If you had to ask me about my most anticipated ape related movie of the year, the answer by far would be Dawn Of The Planet of the Apes. My follow-up would be how many ape related films are they releasing this year, and if you had a list of titles I’d probably shut up and stand there bewildered. The thing about these Apes movies is, damn are they intriguing. Something about the combination of weird talking apes, time travel, social commentary and horrific dystopian ape societies really seems to resonate with audiences at large. Why shouldn’t it? What’s not there to love? To make it better, the cast for Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, is a growing list of names that is spelling out another great Apes film in the long line of Non-Tim Burton related Apes films. Recently cast [Via THR] is beloved character actor Gary Oldman, who all should know by now as Commissioner Gordon from the Nolan Batman trilogy.
One focus is on the human scientists who are struggling to survive alone in San Francisco. Another aspect of the story is the struggle of intelligent ape Caesar, played by a returning Andy Serkis, to maintain dominance over his kingdom.
Oldman is coming on board to play a leader of the human resistance, a diplomatic type who has a military background and was, interestingly enough, a former police commissioner (at least in the current script).
That sounds pretty great for a multitude of reasons. Firstly it helps lend credence to my Unified Gary Oldman Theory, which states that any and all characters Gary Oldman plays are actually just different time periods in the impossibly long life of a time traveling, dimension hopping, reality bending meta-character. It loosely follows the story of an insane criminal who hunts a frenchmen, turns good to become a commissioner for a while, watches the world get overrun by apes and eventually ends up a mega space tycoon super villain after regressing back into his default nature. Placing each movie on the timeline is hard, but that’s why it’s a theory. I have a similar theory about the late Dennis Hopper, but that’s neither here nor there.
Regardless, how great is this movie going to be? Can you imagine if in some impossibly amazing crossover, we actually did get to prove this Gary Oldman character literally was Commissioner Gordon, and he enlists the help of Batman ONE LAST TIME to save humanity from Ape rule? Listen, thinking about apes and Batman is 2/3 of everything I do, so don’t judge me. All I know is I want to see that movie now.
Grizzly Bomb 