- Directed by: Matt Reeves
- Written by: Mark Bombeck, Matt Reeves, Rick Jaffa
- Stars: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn
- Run Time: 2 Hours, 20 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHUBpMznFJI
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The story continues about five more years after the last movie. It’s pretty consistent in quality, keeping the entertainment and driving up the action. Things wrap up pretty well, but of course leave it open for another movie in the continuing saga. If you enjoyed the previous two movies, you’ll probably like this one too.
Spoilery Synopsis
We are told that fifteen years after the plague, the remainder of the US Army was dispatched to eliminate the apes. Under command of Colonel McCullough, the apes went into hiding, but they are preparing to retaliate. We see that the humans have some apes working with them. Suddenly, there’s a lot of shooting. Lots of apes die, but they still manage to bear the human invaders.
Some human prisoners talk to Caesar. The apes who followed Koba now help the humans. They release the humans, and then Rocket and Blue Eyes arrive, saying they’ve found something– a potential new home beyond the mountains. There are too many to make the journey safely the way they came, so they need to find a safe way out of the woods.
That same night, Caesar realizes that the soldiers are a lot closer than he thought, closing on their family encampment. He silently alerts some of the fighters, and watches as The Colonel himself arrives to kill all the group’s children, including Blue Eyes. Winter, the big white gorilla, betrayed them all. Cornelius, Caesar’s little son, is the only survivor of the massacre. He leaves Cornelius with Lake, Blue Eyes’s widow.
Caesar sends all the apes away with Maurice, but he plans on going after the Colonel personally. He ends up taking a few friends, Rocket, Luca, and Maurice, along.
They go to a camp where they think there might be soldiers, but all they find is a scared child who can’t speak. Maurice decides to keep her because she wouldn’t survive on her own.
They soon find another camp, this one full of soldiers, as well as Winter, the treasonous ape. Winter explains his story and asks for forgiveness. Caesar’s wife and son are dead, so Winter knows he’s screwed.
The apes find some people half-buried in the snow after being shot by humans. One of them isn’t dead, but he cannot speak either. They get robbed by a bad ape, whom they catch and start calling Bad Ape. Bad Ape offers his coat to the mute girl. He escaped from the zoo when the plague hit. Maurice says he didn’t realize there were other smart apes out in the world; they could be everywhere. Bad Ape knows of a former quarantine zone where the Colonel and his men might be hiding. Bad Ape gives the little girl the nameplate off a car, “Nova.”
They find the humans’ base, and Luca almost immediately gets stabbed. Nova cries at the loss of her new friend, as do the others. Caesar sends the others away and goes into the human camp alone. He finds all his people have been captured and locked in cages and used as slaves.
Caesar gets captured and gets to talk to Colonel McCullough himself. He walks past the cages, and Cornelius is in there with the others. It doesn’t look good for the apes. The next morning, everyone gets marched out to move rocks to build a wall. When Caesar causes trouble, the Colonel orders Red Donkey to whip him.
Meanwhile, Maurice, Rocket, Nova, and Bad Ape watch all this from the mountain.
Caesar figures out that the Colonel is building a wall to fight more humans; the soldiers that are coming are afraid of the Colonel, not Caesar. There’s something wrong with some of the humans the apes have found, and the other humans fear that. Humans have suddenly started losing the ability to speak and think clearly, some side-effect of the plague, which has mutated. The Colonel killed his own infected son. The other military guys are coming to stop the Colonel. He thinks the final war is coming soon, and if they lose, the world will become a planet of apes.
Everyone glares at each other for about twenty minutes during my nap at this point. Caesar scopes out the whole base and then relays it all to Maurice with sign language. Donkey warns Caesar that the Colonel is going to shoot all the apes when the wall is done being built.
At night, Bad Ape and Maurice dig a tunnel into the adult apes’ holding cell and release them, and then they release all the children apes as well. All the kids get out of the camp by crawling across the power lines.
Caesar, on the other hand, still wants the Colonel and stays behind. Suddenly, humans in helicopters attack the base. Caesar uses the distraction to find the Colonel, who has lost the ability to speak; he’s mute now. Nova’s doll that he took must have been infected. The Colonel wants to die, but Caesar refuses to kill him. He ends up killing himself. Caesar makes a quick dash to escape as the humans from the north storm the base.
As many apes are pinned down by a machine gunner, Red Donkey decides to redeem himself by saving Caesar and his own kind. With Donkey’s help, Caesar blows up the wall– and the whole base.
Suddenly, a giant avalanche comes down the mountain and buries all the humans– the apes take refuge in the trees. Almost all the humans, on both sides, are buried.
The apes continue on over the mountains to the desert, where they will make a new home. As they enter the promised land, Caesar grabs his side where he was shot in the battle. Maurice promises to raise Cornelius and teach him all about his father and what he did for them all. Then Caesar collapses and dies.
And the rest all live happily ever after– until the next film.
Brian’s Commentary
It continues the story in an action-packed way, and also explores the evolution of the planet of the apes. The humans’ plague is evolving to make them stupid and mute, and we know how that’s going to end up. We lose a few characters from the previous films, but we gain a few new ones too. The Colonel’s motivations are pretty clearly explained, and he’s not wrong, he’s just on the wrong side of the main characters. Considering that only 1 in 500 people survived the plague, there were an awful lot of soldiers in that final scene.
Kevin’s Commentary
I liked this one just as much as the previous two movies. It seemed to be a smooth continuation. And it makes sense that other apes besides their group would have been affected by the plague, I’m glad they worked in “Bad Ape” to show that. I’d recommend this if you like the series. It’s more of the same and entertaining.