What this means in a dramatic sense is that once you get past the grunting (mostly from the apes), the subtitles and the incredibly lifelike and frankly a bit spooky apes you’re left with complex moral quandaries and stories of personal relationships that are as old as storytelling itself.
While Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is essentially about the apes on the way up versus the humans on the way down and out, within and between each group are a multitude of factions driven by petty jealousies, idealistic prejudices and the quest for power. Just like Australia’s political parties, ultimately they are self-destructive and everyone comes out a loser.
Whether or not you think Tony Abbott is a chimp, Joe Hockey an orang-utan or Bill Shorten a gorilla, the lessons of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes will probably be as lost on them as they are on so many others. Like most of us, they’ll probably be distracted by the colour and the movement, the special effects, the sounds and the fight scenes.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes lacks the scale and scope of, say, Lord of the Rings. But it makes up for it with an intelligent plot and complex characters, for the apes anyway. If only Australian politics was as smart or our politicians as deep.
