If homosexuality is the subtext of Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies, race is – and has been from the start – the subtext of Planet of the Apes movies.

But from the moment of Chuck Heston saying, “Get your hands off of me, you dammed dirty ape” (quoting from memory only, because even if slightly wrong, the spirit lingers for decades), the original filmed versions of the story had a certain lack of subtlety that fit its time.

This gets into the thorny issue of reboots, which don’t offend me, so long as the choice to reboot is, on some level, about bringing a different angle to an old story. As I have written for what feels like eons, movies are an old enough art form to now be taken seriously and revived and reconsidered as books and theater have been for as long as we can remember. As is obvious when you think about it, all of Shakespeare is a reboot.

Rod Serling and Michael Wilson’s adaptation of the Pierre Boulle novel was powerfully demanding in 1968. Heston was The Good Guy, not only in the film but as a cinematic icon, and when he showed his disgust towards the apes, it wasn’t a racist acting out, but the admission of fear and ignorance even amongst “good people.”

The Jaffa/Silver/Bomback script for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes takes the issue that was so clearly race back in the day and brings it into a current context, which still finds humans fighting between divisions genetic, mapped, cultural, and imagined. But trust is the primary issue. And the earning of it or loss of it knows no boundaries.

Ironically, the one thing this film can still be charged with – and I won’t be shocked if it comes up – is sexism. Keri Russell is the estrogen for The Humans. And she is one of the gentlest, kindest people on camera these days. But even though she is a doctor (or someone with medical skills) in the film, she is still relegated to kissing the hero as he goes to do something brave. She is still the third person to enter the room.

And of the ape side, forget about it. The only real female character is Caesar’s wife, who is there to give birth and to be a point of vulnerability for Caesar and little more.

But back to the humans… what we get instead of female strength is male vulnerability. And I really liked that vulnerability. Only one human man in the film is the obligatory “can’t see past my own schlong” idiot. All of the other men, from Jason Clarke to Gary Oldman to Kodi Smit-McPhee and men throughout the film are haunted by their losses (which take place in the decade-plus since the first film’s story) and showing surprising (for a movie) vulnerability.

There is, as mentioned in my spoiler-free review, one sequence that is wildly out of character for the film and could almost be cut out completely without anyone noticing even… except that it creates a visual impact. And that is when the Jason Clarke character decides that he can’t reason with his human friends/partners/colleagues about allowing Caesar to confront Koba (the bad ape) and reassert control over his tribe of apes.

So Clarke’s character points a weapon at them instead, leading to a hysterical choice by Gary Oldman’s character. This sequence just sucks, because it causes both of these characters to act in a way that belies all that has gone before. Clarke reasoned with Caesar and found a bridge. Oldman, though he was a man of war, wants peace and comfort.

And what does it get the movie? A presumedly dead Oldman (who could, in theory, survive to the next film), an inexplicably uninjured Clarke (even with a 60s TV insert of him flipping into a hiding place as the rubble falls), and the one thing that becomes an inextricable part of the film, an exploded tower… which is cool enough, but hardly critical to the visual or emotional content of the film.

But I don’t want to obsess on this flaw. It doesn’t spoil the rest. It just feels like it’s from some other movie. The Clarke character’s allegiances are already well-established by then. So it doesn’t tell us any more about him. And it blurs Oldman’s character for no real reason. He can’t become the human version of this film’s “bad ape” in the next film because it would require enormous hypocrisy and a leap of stupidity.

Anyway…

Dawn of the Apes speeds up the process from the first series of films. The first film in this series (Rise) was in many ways a demand for as little (and as much) as interspecies respect. This film is about what one does with freedom and challenges to that freedom, real or imagined.

The end of most of human civilization is a backdrop, established in an opening sequence. It’s not a movie about the humans, really. The Apes, led by Caesar, have built an ape kibbutz. There is a hierarchy, but it’s a peaceful existence with the first ape commandment, “Ape Shall Not Kill Ape” at its center. It’s been 12 years since these apes have seen humans. And then, humans show up.

As it turns out, the human group, while not quite as settled, has done pretty much the same thing. The very few survivors of a simian flu plague have gathered and created a community that allows them some peace, safety, and comfort.

When one confronts the other, the question becomes how each will use its resources in responding to the existence and threat of the other community. Even more significant in this film is the internal politics – more of the apes than the humans – that get shaken up by fear and rage.

One element that makes this film so unique is that the apes who hate humans have good reason to hate humans. There is interspecies hatred with open eyes. But they do not have the wisdom to, 1) understand that not all humans are the same, and 2) understand that circumstances have changed and that they are no longer well-served by their fear and hatred.

In this regard, the humans of this film are, mostly, more evolved than the apes. There is only once example of a human who is so fearful and stupid that he keeps finding ways to threaten the apes further without cause. And that human is only involved because of circumstance and is not really a leader.

To be fair to the apes here, there isn’t a wide swath looking for revenge on humans. But like the humans, the majority follows. And the main revenge-seeker in this film is an ape who is in a leadership position.

Both the leading human and leading ape in the story seek, initially, to keep the societies separate, even though the humans need to enter “ape space” for some period to bring power (and with it, civilization) back to the city.

This is an interesting issue about how we socialize with “the other.” The isolation of the orthodox of many cultures vs assimilation. A big, hard issue.

But this film quickly moves on to the idea that once we are in contact and communicating, the boundaries are about good and bad, trust and distrust… not the genetics with which we are born.

And somehow, this brings us full circle back to the original film, as Cornelius and Zira are determined not to allow Taylor (the talking human) to be destroyed in the name of science or fear.

Yet, it is more complex than that too, as in this film, Caesar comes to the conclusion that killing a manifestation of fear and hatred once it seems sure that this manifestation cannot be rehabilitated is okay, even honorable.

What to make of that? Is it the start of ugliness? Is murder by a leader justifiable? Or is it T.S. Lawrence killing to keep the peace?

And what does this say about the future in this series? Will earth become an interspecies planet, slowly but surely turning the dominant life form into human-like apes as ape genetics dominating human genes in interspecies mating? Maybe. That would certainly reflect the direction in which the human story of this next century seems to be heading.

Or will Caesar make a judgement of humans who cannot ever accept that apes are the equal of humans, leading to a more violent end?

It was fascinating to hear audience reactions to the film at a screening in New York last night. From early on, there were a few people applauding apes that killed humans. It was odd. Almost reverse racism or self-loathing. Or perhaps just a casual relationship with movie violence.

Later, there are two terrific sequences in which an ape pretends to be the stereotype of a monkey that humans expect so he can get past the humans’ defenses. But the humans in these interactions, while ignorant and not particularly appealing, don’t really seem to deserve the violent end that they get at the end of their second interaction. Yet, big cheers when they are murdered by the “bad ape” of the film.

It reminded me a bit of screening Big Deal: A Question of Consent, which documents the rape of a stripper at a frat party and the fall out. Audiences had different reactions each time we screened the film. Some hated the frat guys. Some hated her. Some were in the middle. But all of the were watching a human being suffering, whether they felt she earned it or asked for it or was lying abut the repercussions. But people, generally, seemed compelled to take sides.

When you break down the ideas in this film, they can seem a little simple. But the complexity of the interaction of ideas and the fact that they are being discussed inside of a CG-fest about talking monkeys makes each demand of thought by the audience that much more compelling.

Forty-six years after the first Planet of the Apes film, who would have expected a sequel to the reboot to be a Rorschach test for viewers? But it seems to me like the rare modern spectacle film that will have audiences talking seriously for hours after the film.

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