Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes (2014)

Director Matt Reeves and Twentieth Century Fox have pulled off a cunning bait-and-switch with Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, getting the summer blockbuster crowds flocking to see to a sub-titled foreign film!

Because that's essentially what Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is with almost as little English spoken dialogue as an Arnold Schwarzenegger flick, about 75 per cent of the movie is the apes signing - or grunting - to each other, translated as sub-titles.

And the apes are magnificent. There is no denying the brilliance of the special effects and the emotional depth the actors manage to portray through motion-capture.

The script by Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silveris also heavily biased towards the simian elements of the story with the humans being two-dimensional at best.

We have followed the key apes - such as Caesar (Andy Serkis) and Koba (Toby Kebbell) - from Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and they are given solid character arcs. However, in stark contrast, the humans we meet for the first time here we never really get to know anything of any substance about and so they generally come across as broad stereotypes.

Gary Oldman's character, Dreyfus, for instance adds nothing to the story, except his final act of destruction which could have been committed by any of the nameless supporting characters.

It's ten years since the outbreak of simian flu (as seen at the end of Rise) and the apes have made themselves a nice home in the woods outside of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, while human civilization has collapsed and been at war with itself for increasingly less resources.

Despite living just across the bridge from each other the apes haven't seen any humans for two years and the humans in San Francisco seem even more oblivious to the colony of apes (I know this is all post-apocalypty, but I did find this a bit hard to believe).

The humans need the energy from an hydroelectric dam up in the forest (to power their iPads mainly) and so send out a small party to scout it out. The group includes Malcolm (Jason Clarke), his son Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Malcolm's girlfriend Ellie (Keri Russell) and fine Fringe alum Kirk Acevedo as the required troublemaker - and they unexpectedly run into the apes. Naturally hilarity ensues.

Caesar reluctantly comes to trust the humans, while scarred-up Koba hates them with a white-hot fury and does his best to sabotage any moves to establish respect or friendship between the two neighbouring colonies.

Most of the humans - barring Malcolm and his make-shift family - aren't overly fond of the apes either and so inevitably tensions come to a head and conflict breaks out.

The storyline of Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes isn't particularly clever or original and ultimately it comes off feeling like a bridging film between the fantastic Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and whatever is coming next in the franchise.

Also, for a summer blockbuster (and especially one with a surprising amount of subtitles), it's a very "talky" film, with some noticeably slow patches between the fast-paced action sequences.

In hindsight, this is an Apes film for lovers of the franchise that, despite its big build-up, seems quite small in its execution, portraying what is presumably a key moment in the development of (this iteration of) The Planet Of The Apes, rather than being the self-contained epic some might have been expecting.

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is enjoyable, but not to the same degree as Rise. It goes part way towards realising the potential set out in the original film, but with the inescapable feeling that there is still a lot more to come.

The main takeaway from Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes for me was a hunger to see where the franchise goes next.

Prey (2022)

Set in 1719 on America's Northern Great Plains, Prey follows eager young Comanche warrior Naru (Legion's Amber Midthunder), who struggles for acceptance by the male warriors in her tribe, despite her formidable tracking and herbal medicine skills.

Even her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers) can't fully acknowledge her prowess.

However, when she spots a fiery "thunderbird" in the skies, she takes it as a sign that it's time for her "kuhtaamia", a coming-of-age ritual where you hunt something that can also hunt you.

When an enigmatic creature, presumed to be a lion or a bear, threatens her community, Naru goes off on her own to prove herself.

Only, it turns out that the big beastie in the woods is actually an alien Yautja (Dane DiLiegro) aka a Predator, who has come to Earth for some sport.

Escaping the alien killing machine, Naru and Taabe fall into the hands of a veritable army of brutish French fur trappers.

Even tooled-up with (admittedly primitive) rifles and pistols, the French prove to be little more than target practice for the heavy-armed, high-tech alien as it cuts a bloody swathe through their numbers on its hunt for more challenging prey.

Rhythmically paced, with no time for padding or slack, Prey is a lean, stripped back to basics, entry into the Predator franchise.

Taking place several hundred years before Arnie faced a Predator in Central America, this prequel engages a willing audience from its opening sequences - introducing us to the Comanche way of life - through to its kinetic, blood-soaked final act.

On one hand, it's a slow burn as the diametrically opposed hunters - human and alien - work towards their eventual confrontation, but on the other the film is beautifully and dramatically composed, making great use of the Canadian wilderness in which it was shot.

Assisted by her (thankfully) indestructible canine companion, Amber Midthunder is a charismatic action lead, although her Naru segues a bit too comfortably from hunting animals and fighting the Predator to out-and-out murdering Frenchmen.

Writer-director Dan Trachtenberg's script, co-written with Patrick Aison, does a great job of foreshadowing important elements that will eventually contribute to Naru's inevitable victory over the seemingly indestructible Yautja.

In the latter half of the 99-minute movie, however, it does tend to lean too heavily on emulating the original 1987 Predator and having Taabe actually say "if it bleeds, we can kill it" is a real cringe moment in an otherwise solid script.

What I'd like to see now is more of these "historical Predators": how about one set a hundred or so years later in the Wild West, or feudal Japan (Yautja vs samurai and ninja), or Medieval Europe (as depicted in the Kickstarter-funded Predator: Dark Ages, back in 2015), or during The Battle of The Somme (or some other grim First World War setting), or Victorian London, or the Stone Age?

The possibilities are endless. Although, if humanity wins every time you have to wonder why the Predators keep coming back!