...of an Academy Award.
A lot of people felt Serkis should have won for his portrayal of Gollum, but he puts that performance to shame with his turn as the not-so-poker faced leader of the apes, Caesar.
It's the understated emotion that really bubbles to the surface in Serkis' depiction of the reluctant but always resolute Caesar.
It's not easy to give a performance through a CGI ape and convey to the audience through vocal intonations and an extremely limited speaking script the hurt, the ambition, the hate, and the pain that Caesar feels, yet paired with an incredibly talented special effects team, Serkis manages to pull it off.
I suppose I can't give all the credit to them, because the script for this film is way above par. It works on so many different levels, and it's really quite something because I just got done watching Godzilla vs Kong, and oh boy is there such a stark difference in screenplay quality between the two films.
All while watching War For The Planet of the Apes I was thinking to myself "Why couldn't the Transformers get this sort of on-screen characterization and treatment?" The Hollywood excuse is always "No one wants to see robots fighting for two hours!" and yet that's always the best and only parts worth watching when it comes to the Transformer films.
Here, however, director Matt Reeves flipped the script (I suppose you could say literally) by putting the focus on the CGI apes instead of the humans. The entire story is about Caesar -- everyone else plays second fiddle to Caesar.
It basically proves that you can make a quality, character-driven film without tacking on some ridiculous human sub-plots just to pad out the time or tie together action scenes.
In this particular case War For The Planet Of The Apes is probably misnomer given that this is not an action film. Yes, there are action scenes, but this is all character drama, with a few action set pieces to payoff the trilogy.
I thought the original Dawn of the Planet Of The Apes was an okay film, nothing too memorable. I didn't care all that much for Rise of the Planet of the Apes. However, I have to say that I adore War For The Planet Of The Apes.
The difference boils down to bringing the emotion out of the leads (who are all CGI apes), giving the main antagonist a complex and multi-dimensional approach to his self-proclaimed "purpose" and a few twists you likely won't see coming.
I can understand why a lot of people may not like the film because it's methodically filmed and paced. This isn't The Fast & The Furious, and if you go in expecting more "War" rather than "Planet of the Apes" then I suppose you'll be sorely disappointed.
However, if you're looking for a movie that's actually really well directed, better written than it has any reason to be, and a lot more emotionally driven than most other Oscar-bait dramas, then you'll definitely enjoy War For The Planet Of The Apes.
And it still irks me that Serkis wasn't even nominated for an Oscar for his performance. I didn't bother checking to see who won best actor for 2017, but I'm finding it hard to believe anyone turned in a more layered, heartfelt, and multi-dimensional performance than Serkis did with Caesar.
