the film\u2019s emotional texture: it\u2019s serving character far more often than spectacle, and it\u2019s the characters who make this a ride worth taking. The increasingly useful Reeves, it turns out, was exactly the right man to get his paws on this franchise, and not because they\u2019re squeaky-clean. It\u2019s the dirt and despair we were looking for.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Steven Greydanus offers his usual perceptive review here<\/a>. As a smart Catholic Greydanus always writes with a sharp moral perception. He picks up the themes in movies and helps us to see them better:<\/p>\n

Dawn<\/em>\u00a0is about hostility versus empathy, cooperation versus belligerence, suspicion and fear versus\u00a0daring to trust. It\u2019s also about how much harder it is to build bridges than to burn them, and how maddeningly easy it can be for those given to the latter to undo the work of those struggling to achieve the former\u2026<\/p>\n

Dawn<\/em>\u00a0offers a remarkably robust allegory of the insidiousness of \u201cus vs. them\u201d ideology: of the tribalist tendency to assume the moral, cognitive or ontological superiority of the in-group, and to define those outside the group as other, as malicious, untrustworthy or worse. Even Caesar, sitting in judgment of one of his own, first finds it necessary to place him outside the group. This is required in a way by his own principles \u2014 but it also highlights the importance of moral realism in a fallen world.<\/p>\n

Gratifyingly, the film offers this allegory without devolving either into a naturalistic equating of humans and animals or a \u201cnoble savage\u201d portrait of corrupt civilized men vs. primitive apes living in harmony with nature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read Robey\u2019s full review here<\/a>. Steven\u2019s review is here<\/a>. If you\u2019re looking for a good summer movie. This is the one.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was going to write a review of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes which I saw earlier this week, but this review\u00a0by Tim Robey at the Daily Telegraph says what I would have said and it coins the very smart summary of the film: \u201cGorillas vs. Guerillas.\u201d Steven Greydanus also sums up what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":557,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nDawn of the Planet of the Apes: Gorillas vs. Guerrillas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I was going to write a review of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes which I saw earlier this week, but this review\u00a0by Tim Robey at the Daily Telegraph says\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2014\/07\/dawn-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-gorillas-vs-guerrillas.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Gorillas vs. Guerrillas\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was going to write a review of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes which I saw earlier this week, but this review\u00a0by Tim Robey at the Daily Telegraph says\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2014\/07\/dawn-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-gorillas-vs-guerrillas.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fr. 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