Parallels of the Planets of the Apes

Recently my wife and I watched Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014). We found it good enough, that I suggested that we watch first film, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011). Watching the two films near enough to each other enabled us to see some interesting parallels between them.

(Spoiler alert. If you do not want to be spoiled, please stop reading here.)




















Both films start with a group hunting another group.

• In Rise, human hunted apes.
• In Dawn, apes hunted... other animals.
• Perhaps this parallel tries to tell us how far the apes advanced.

Both films put a (school?) bus as a significant piece in human versus apes battle.

• In Rise, the apes pushed a bus to shield them from human machine guns.
• In Dawn, the apes loyal to Caesar were imprisoned in a bus.
• I do not know if this is intentional. If it is, why a bus? If you have an insight, please comment below. I will be happy to know.

Both films have a scene in which an ape rode a horse.

Both films have a sense of dread throughout. My wife and I agreed that somehow the films makes us dread the bad thing that will happen in the climax.

Overall, though, we thought Rise was more fun to watch than Dawn.

(Edit on 10 Feb 2015)

In both films the "villain" character fell (to his death?).
My wife pointed out an interesting observation related to this:

• In Rise, Koba pushed the villain character.
• In Dawn, it is Koba who fell.

It struck me as a poetic way to show Koba's character arc. Further, it revealed this to me:

• In Rise, Caesar was not willing to do the pushing/killing. He let Koba do this.
• In Dawn, Caesar accepted that he needed to do the killing. So, he let Koba fall.

What a way to design parallel scenes to show arcs of the two major characters.