A Classy Quirkabum

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bonus panel:

I love Cornelius so so much, he is small and pretty and he gives me a lot of tenderness and and and 😭😭😭😭

In the novelization of Dawn, either Caesar or Koba (I can't recall which) make a mental note that Ellie, a woman, is part of the human group who comes to the forest. The thought is that the humans must be larger in number than they thought if they'd risk sending a female out into danger. I get that their ape community is just starting out and breeding females are important to grow their numbers; I was just surprised how much they think on that. I think even Maurice mentions protecting the females a time or two in the book, Caesar's Story.

This is why there are no prominent female apes in the Caesar trilogy of movies. There's only Cornelia (who does get things to do in the War prequel novel, Revelations, but otherwise is just motivation for Caesar) and Lake (who is baby Cornelius' stand-in mother figure).

[PT: Revised Dawn Rant /End PT]

Referring back to this post

Since making my original rant on the dam scene on my main account, I've thought a lot more about it and what actually makes it so wrong, to the point I'm now comfortable calling it poorly written.

My original post was very much focused on the fact that in-universe, Caesar's behavior is reprehensible, and I still VERY much stand by that. But now, even from a more doylist perspective, I find the scene incredibly frustrating and poorly executed.

Here is the scene in question. Do rewatch it, even if you think you don't need to.

Koba has just found out (via Blue Eyes, a scene prior) that Caesar has been working with the humans to restore power to the human colony while he was away.

He enters the dam where they are working, demanding to speak to Caesar, and threatening a human child in the meantime (YIKES)

When Caesar arrives, Koba berates him and says he cares more about humans than apes, even more than his sons, which includes a newborn (Also yikes)

And so Caesar beats the shit out of him. He screams, lunges, and ends the fight with his hands wrapped around Koba's throat before slowly letting go and repeating the most important rule to their society, "ape not kill ape."

Despite Koba's pretty cruel behavior, this is not a reasonable or forgivable response, I'm afraid. But this movie (and the fan base, discussing both later) treat it with either total neutrality or blame Koba for getting too angry.

I think I put it fairly succinctly in my original post, but there is genuinely so much wrong going on here. This scene is serviceable as a plot point that drives Koba toward violence against Caesar, but almost every other fold of nuance and context makes Caesar look worse and worse in my opinion. The implications of this scene stretch far beyond what I think the writers of this movie really intended, and the supplementary material only rubs salt in the wound unintentionally by creating parallels to Caesar's "domination" of Koba and his abuse by human captors. Both are instances of corporal punishment.

When thinking more deeply about this scene, you start to wonder: Why is no one doing anything during or after the fact? How is this affecting Koba, beyond the surface text? Has Caesar done this before?

I personally have my own answers to all of those questions, but I'm typing them out to try and communicate that this act of violence, even if intended to be a one-off loss of control, has heavier implications that parallel real life abuse. And where my TRUE issue with this scene, and all of the possible implications (believe me, I can give you a laundry list), lies is in the fact that it's never fully addressed by the narrative. Between both the movie itself and the fanbase's readings of it, the common takeaway is that Caesar's blindspot here was his affection for Koba. He was too kind and forgiving to his brother, but every time I think about this movie, I go "Really? That's how KIND and GRACIOUS you are?" The movie shows Koba doing a similar, but admittedly worse, action of killing an adolescent ape to manipulate Blue Eyes and the others. Once again using violence to subjugate and control the kingdom he now rules, but when Caesar nearly did it an hour ago on screen I guess that was fine. He wasn't "ruling through fear" then, like Koba is.

I get the impression that it's not actually the action that matters, it's where it leads. Nuance matters here, but I can't get past retraumatizing an abuse victim and getting off scot-free, in-universe and metanarratively, even if said abuse victim is behaving horribly. Caesar and Koba are more similar than this movie is willing to admit, which is not strong writing when Caesar is positioned as Koba's virtuous narrative foil.

And these threads are not inherently awful. Given more grace and development, I actually find these ideas EXTREMELY compelling, they would strengthen the themes of Dawn five-fold in my opinion, and this sort of idea was done more successfully in War. What's frustrating to me is simply that, War operates on the pretense that Caesar's descent into revenge is a new development, when I just don't fully buy it with the abuse at the dam emblazoned into my skull.

And I feel like this could've been a fairly easy fix? Just some edits to the scene of Caesar talking to Blue Eyes after their reunion, some extra lines or an extra scene in War, or a rewrite of the dam scene altogether could've patched this up. It does concern me that no one in the writing room caught the cognitive dissonance here... or maybe someone did, but they were dismissed. I don't know which is worse.

Marimar Martinez was shot by ICE 5 times and not only survived, but also had the courage to testify against her attempted murderers:

"I am Renee Good. I am Alex Pretti. I am Keith Porter... My own government attempted to execute me, and when they failed, they chose to vilify me."

The actual director is Natted JWHJ0715, and they deserve credit!!!