Apes riding horses, people. Now that’s how you end a trilogy!

There’s no way on Earth anyone saw this coming. When Fox announced that they were looking to reboot the Planet of the Apes franchise (through a prequel, no less), many took one look at their hastily purchased DVD of Tim Burton’s muddled remake gathering dust on the shelf and shook their head.

Beginning with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, this newly conceived franchise snuck up on an unsuspecting world with all the stealth of the Simian Flu but, for its best intentions, it really shouldn’t have worked. In revisiting a fifty-year-old property with dwindling public interest, nobody but the foolhardiest gave it much hope; however, through a well-executed script and compelling premise, Rise of the Planet of the Apes quietly and deliberately built the foundations for what has become one of modern cinema’s premiere franchises.

With Matt Reeves drafted in for directorial duties for the sequel, and with technology now able to fulfil even the most ambitious of concepts, the series hasn’t looked back. So here we stand on the brink of humanity’s total annihilation and it’s an oddly cathartic place to be. As the dust settles on the war and we look towards the future of the apes we’ve grown to love; a new-found respectability has been instilled in a franchise many left for dead years ago.

Fifteen years after the Simian Flu virus wiped out much of the world’s population, a clan of increasingly intelligent apes, led by chimpanzee Caesar (Andy Serkis), come under attack from a rogue military faction known as Alpha-Omega. After suffering unimaginable losses and with few options left, the apes are forced into a deadly conflict with the human army, commanded by an iron-fisted soldier known only as The Colonel (Woody Harrelson). With the pain of loss burning within him, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts as he begins his deeply personal quest for revenge. As desperation on both sides starts spiralling out of control and with survival hanging in the balance, Caesar and The Colonel must go to war for their future on the planet.

To curry favour with the masses who’d all but abandoned the franchise, there were many boxes this reboot had to tick to succeed but, more than anything else, they had to make us care. Care, not only for the concept of a world populated by intelligent apes, but for the apes themselves. In opting to start at the very beginning (or the beginning of the end, depending how you look at it), it was vital that we were given clear reasoning to dispense with our natural instincts and empathise with a species primarily depicted as antagonists.

The answer to this conundrum comes in the form of one ape and one ape only - Caesar. As one of the finest examples of building your franchise from your character up, the decision to root this trilogy so deeply in the physical, intellectual, and emotional journey of one specific ape is a runaway success. After three films-worth of patient, well-measured character development; the emotional payoff of this final chapter in Caesar’s journey, hits harder than many blockbuster franchises dare dream. We’ve seen the fall of humanity and the rise of the apes exclusively through Caesar’s eyes and, thus, our emotional bond with both the character and his brethren has been sealed. We’ve learnt to love and live with the character and, going against everything we’ve been programmed for, our allegiances are flipped on their head, as we enter the final showdown actively rooting against humanity. Now that’s one hell of an achievement.

With chaos swirling around him, Caesar is the embodiment of a reluctant hero. Instilled with an honour and a dignity absent in many of the film’s human characters, his battle is not only with those looking to end him and his species, but with his very instincts themselves. It’s the kind of moral grey area that War for the Planet of the Apes revels in and, as Caesar constantly teeters on that knife-edge between human and animal; between compassion and rage; the ride to find what side he’ll ultimately fall is a truly gripping one.

It’s a wonderfully weighted emotional game of emotion Matt Reeves plays with the character; one that throws up some incredibly complex moral and spiritual conundrums but, at the very heart of Caesar’s ability to win us over, is the performance of Andy Serkis. As the technology’s flag bearer, Serkis has been the world’s premier motion capture performer since his ground-breaking turn as Golem back in 2001 but, as the years have rolled on, his growing confidence with the art has begun to reach mastery levels.

Serkis’s embodiment of Caesar is nothing short of astonishing and the gut-wrenching emotion he’s able to render from what’s essentially a collection of pixels, is absolutely peerless. With the film’s post-apocalyptic stakes, the film’s overarching narrative is as wide as it gets, but this has been every inch Caesar’s personal journey from the very beginning and, by drilling down to the very core of the character, Serkis’s performance has ensured that we’ve been with him every step of the way.

As they face off for the first time, Woody Harrelson’s unhinged Colonel looks deep into Caesar’s eyes before proclaiming his nemesis “almost human”. As apt statements go, this one’s a real doozy and a meta-declaration that’s tough to argue with. Throwing off the veil of technology, Serkis is able to inject his performance with a level of nuance rarely witnessed from the medium and, in doing so, has almost single-handedly turned the tide of opinion on motion capture; surely leaving the door ajar for eventual Academy Award recognition. Beyond Caesar, every non-human computer-generated creation has been constructed with an awe-inspiring level of detail and verisimilitude, to the point of invisibility and the inherent potential in the continually evolving technology is incredibly exciting.

Of the rapidly dwindling cast of homo sapiens, The Colonel maybe one of only two humans of any note, and certainly the only one with any real dialogue, but his presence casts a huge shadow over the entire film. With Woody Harrelson in all his scenery-chewing glory, his performance is both terrifyingly cold and wonderfully cartoonish, but the theatrics work perfectly within the film’s overtly operatic surroundings.

Not afraid to wear its Apocalypse Now influences on its sleeve, War for the Planet of the Apes paints The Colonel in distinctly Brando-esque tones and, much like his infamous Colonel Kurtz, Harrelson’s character is set up as a man adrift mentally, physically, and spiritually from his superiors and from what remains of humanity. But, unlike Brando troubled portrayal, Harrelson’s performance is chock-full of commitment which, together with the character’s well executed writing, goes a long way to constructing the kind of complicated, thought-provoking, and fully rounded antagonist you rarely witness in blockbuster cinema.

Playing the perfect foil to Caesar, The Colonel is simultaneously charismatic and reprehensible, while operating as a window into the dark core of mankind’s core that Caesar continually flirts with. The Colonel is humanity stripped down to its primal instincts and an expertly weighted counterbalance to Caesar as the two species meet at a crossroads. His bombastic, cult leader appearance and fiercely fanatical following expose man at the its most animalistic and in stark contrast to the relative harmony of the apes they oppose.

Though War for the Planet of the Apes doesn’t shy away from the stark reality of the situation, there’s an unmistakable beauty in amongst the bleakness. As the decaying San Francisco cityscape and rain-slicked forests of previous films give way to wide open beaches and dense, snow-covered mountains; War’s landscapes emanate a desolate magnificence, as if ripped straight from a canvas.

While the CGI design on the apes is jaw-dropping, the rugged beauty of the tangible landscape around them works as a lovely counterbalance. Matt Reeves and cinematographer, Michael Seresin, take full advantage of the British Colombia location, with the frozen landscape perfectly encapsulating the film’s quietly chilling tone. Working in perfect tandem with Michael Giacchino’s wonderfully evocative, nostalgic (those drums!) score; the film’s location paints a beautifully haunting picture that’s equal parts absorbing and overwhelming.

Matt Reeves has become a master at eking out wonderfully constructed, high-concept stories from potentially tiresome blockbuster fare and, since taking the Planet of the Apes reigns from Rupert Wyatt, the director has worked wonders with the franchise; pushing it into unexpected directions and lifting it to a whole new realm of possibilities. Although War for the Planet of the Apes is every bit the big budget, studio blockbuster; it’s clearly not afraid to approach things from an overtly adult perspective. Explosions and massive action set pieces are the film’s bread and butter but, by revelling in its deeply intimate nature, sparse dialogue, and operatic tone; Reeves has constructed a truly grown-up blockbuster.

Rounding out one of cinema’s finest trilogies, War for the Planet of the Apes succeeds in offering high-concept blockbuster spectacle without sacrificing dramatic weight. This is mega-budget, mature filmmaking at its best and, by refusing to compromise in tone, style, or dialogue; director, Matt Reeves, asks some poignant questions on morality, human nature, and mankind’s eternal proclivity for conflict. Through Reeves’s highly focused direction, full blooded performances by Andy Serkis and Woody Harrelson, and some of the finest motion capture in cinema history; War for the Planet of the Apes operates both as a pitch-perfect conclusion to Caesar’s journey and an ideal platform from which to build the franchise’s future.