Friday, August 4, 2017

Film Review - War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

War for the Planet of the Apes is the third in the new Planet of the Apes series and sees Caesar (Andy Serkis) trying to survive with his fellow Apes until he is captured by a ruthless Army Colonel (Woody Harrelson) who puts him and his other Ape captives to work building a wall which the Colonel hopes will fortify them from other soldiers determined to take his base.

I didn’t mind this new Apes film but I wouldn’t say I am raving about it very much what I did like was the motion capture work on the Apes themselves and especially Serkis himself who much like he did as Gollum/Smeagol in the Lord of the Rings series makes this character his own and makes you believe there is a real performance under all of that motion capture work plus the film has a great winter visual look to it as well.

Where it does fall over is sadly in Harrelson’s performance after seeing him as Haymitch in the Hunger Games series I found it a little difficult to believe him as this slightly crazy Army Colonel and also the film felt a little bit predictable in terms of its overall storytelling in terms of where it would go and how it would end and as a result I kinda got a bit bored with the film after a while.

And so that was War for the Planet of the Apes and sadly much like Alien and X-Men 2 other Sci-Fi franchises owned by 20th Century Fox it might have begun to run its course but this new film isn’t bad but its also very hard to top the original from 1968, 2 and a half out of 5.

No comments: