Review of War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) by Jake C — 04 Aug 2017

On an Imaginary level, the film presents the overthrow and replacement of mankind by apes, a reversion to our primitive state and a reversal of evolutionary chronology, an undoing brought about by humanity's own overreach and self-destructive nature.

On a Symbolic level, however, the film suggests exactly the opposite: The displacement of man by our technology, the supplanting of CGI characters for flesh-and-blood actors. All of this couched in the classical narrative arc of a revolutionary epic, an amalgamation of messiahs from Moses to Lenin, the great heroic myth that characterizes the humanist tradition.