While Imperfect, ‘War for the Planet of the Apes’ Concludes an Unlikely Blockbuster Series

“Ah, you think darkness is your ally.” So begins an iconic phrase from The Dark Knight Rises, spoken by Bane, an abstract of the underlying theme that runs through the series: darkness. In this, the third of the renewed Planet of the Apes series, a prequel to the 1968 original – a series of which there are five – the film stands out with its own theme, one that fills the space of each moment, an absence viewers may notice as strange before being able to put a finger on it. Silence. For a war film, War for the Planet of the Apes shines best in its silence, its moments of audible peace within the actual chaos of the scenes, lending itself to tension, fear, sadness, and a bevy of the other emotions that come with the agony of war. The plot within the series of prequels seems straightforward: humans and apes go to war. A war which humans inevitably lose, giving way to a planet where apes rule and humans live in servitude. The actual plot, however, is a little different in that it is half revenge-movie and half prison-break, with the fall of humanity as a backdrop more than a main narrative. Within and outside of that narrative is the same theme though – that of survival – and the exposition plays almost like a close game with several lead changes, a back-and-forth struggle as humans and apes gain and relinquish power. It happens more than you might expect; it happened even more than I realized until reflecting on the film.

From the opening scene, humans assault an ape stronghold…