It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of the Planet of the Apes franchise, so it will also come as no secret that I am VERY excited for the imminent release of the newest entry, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (and, unlike some, I don’t mind the repetitiveness of the titles).  Now that we have gleaned several tantalizing glimpses as a result of a fevered marketing campaign, it’s time to ask the tough questions.  What is there really to look forward to in this recent entry?

To start with the most basic, we will finally get to see the aftermath of what occurred in the first film.  While escaping from San Francisco and fleeing into the Muir Woods, to say nothing of starting a devastating flu epidemic were truly stupendous accomplishments, the trailer for the upcoming films suggests that we will get to see what the fallout from that is like.  (The immediate aftermath is laid out in the novel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes:  Firestorm by Greg Keyes.  It is a truly well-written work that asks the same sorts of questions raised by Rise).  This is a world, after all, that has been radically altered by the downfall of humanity into disease and lawlessness.  As a result, there is an openness to the world that this film will represent, in which the future is literally up for grabs as each side stakes out its territory.

As part of this, the trailers and other TV spots suggest that we will gain a greater glimpse of the social organization of the apes.  Clearly, Caesar will be the leader of his fellow non-human simians, but the society the trailers have shown is highly evolved.  We will at last get to see how it comes to pass that the apes have their own homes, as well as how some of them have mastered language, both signed and spoken.  While this society will, undoubtedly, bear some relationship to our own (since, as most readers will recall, Caesar was raised among humans and only left their orbit once they showed their cruelty to him and his kind), it will also be vastly different.  These are, after all, apes that have evolved to be human-like but not entirely human.  As such, the film provides a fascinating and tantalizing possibility of what a non-human civilization could look like.

While the apes will no doubt steal the show (as they did in the first film), the human characters also look like they will gain more development than they did in the first installment of this reboot.  Gary Oldman (his most recent asinine statements notwithstanding) will no doubt shine as Dreyfus, the human leader spurred on by a hatred of the apes and a deep mourning for his lost family (who presumably died of the flu).  I suspect that most of the human drama will hinge on their collective sense of precariousness.  Though certainly precipitated by 10 years of post-flu chaos and martial law, this feeling will most certainly be heightened by the looming possibility of an ape invasion that could snuff out what little tendrils of civilization humanity has managed to cling to and resurrect out of the chaos.

The truly pressing question, however, is this:  what will be the outcome of the battle that we have seen in the final trailer?  The stakes, we know, are as high as they possibly can be, as this seems to be the point at which the scales may tip decidedly in favour of the apes.  After all, at some point in the franchise we are going to have to learn how it came about that non-human apes came to be the dominant species on planet Earth.  Just as importantly, we will also find out whether Caesar will survive the battle that threatens to engulf both his people and the humans to whom he clearly feels some ties.  If he does not (and it is a definite possibility that he will meet his death in this film), then the misanthropy represented by the vengeful bonobo Koba could well set the agenda for future generations of apes.  And for humans as well.

While it will no doubt draw heavily on its precursor in the original series Battle for the Planet of the Apes (in much the same way that Rise drew inspiration from Conquest), Dawn looks as if it will, in good post-apocalyptic fashion, point out just how transient we humans really are.  And that is a truly good lesson for us as a species to learn.