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War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
Completely misses the mark after the excellent Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
This sequel picks up shortly after the conclusion of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and starts off with an interesting premise, but then collapses beneath the weight of poor writing that goes to the deus ex machina well far too often.
Following Dawn of the Planet of the Apes there was an interesting thread to explore in this sequel, namely how our protagonist, Caesar, reconciles how he killed Koba (he broke his own rule that ape must not kill other ape) and how he manages the mess Koba created by starting a war with the human encampment in San Francisco who managed to contact a local military force shortly before Gary Oldman's character lost his mind.
The intro establishes how a paramilitary of humans, along with enslaved apes assisting them, are hunting apes, and how the apes fight back. The conflict also establishes that Caesar isn't an almighty ruler of apes, and rather there is a significant amount that have defected from his community, apparently because they were Koba loyalists, yet seem perfectly fine with the killing of other apes regardless of their affiliation with Caesar for some strange reason; deus ex machina, it seems, since the writers needed evil and/or subservient apes to complement our human villains.
Speaking of human villains, Woody Harrelson's character is just cartoonishly evil for the sake of being completely evil. It never is really explained or explored how or why hundreds of men and women came to follow a megalomaniac madman without ever questioning his actions or his capability to lead them to salvation. The entire second act is built upon Caesar's bloodlust to kill Harrelson's character for revenge, and it completely telegraphs the cliche you see in just about every detective story (Batman included, which I suppose is ironic considering what writer & director Matt Reeves followed this movie up with) of whether or not the virtuous protagonist will be driven to murder their foe or not. Despite Harrelson's character being written as cartoonishly evil as possible, there are multiple story beats along the way showing that Caesar comes to realize that murdering Harrelson's character won't bring his family and other apes back that the paramilitary forces have killed and tortured.
The climax of the third act when Caesar finally gets to Harrelson's character gets completely robbed of any potential tension because of bad writing on multiple fronts. At this point we have learned that Harrelson's paramilitary are being hunted by another military force (it's never explained if it's a rival paramilitary force that rose up in the post-apocalypse or the remnants of the United States military), and they are currently bombarding Harrelson's encampment and clearly outmatch and outpower Harrelson's force. Essentially, Harrelson's character is going to die one way or another: either Caesar kills him or he dies in a doomed battle he brought upon himself in his madness. Instead, Harrelson's character (ironically?) contracts the new mutated virus established in this movie that apparently works like a viral Alzheimer's disease that robs humans of their ability to speak before rendering them primate-like husks. Caesar decides to show mercy on this cartoonish villain that murdered his family and ensalaved, murdered, and/or tortured his friends and fellow apes, because of course he does because he's our hero (more deus ex machina). He also puts down a loaded handgun next to Harrelson's character, who was established in the first act and in the intro pretext was hell-bent on hunting down and murdering Caesar to quell the ape uprising, expect Harrelson doesn't even momentarily think of shooting Caesar to "complete his mission", and instead just kills himself. Again, in multiple story beats leading up to this we've seen Caesar's bloodlust from the first act give way to once again show his desire for peace and non-violent nature, so all this scene really amounts to is to weirdly humanize our cartoonishly evil and despicable villain with no redeeming qualities in his final moment. Huh?
Speaking of cartoonishly evil villains, there is also an evil gorilla assisting Harrelson's paramilitary that multiple times abuses Caesar and other apes in Harrelson's captivity (and who knows how many else before this), who in a bizarre moment of clarity when he sees apes being gunned down in the third act climax decides to shoot a human soldier to save Caesar before he's predictably shot in the head by the human soldier he was assisting seconds before. Again, a cartoonishly evil gorilla that has betrayed and abused Caesar and other apes multiple times for some reason gets a heroic moment to apparently redeem himself before his death. Why? Well, Reeves & co,. Apparently wrote themselves into a corner and needed deus ex machina to save Caesar once again.
Other problems in this movie are a human child character, afflicted with the mutated disease that renders her unable to speak (yet conveniently doesn't affect her ability to learn sign language from the apes), that's introduced to tether Caesar and his friends to their humanity and compassion since she apparently doesn't have any problem with Caesar killing her father(? Or her caregiver, since it's never explained who he was in relation to her). In another stunning moment of deus ex machina, her character just waltzes into Harrelson's paramilitary encampment undetected, reaches Caesar's cage, still undetected, and manages to give him water and food so he can survive the night. How she gets away is through more contrivances where Rocket decides to stroll into the encampment to cause a scene and be captured, and conveniently isn't just shot by the cartoonishly evil villain who a few scenes prior murdered an orangutan in front of Caesar to prove a point. Perhaps Harrelson had hit his quota for ape murder for the day or was just too tuckered out for the day for more ape murder? This leads to even more contrivances and deus ex machina where Rocket manages to get the attention of a nearby soldier that is keeping overwatch outside the base (bizarrely enough no soldier is keeping watch on any of the ape pens), who then decides to enter an ape pen alone and is predictably taken care of and just so happens to have a keyring allowing the apes to escape and open other locks in the encampment because sure, why not?
Another strange direction for this movie was to add comic relief. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is an excellent dramatic movie, and I think the only moment in that movie approaching comedy was when Koba tricked the soldiers into thinking he wanted to play with them before he grabbed the rifle and murdered them. In this movie, Steve Zahn has a chimpanzee character that's used for comedic effect constantly throughout from about the halfway point to even into the climax of the third act. It clashes with the tone of the movie constantly, and feels like someone heard criticism of Dawn for being too serious and answered with this out-of-place nonsense (or they saw Marvel Studios' formula for adding comedy relief and banter in all of their movies to varying degrees of success and thought this would do the same thing).
So, this movie isn't completely bad. The CGI is spectacular save for a very strange moment in the beginning of the movie when a subservient ape gallops to the frontline of the human paramilitary force to provide supplies and the CGI looks jerky and especially fake, unlike the rest of the movie. I'm not sure if this was a reshoot or if it didn't get caught in editing, but it's very jarring. Pretty much every scene with Caesar, and Andy Serkis' performance, is great, too. This movie is just incredibly disappointing after the spectacular movie that preceded it, and feels like a waste of Serkis' (and Karin Konoval's) talents.
Others clearly like this, so it seems that this movie was just not what I wanted out of the follow-up to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. I guess I just couldn't turn my brain off long enough to enjoy the ridiculousness that brings down an otherwise interesting premise.
The TV Wheel (1995)
Less than the sum of its parts
The concept of this show is pretty fascinating, and the execution is remarkable as well, but when you make a comedy show full of bad comedy you're going to have problems. This show had so many talented comedians working on it, from the performers to the writers, but for whatever reason the writing is mostly bad, and the performances come off as desperate and obnoxious most of the time, and the result is disappointing.
This is essentially a high concept sketch comedy show, where the gimmick is that the entire show is shot in one take, with a revolving stage and a stationary camera allowing each sketch to flow into the next. You can actually see a nearly nucleus for the underlying concept of Mr. Show here, oddly enough, with how some sketches flow into the next. Sketches vary in length, with some being simple visual gags afforded by the stationary camera set-up and using forced perspective. Like I said, the concept of this show is pretty neat, but again, the writing and execution betrays the talent involved.
In a way, this show reminds me of Brad Neely's Harg Nallin' Sclopio Peepio. Like Joel Hodgson coming off the success of MST3K and trying something new, Brad Neely was coming off the success of his memorable online shorts and China, IL to try something new. Both shows are sketch comedy shows with rapid-fire sketches varying in length, from extremely short non-sequiturs to full-blown sketches. Joel cashed in comedy industry favors to bring in a lot of talented and funny friends and people to The TV Wheel, and Brad Neely used his newfound industry fame and connections to bring in a lot of talented and funny people to help him make his new sketch comedy show. Both shows have a couple memorable and very funny bits, and both shows have a lot of misses crammed into the runtime as well. Both shows in the end are disappointing endeavors that waste intriguing concepts, and make you wonder what could have been had the writing been tighter.
If you're a fan of Joel and sketch comedy then you can find this on Youtube for a cursory watch, but ultimately you'll leave it disappointed and understanding why the show didn't get picked up. Still, though, I do wonder if in different hands the concept could be successful.