I'm going to preface this that I absolutely love Dawn and I liked Rise. I had a lot of faith that War would wrap things up nicely seeing how well the overall tone and quality had advanced from the first to second film.
But at the end of War, I was left kind of feeling meh about it. I think the film is an outstanding technical achievement and had fantastic acting. But as a final package, I couldn't help but notice it felt sloppy.
I'm gonna dig into it while it's still fresh.
At the end of Dawn, the humans put in a distress call that was picked up by the military to the north. They're sending help. We can assume they're told about the apes. What doesn't quite make sense and I feel wasn't driven home enough was why the humans are SO hateful of the apes. Even in dawn, that asshole dam worker that hated them didn't really have a reason. And he was certainly an outlier amongst the humans. Now in War we're thrown into a world two years later where every human left is at odds with apes. The colonel explains that even his superiors hate the apes. But why, where is the precedent everywhere else?
If they had just given a reason for their campaign, like "apes still have the virus, their existance puts humans at risk because it could spread." I buy that. Except that's not their reason. They regularly closely interact with apes. It's humankind itself slowly degenerating and self infecting again with the same virus.
The evolution of the virus makes people lose their ability to speak, but they don't seem to lose any other faculties. The girl wasn't suddenly acting like an animal. She even learned sign language! So why the zealous campaign against these people? The Colonel killed his own son because he couldn't talk? If they wanted to sell his through line and why he went rogue against the rest of the military, we should have seen how truly animalistic the infected people became. Because the girl seems fine short of speech.
We regularly get that point of view with the crossbow soldier, from the very beginning. It's like they were setting him up to be more important. We usually get to see the point of view of the character that's going to have some sort of arc. Especially considering almost every shot of him he had this look on his face of "boy I'm not sure if these apes really are the bad guys". But nope, in the end he shoots ceasar and gets blown up without any kind of resolution or through line. This relates to my earlier point: why the fuck do these guys hate them again?
Big gorilla friend has a brief moment with the girl so we like him. No more than a minute later he dies and the girl is crying over his death. This scene felt so forced in and strangely paced. It really didn't affect anything other than remove the gorilla. Also, those two troops that popped up on patrol and were killed... no one noticed they're missing?
History/religion nut Colonel leader tells his command if they want to stop him they'll have to come to his doorstep to kill him. Proceeds to pick a spot with a big broken wall instead of moving somewhere more formidable. Also this spot was chosen before he found and captured the apes meaning he intended to fix that wall without their manual labor. Either the Colonel didn't quite think that plan through, or the writers didn't.
Leaving train cars of explosive fuel out in the open knowing their base is going to be under attack any day.
Little girl walks right through the broken wall and into the base with no one noticing.
Monkeypoop guy is dumb enough to go into monkey cage all alone, with no backup, with no one noticing.
Children monkeys climb out on a well lit wire with no one noticing.
White uniform army sees impending Avalanche and don't drive away with the vehicles they came with.
Maurice petting dead ceasar slumped over on the hilltop. Showing that same glamor shot of the valley and the apes more than 3 times.
There really wasn't any "war" in this movie. Ceasar is battling with himself. He's trying not to be like Koba. Humans are fighting themselves. We can assume there are many more humans and probably a lot more smart apes out there. This is the war I was expecting to see. This was more like a battle for the planet of the apes. Just another day in the history leading to a planet dominated by apes. It didn't feel definitive.
Realllly Looooooong draaaaaaaged out camera dissolves.
That was all. Bugged me.
Overall, War was a solid 7/10. I'm disappointed it didn't drive it home. But I'm always a fan of the characters and the world.