First of all, let's just clear something up right away- Andy Serkis and his performance capture team over at Imaginarium Studios are as important to this era of filmmaking as Godard and his peers were in the 50s and 60s. While this may sound like shameless hyperbole (something that is not in my nature...honest), think about it. Performance capture has the potential to revolutionize how films are made. Capturing the substance and soul of an actor's performance, or even altering the physical appearance of an actor via digital manipulation is a big thing, it's BIG and we are only just starting to realize just how big. Remember how blown away you were by Gollum? It was a collossul leap forward for computer generated characters, Jackson and his effects team at WETA, along with Serkis, making his first foray in to performance capture, created something truly groundbreaking.
After my recent viewing of Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, not once did I display any sort of appreciation for the effects, simply because I no longer thought of them as anything special, because digital performance capture now has the potential to be as incidental an element of the cinematic lexicon as a dolly zoom or a jump cut. Like I said, BIG. Now that I've made that clear, onto my main point, which is that the new Planet Of The Apes cycle may be the most important series in the future of mainstream cinema. Why? Put simply...story. The aforementioned work of Serkis' team and the hugely talented filmmakers working alongside them, is a large part of why these films are so revolutionary (if that's too strong a term for you, try rejuvenating), but the core appeal is great storytelling.
A good story is something that is often taken for granted, especially in big budget studio pictures. The fact that Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy made it to the screen in the form that it did is astounding, as is Warner's decision to let Nolan make Inception, which may be the most cerebral blockbuster ever made. In many ways, Nolan paved the way for the Apes reboot, he showed the suits that people will part with their hard earned currency to see something with more substance, instead of a series of increasingly elaborate explosions. Now, don't get me wrong, I love Michael Bay (seriously, The Rock is one of the best action movies of all time), I adore the Fast and Furious franchise, I have honed the skill of disengaging brain and suspending disbelief to a fine art, so when Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes came out, I expected an effects driven explodathon with talking monkeys and I was well prepared to enjoy every minute of that. I came away realizing that I had not been this taken by the storytelling of a film since I had watched The Third Man while playing truant one afternoon in my salad days, a film which taught me the importance of good storytelling.
Rise isn't even about a bunch of apes getting smart, not really. It's about one ape and the existential struggle that comes along with his increased intelligence. It's also about a scientist trying to cure his father's Alzheimer's, each failure a resonating defeat that effects the events of the film as a whole (Ceasar's defense of Will's father seals his ultimate fate). It's also a (slightly hamfisted) treatise on science versus nature and a surprisingly bleak apocalypse film in which the blame for the end of the world is placed squarely on us. Sure there's action, exhilarating and well executed action, but it plays second fiddle to the story.
Fast forward 3 years and new director Matt Reeves (whose Cloverfield attempted to subvert traditional monster movie tropes) brings us Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, a film superior to it's predecessor in both in scale and story. Whereas the first film dealt with themes of loss and mankind's self destructive nature, Rise places focus on family, maintaining sociatal balance and the parallels between human and ape kind, for better or worse. Big themes for a summer tentpole movie. The strongest element is the juxtaposition of man and ape, emphasizing the futility of two warring factions that gain nothing from the conflict. In a key scene, the duplicitous Koba shows a young ape how to hold a rifle, we then cut to human antagonist Dreyfuss showing a frigtened soldier how to load his weapon. It's a particularly touching moment in a script full of clever nuances.
Remember Battle: LA? That hideous little moment of cloying jingoism which sees Aaron Eckhart ask a child to be his "little marine"? The apes films are the polar opposite of this type of sledgehammer storytelling, there is more genuine emotion in the face of a computer generated chimpanzee than there is in 90% of today's big budget summer flicks.
The example set by these films is not likely to be followed any time soon, in fact, my entire argument is based on a subjective desire for blockbuster cinema to learn multitasking. Balance the explosions with the story, choose appropriate actors and give them something worthwhile to do, script comes before concept, this is not rocket science. At the moment, Superheroes and giant robots rule the box office, but there seems to be something on the horizon, especially with indie filmmakers being handed the keys to the best toyboxes. Gareth Edwards recently transposed his slow burn, human-focused storytelling to Godzilla, a monster movie which bravely keeps the monsters as bit players, much like Monsters was more concerned with it's central love story than the giant squid aliens occupying Mexico. Chronicle director Josh Trank has been handed the reigns of not only the Fantastic Four reboot but also an as yet untitled Star Wars spin off.
It seems that studios are now starting to realize that the creation doesn't take care of itself, it needs a talented group of creators to make it work.
But summer blockbusters should be all about big explosions and brainless fun, screw the story! I hear you cry. Well, consider this, someone recently made a supercut of all the robot action in the first 3 Transformers films, it's 20 minutes long...those movies are roughly 8 hours long in total. Think to yourself, do you remember anything about the other 7 and a half hours? Apart from Megan Fox straddling a motorcycle like she's doing a GQ shoot, or how much you hate Shia Lebeouf? Exactly, but who needs story, right?
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