Well, I'm pretty disappointed.
I pretty much loved Rise. It set things up perfectly and had one of the best executed moments in recent blockbuster history. It hit all the right emotional beats and had good set pieces too. The story was also told quite well.
Dawn fell off quite a bit. It looked well, but the story wasn't that well thought out and it felt pretty schlocky for a successor to Rise. It was nice to look at, but that was it for me.
This one was way closer to the second than I would have liked. The first third was pretty well done and it felt well thought out. After they leave the woods and meet the little girl though, the movie starts to fall apart bit by bit.
There's just so much stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense. The broad story strokes are okay, but so much stuff in the details feel wrong or cheap. The reason why the 'donkeys' work at exterminating the apes with the Colonel doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me - Snow wanted to start a new life asap and could have left by himself without a problem. Instead he choses to work against the others for the man who killed his friends. The escape sequence and the reinstating of Caesar as the Idol and leader of the apes didn't feel earned. Every time in the last two movies when they mention how intelligent the apes are - they just say it and don't show it. When the Colonel is astounded how Caesar could put all the pieces together e.g.. Everybody could have done that - you don't need to be a genetically improved ape to do that.
Or regarding tactics - when they find bad ape, they are just standing in front of a dark chimney guns locked, well knowing that the person has a shotgun and tried to kill them before. One shot and they would all be dead. They also chose to storm in on horses every damn time from the front into blazing guns, when they could use trees to their advantage. Why wouldn't warn Caesar every god damn ape in his camp when he realized that there were soldiers infiltrating?
At least his wive and child should go to a safe place, right? Nope.
All of this might read like I'm nitpicking, but they nailed that concept in the first one and here it just doesn't sit right. Even worse, they keep adding more and more pieces to the picture that don't sit quite right.
The fight sequence at the end... It all felt very much like a video game story. The concept was great at times, but the execution was very flawed. The whole sequence in the camp operated on silent film logic - if it's not in the frame, we can't see it/hear it.
Why the ape with the grenade launcher had to blow up the crossbow guy instead of fulfilling Caesars plan of blowing up the fuel tank I don't really get -well, the cynic in me say, it's because the protagonist HAS to deal the final blow. And why Caesar just makes his injury known after weeks or even month of hard travelling and then just conveniently dies.. It's just not that well written. It feels like it's written around the setpieces and not like a coherent story that's being put into pictures.
I don't know, I expected more when everybody said this would be the best one.
Seems like the franchise is loved for different things than I expect from a good blockbuster. This feels like we got a Lost World two times after a Jurassic Park kind of quality movie.
It was very well acted and it looked pretty amazing though. They squeezed every penny out of that budget into the right parts.
