Nothing to go ape about

APES love to monkey around in general, but studies have also shown them to be adept at forming political groups and exhibiting other human-like tendencies. So it isn't that much of a stretch for them to turn into a more evolved species capable of belligerent behaviour involving the use of automatic weapons and terminating humans with extreme prejudice. Not when it's a science fiction movie anyway.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the latest in a long-running feature film series - a sequel to the 2011 reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the eighth instalment since the original Planet of the Apes (1968) - to delve into a narrative about the interaction between the human race and a troop (literally) of mighty expressive simians.

An action-drama in which an ape gets top billing (not to mention most of the best lines) would have been unthinkable in 1968 but times - and movie technology - have changed. The simian characters in this movie (directed by Matt Reeves and written by Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver) are more human than several of their human counterparts: a damning indictment of the human race perhaps, but also an indication of just how far digital technology and performance-capture techniques have come.