Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The latest edition of the Planet of the Apes saga finds a group of fledgling survivors grasping at nascent technology left over from before the simian flu wrought it's apocalyptic havoc upon mankind. The flu, conveniently enough, was caused by man's experiments on apes, a not so thinly veiled hat tip to environmentalist and animal rights wackjobs. This was a great movie, which raised interesting questions about the rights of non human life forms, especially those with demonstrated intelligence, and made a righteous condemnation of imperialism and war in general. It unfortunately promoted the great man (or rather, great ape) theory of history, as represented by the benevolent despot Caesar and juxtaposed with the bellicose and illegitimate rule of Koba.  While the movie does portray the human authority figure Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) properly as incompetent and ever eager to succumb to hubris In a neat trick, Koba staged a false flag event in order to provoke the apes to war with the humans. The war is also triggered in part by Dreyfus' efforts to restart the power generator, perhaps a euphemism for the West's current bloody wars for oil in the middle east. All in all a great and exciting picture.