[8.4/10] The beauty of speculative fiction is that it let’s us understand ourselves better by reflecting the world from a comfortable distance. Thankfully, there is no actual conflict between apes or humans, no post-apocalyptic, disease-ridden setting that requires humanity to cluster for survival, and no human vs. simian enmity. But the real world does have xenophobia, the tension of nations wanting to show strength while avoiding the costs and bloodshed of war, and families of all stripes struggling to find their way in an uncertain world.

*Dawn of the Planet of the Apes* does better than its fellow genre films by taking those issues seriously in the context of its fantastical premise. It would be easy to turn a movie about a colony of sentient monkeys interacting with a colony of survivalist humans into a big block of cinematic cheese. Instead, *Dawn* imbues its man vs. ape conflict with rich, culturally-relevant points of tension, recognizable characterizations for human and chimp alike, and an approach that gives weight and meaning to events that could sound ludicrous on paper.

But it also does better than its mainstream prestige-aiming brethren at exploring issues of community conflict, prejudice, and leadership because it has the benefits of that distance. The tensions between apes and humans in *Dawn* can, in different guises and modes, work as a metaphor for international conflicts, for issues of race relations, for familial challenges, without having to be bogged down in the real world lionizing or contentious details. By going bigger and more outsized, the film also becomes more universal than a more down-to-earth take on these ideas could.

*Dawn* picks up roughly ten years after *Rise of the Planet of the Apes*, its Franco-fronted predecessor. In that decade, humanity has been decimated by a “simian flu,” leaving pockets of survivors, including one holed up in the remains of San Francisco. In that same time, Caesar, the literal and figurative father of a new generation of sentient apes, has formed a community in nearby Muir forest, leading a growing group of his kind with his allies from before the fall of the world, fostering that sense of community, and raising his two sons with his wife. It’s been at least a couple of years since the apes have seen a human, and the surviving humans seem to have no idea that there are intelligent, english-speaking chimps out there.

Naturally, this being a movie, these two groups come into contact and conflict with one another when the dam that the humans need to restore power to their makeshift village lies within ape territory. But from that simple need for community to have to encounter and deal with another, *Dawn* spins an engrossing story of mutual mistrust, efforts to mend fences, a legacy of hate, and the inherent difficulty of calming the tensions that arise from those who are angry, scared, and unable to stomach the hard work of accepting another people as being as valid and complicated and noble and pitiable as your own.

The great tools of *Dawn*’s screenplay, penned by returning scribes Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver and franchise newcomer Mark Bomback, are the parallel and the counterreaction. The film spends a significant amount of time cutting between the apes and the humans, showing them to be two households alike in dignity. Caesar's growing family is juxtaposed with the blended family Malcolm (Caesar’s designated “good guy human” counterpart) is trying to forge. Both human and simian leaders mull over the necessities and potential costs of violent conflict in much the same terms. And both communities have agitators ready to wipe out the enemy before the enemy has the chance to do the same to them, and those trying to hold the clan together and keep the peace. The same fears, the same prejudices, the same hopes and affections, are put on display for both groups.

At the same time, *Dawn* deftly depicts the rushing and receding tides of relations between the groups. A tender moment between Malcolm’s friends and Caesar’s son just as quickly turns tense and violent when an unexpected bit of contraband is uncovered. The good works and bonds formed between Caesar, Malcolm, and their confidantes that inspires hope for good relations is immediately undercut by scenes of their doubters who are instigating and preparing for war. Each moment of progress is met with a setback, only for another step forward to be made -- whether personal or ecumenical -- while another pitfall rests on the horizon. The film does justice to the tenderness and fragility of peace between peoples, how easily it can emerge and how quickly it can vanish.

But however heady it may be, *Dawn* is still a blockbuster, and it excels on that front even when its high-minded inclinations are set aside for the studio-mandated combat and explosions. Director Matt Reeves, cinematographer Michael Seresin, and the incredible team of animators who brought the apes to life and integrated them into an outsized but recognizable world, come together to create incredible cinematic images that serve the film’s purposes and aren’t reduce to mere superlative eye-candy.

It’s a fine line to try to show a chimp on horseback, brandishing a pair of automatic weapons, guns akimbo, riding through flame, and make it something both awesome and serious, but somehow *Dawn* threads the needle, matching gripping visuals with the sense of the horrors of war. A close-up on Caesar’s eyes as bookends works as a visual shorthand for his renewed humanity and the weight of the world on his shoulders. And the movements and expressions of the apes, and their interactions with the humans, help communicate that life and sentience better than raw exposition ever could.

Like *Rise* before it, that may be *Dawn*’s greatest achievement. In a time where every blockbuster is filled with undifferentiated, oft-unconvincing CGI, the simian characters in *Dawn* not only move and interact with weight and purpose, but the animators take pains to capture the subtle gestures and expressions of the human actors portraying the apes, making them feel like genuine souls and not just computer-generated abstractions. That not only gives power to the inevitable ape-on-ape and man vs. monkey skirmishes, where chimps limp and engage in the grisly business of war with either the fires of revenge or the weight of sadness in their eyes, but it gives added force to the film’s “equally yoked” approach to the two communities.

That’s especially true for Andy Serkis’s take on Caesar, who somehow tops his performance from *Rise*. There’s plenty of solid performances in *Dawn*, from Jason Clarke who’s serviceable as Malcolm, to Gary Oldman and Keri Russell who make great things out of the all-too-little they’re given to do. But Serkis’s Caesar is the film’s crown jewel, making the viewer believe in a chimp who can weigh the costs and benefits of war and civilization, convey both anger and tenderness at the right moment, and want a better future for the next generation as much as any flesh and blood character ever could.

At times, though, the blockbuster-y elements of *Dawn* do weigh down the film. Both the ape and human antagonists become too over the top evil at times. But even there, *Dawn* manages to motivate them in believable ways, with the human foil resenting his simian counterparts because he blames them for the disease that wiped out humanity, and his ape equivalent carrying the legacy of his own mistreatment at the hands of humans. That experience led one hawkish chimp to inherit the worst of humanity (plus an impressive ability to code switch) and a desire to inflict it back on his tormentors, while Caesar’s experience of the kindness and decency humans are capable of in *Rise* gives him a different, more yielding perspective.

It’s that kind of depth that sets *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes* apart from both the science fiction and fantasy films that treat an outlandish premise as an excuse to tell weightless stories, and from the more “serious” films that treat the gravitas of their subject matter as an excuse not to delve into it with grace or nuance. This film offers the best of both worlds, a meaty take on a classic sci-fi idea, and a fantastical lens through which to review real world communal conflict, that gets at notions of leadership, fear of the other, community and humanity, better than scores of films on either side of its divide.