TheRetroCritic

Review available on the new website .

Review now available on the new website .

We review War For The Planet Of The Apes on The Big Rewind .

I talk briefly about War For The Planet Of The Apes .

After the Rise and the Dawn comes the  War For The Planet Of The Apes , the third and last part of the Caesar prequel trilogy in which Andy Serkis' motion-captured ape leads his intelligent kind to battle against the humans once and for all. Or, at least, that's what the trailers would have you believe. Based on those, you'd think the entire film was all-out war with Woody Harrelson's intimidating baddie facing off against Caesar in one last epic stand. The film is not that at all, it's actually much more subtle than that but "subtle" doesn't exactly make for exciting, bombastic trailers. The war in question is a rogue group of soldiers, led by The Colonel (Harrelson), who are trying to eliminate and/or enslave all the apes living in the forest. The apes defend themselves, of course, but it's not really a war for them, it's survival as they plan to leave the forest for a more peaceful setting. Unfortunately, The Colonel murders Caesar'

After the huge success of the first The Hunger Games movie, finally we get this sequel and await not one but two more movies, the franchise therefore proudly following in the footsteps of The Twilight Saga and the Harry Potter franchise by ending in a two-parter. Catching Fire follows the story pretty much where we left it except, this time, victor Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) have become the people's rebellious inspiration and good old evil Donald Sutherland isn't happy. The latter wants to avoid a revolution at all costs so he changes the rules of "The Games" a little and Katniss gets selected once again. This makes for an interesting subplot but also for a very familiar movie. Save for what drives the characters, the political stuff that happens off-camera and the end reveal, this is basically the first film all over again. Beat by beat, we find exactly the same structure developing as we spend some time in the p