Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

The Planet Of The Apes franchises had it's ups and downs. The older movies seem dated to some and the gigantic reveal at the end of the original movie is part of modern movie-history. With the prequels/reboot of the franchise they managed to salvage what Burton destroyed in his 2001 remake with Mark Mahlberg, so how did the 2nd part of the reboot series do?

I was in love with Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, so I had high hopes for the much anticipated sequel, however I was a little bit concerned about the fact that James Franco was missing from this part.

The story of Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes continues 10 years after the first installment and in the meantime the face of the earth has changed. Most people are dead and the surviving has become a struggle for the few surviving victims (who are most likely genetically resistant to the virus that was unleashed in the first movie).
In contrary to the humans, the apes are doing just well. They aren't dependent on electricity and technology, so their life in the woods around San Francisco is pretty easy.
It seems like the small group that escaped from the humans in the first film has multiplied and the general intelligence seems to have increased as well, with some of the apes even talking.
Caesar is the chief and leader of the apes and seems to be doing just fine with his two sons and wife.
While hunting in the woods the apes come across a human scouting team (they previously thought all humans were gone) and one of the apes is shot by the human.
And that's when the story starts rolling. Both camps (human and apes) are full of distrust against each other and the humans constantly underestimate their evolutionary brothers.
Koba, the scarred ape from Rise turns out to be the main villain of the movie, even using the humans' machine guns (quite impressive footage) and trying to overthrow Caesar and putting the humans into "concentration camps" - crazy monkey, but he was abused in many laboratories, so his hatred towards humans is quite understandable.

Overall, the characters (human and ape alike) and their actions are quite comprehensible and the story never gets boring - at many points even emotional. You start rooting for both camps, when facing a common enemy in Koba, who effectivly starts an all-out war between the two races (likely being picked up in part 3)

The thing that annoyed me most about the film was the constant use of sign language. I would have preferred if most of the apes would have been able to talk, just so that it is easier to follow the movie (I really hate reading subtitles all the time). At the end of the movie, many more apes start to talk, though.

The CGI is just remarkable and much improved since the first part (if that's even possible). There will be one point - sooner or later - for every viewer to forget that those apes are actually not real, it's incredible. Andy Serkis, who did the motion capture for Caesar has done - once again - a splendid job, and the animators even more so.

In conclusion, the ape-spectacle continues while tackling real human issues of modern times, wrapped in some nice action-filled blockbuster movie. Plus, the best CGI since Gravity.