"If we go to war, we could lose all we've built." (Caesar, "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes")

I just saw "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes".  Wow!  I loved it.  We saw "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" last week in Kelowna and that gives the background to this new movie.  It is visually eye-popping (the scenes of the derelict San Francisco and the battle scenes and the subway and the tower -- all just stunning), and the performances are terrific (especially the apes!) and there's so much going on.  When they show the apes' camp in the redwood forest, it really reminded me of Animal Farm (because Maurice, the orangutan, is teaching the ape children things about ape not killing ape {which, of course, like Animal Farm,  foreshadows some of the terrible events that take place later in the movie}) and "Apocalypse Now" because the compound is very reminiscent of Kurtz's compound in Vietnam.  One of the surviving humans keeps his sanity by drawing and they show drawings in his sketchbook that underscore what happens in the movie and of course, there is that epic battle between good and evil in both the ape world and the human world -- good and evil in both worlds.

The character of "Koba" is the tragic one.  He was a lab chimp in his past and he carries the scars in his psyche and on his body.  He can't escape the pain that he has experienced and it manifests itself terribly and he bears the consequences for his actions, but you can't really blame him.  It always comes down to us, and our responsibility for the damage we inflict on the natural world.

I'm thinking I'd like to remember more clearly the earlier "Planet of the Apes" movies, but I think they wouldn't hold up technologically to this -- the apes in those old movies really did look like people dressed up and in these new movies (thanks to CGI apparently), the apes look like actual apes.  There is one scene between Caesar (the leader of the apes) and his son, Blue Eyes, which was beautifully acted.  Blue Eyes can't really speak but his face said everything and Caesar's face is also very expressive.  They didn't need to say too much to make you understand what they were feeling and thinking.  The essence of great movie acting.