Like with what I said about Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), its sequel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014, works less as science fiction and more as a political drama.  Briefly, I have to wonder about the titles.  What, really, is the difference between “rise” and “dawn.”  The stories of the two movies vary in that they deal with different points in time, but the names are interchangeable in terms of what they describe.  This brings me back to my original point.  The eponymous animals walk like humans and, in some cases, talk like humans, but one would not describe them as such.  Still, this is not my concern.  I find the antagonists in the movie that insist on describing the simians as “animals” less compelling than the mechanics of the plot.  They may hoot and swing through the trees with ease, but the apes must as well be a country onto themselves, on par with the United States or Russia, take your pick.

Speaking of simians, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes reminds us at the start about the disease from the last film, and how it has spread around the world in the intervening ten years.  Again, for those of us who lived through COVID, this opening might strike some tender emotional chords.  For the movie’s purposes, it serves to show the downfall of human civilization as we see the lights around the world slowly go dark.  As for the leader of the apes, Caesar (Andy Serkis), the problems of humanity seem distant to him and his fellow primates as they hunt for game in the redwood forests of Northern California.  After they return to their village, having had to save his son Blue Eyes (Nick Thurston) from a Bear Attack, the sage orangutan Maurice (Karin Konoval) asks Caesar if he ever thinks about humans.  Caesar says that he does from time-to-time, but he is about to get a major reminder when Ash (Doc Shaw), Blue Eyes’ best friend, is shot and wounded by a human named Carver (Kirk Acevedo).  Carver is part of group of people sent by a colony in nearby San Francisco hoping to restore electricity from the nearby hydroelectric dam.  Koba (Toby Kebbell), Caesar’s right-hand chimp who had been brutally treated by humans, wants to immediately kill them.  Caesar is not keen on mankind either, but intervenes to send the intruders back from whence they came.  As a show of force, Caesar gathers his followers to stand outside of the gates of the colony to sternly remind everyone that humans have their place, and apes have theirs.  For the person nominally in charge of the colony, Dreyfus (Gary Oldman), this poses a problem.  To this point, they had been getting by on fuel-powered generators, but they are down to their last few weeks of gasoline.  Having seen Caesar to be capable of reason, Malcolm (Jason Clarke), who had been with the earlier group, volunteers to go back with a few others to negotiate for work on the dam.  Coming with him is his wife, Ellie (Kerri Russell), a former nurse, and their adopted son, Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee).  Carver is along for the ride, too, but only because he knows how the dam operates.  Caesar grants them the opportunity to stay nearby, but only so long as they hand over their guns.  The chimpanzees even help save the lives of Carver and Malcolm when they get partially buried in a collapsed accessed tunnel.  While Carver is having his wounds tended to, one of the younger simians finds a shotgun in Carver’s toolbox.  Caesar is about to banish the humans when they see that his wife, Cornelia (Judy Greer), is sick and in need of medical assistance.  Ellie and Malcolm’s offer of assistance buys one more day of effort on the dam.  Meanwhile, Koba feels that Caesar has betrayed apes by helping the humans.  Seeking to provoke a conflict, he discovers the location of an armory to which Dreyfus has sent men in order to give themselves weaponry in the event of an ape attack.  Koba is about to give Caesar this news when the former finds the latter with Malcolm and the others, and decides Caesar is a traitor.  With the dam once more operating, Koba takes the opportunity to murder some humans and steal their weapons, killing Carver in order to implicate Carver in an attempt to assassinate Caesar.  Putting a bullet in Caesar, Koba appears with the firearm and some of Carver’s clothing as supposed proof of human treachery.  With Caesar seemingly out of the way, the rest of the apes, including Blue Eyes, join Koba in attacking the colony. Though Dreyfus is able to organize some resistance, the fight is soon over.  As they flee the primate village, Alexander, Ellie, and Malcolm find a severely injured Caesar.  Once Caesar regains consciousness, he directs the humans to the home he lived in from the last movie.  Ellie needs to operate on Caesar to save his life, but all her supplies are back at the colony.  Malcolm volunteers to go fetch it.  He is able to dodge most of the chaos, but encounters Blue Eyes, who has begun to see Koba as a monster.  Malcolm brings Blue Eyes back to Caesar, and there are a number of reconciliations.  While Caesar recuperates, Blue Eyes frees the simians still loyal to Caesar.  Once their leader is well enough to travel, Malcolm takes them via the subway to where Koba and the others have gathered in the tower overlooking the colony.  Malcolm sends Caesar and the others up while he stays below to confront Dreyfus.  The human boss has rigged explosives to blow up the tower.  Though Malcolm tries to prevent this, Dreyfus detonates, killing himself, but Malcolm avoids injury.  Luckily (and strangely, plot-wise) the building does not collapse.  This is especially lucky for Caesar who, despite his injuries, defeats Koba in hand-to-hand (to hand?) combat. Once it is over, Malcolm and Caesar have one last meeting where they acknowledge that war is inevitable before they part ways and the film ends.

Thus, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes does not have a happy ending.  Sure, the people we are supposed to care about live, but to what end?  Civilization is still dead, and apparently there is more bloodshed to come.  Though I said some of what I am about to cover in my review of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it bears repeating that the problems are the result of people (and I include apes in this) that are a little too short-sighted to be believable as characters in a true science fiction flick.  By the final scene, even Caesar seems to come to accept that there is nothing to be done to prevent death and destruction.  Though he acknowledges that apes share the blame for starting it, he says that humans will not forgive.  This underscores the point I made early on about how little use it does in thinking about the apes as animals, and instead just viewing them as human actors, albeit of a radically different stripe.  Differences are okay, but film would like you to believe that everyone is the same, no matter the position of their opposable thumbs.  While I will grant that there is more about us, and them, that unites, it is not how God created us.  There is an interesting statement from Koba near the beginning following Blue Eyes being clawed by a bear.  Koba attempts to lessen the blow of the wounds by saying that scars make you strong.  These reminders of past injuries, be they emotional or physical, can, indeed, make one better, and Faith is a good way of figuring out how to do so.  There is an old saying about how God never gives us more than we can handle.  With Him, we can triumph over anything.  That does not mean that what we experience will be without hurt.  That is unavoidable.  God seeks to use those moments in order to bring us closer to Him and for His greater glory, and in some cases, to each other.  They also make us unique, and there is nothing wrong with acknowledging such differences.  I wish I could say the same about the characters in the movie.

The next movie in the franchise is War for the Planet of the Apes (2017).  Given all I have just written, I would have thought Dawn of the Planet of the Apes would have accomplished what the previous title suggests.  What I am trying to say is that these movies appear to be a little repetitive.  They are not necessarily bad, just kind of bland and predictable. Make of this what you will.