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  • Alas, Poor Scrappy: Carver, killed seconds after a genuine moment of happiness.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Koba gets this the most:
  • Angst Aversion: The film begins with most of humanity wiped out, and the remnants struggling to survive. On top of that, any lighter moments are always immediately followed by things taking a horrific turn for the worse, and both species end up looking as bad as each other.
  • Award Snub: Andy Serkis, though at this point it's no surprise. Though it's arguably made more noticeable by him not making the supporting categories he was campaigned for despite having a leading showcase. Some people also thought Toby Kebbell (Koba) was equally deserving of recognition.
  • Awesome Music:
  • Base-Breaking Character: Koba: While most people agree that he is a very compelling and interesting villain, some people disagree on whether or not his sympathy holds up. Some argue that he is a mentally ill Tragic Villain through and through because of his Trauma Conga Line, while others see him as a purely evil villain because of his selfishness and heinous actions.
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • Koba falls to his death, but the filmmakers, seemingly with this trope in mind, don't make it that simple for him and also have him crash into various things and have debris collapse on top of him while he's falling.
    • And also, Carver's death, at least to those who don't see it as an Alas, Poor Scrappy moment.
  • Complete Monster: Prequel comic, by Michael Moreci et al.: Pope is a brutal chimpanzee and the commander of Caesar's ape soldiers. Believing that Caesar's rule has made the ape society weak, Pope desires to wrest power from the Ape King through any means necessary. Subjugating a tribe of primal apes by killing their alpha, Pope forces them to undergo vicious training to mold them into loyal soldiers with which to use to conquer Caesar's colony. Demonstrating his cruelty by having a dissenting ape tortured and fed to a polar bear, Pope proceeds to have dozens of humans and apes alike rounded up and caged with the intention of using them as slave fodder. When confronted about his inhumane treatment towards his fellow apes, Pope casually decries them as not apes, but mere "dumb animals".
  • Cry for the Devil: Many viewers felt sorry for Koba at the start of the movie, especially when he reminds Caesar that humans are the reason why he looks so disfigured after they experimented on and tortured him for years. For some people, this sympathy ends later on though due to his selfishness and blatant hypocrisy (using "human work" to achieve his means, including against his fellow apes).
    • Though some people do still sympathize with him, especially those who have read the Firestorm prequel novel which shows his awful backstory of losing his mother and being an abused trained ape before becoming a tormented lab ape.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Maurice, even more so here than in the first film. No one gets the better of him, not even Koba.
  • Even Better Sequel: General consensus among critics and audiences is that the film is even better than its predecessor, currently holding a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes and 79 on Metacritic (versus the original's 82% and 68, respectively). Some have compared it to The Empire Strikes Back and The Dark Knight in this regard. Others have even proclaimed it the best movie of the summer, if not the entire year.
  • Evil Is Cool: Koba has received universal acclaim for his role as the primary antagonist of the movie. He may become a ruthless and sadistic monster, but he is also a totally badass ape, with his tragic backstory making his actions understandable. Koba is widely considered one of the best movie villains of the 2010s.
  • Fan Nickname: Many of the fans refer to Caesar's second son as River. War for the Planet of the Apes reveals his name is Cornelius.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • In a case of epic bad timing, Dawn premiered in the middle of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, the deadliest Ebola epidemic to date. What's eerier, Ebola has similar symptoms to the fictional Simian Flu. To be fair, the premiere date was set long before the outbreak began.
    • Dreyfus blowing himself up believing that he is saving the human race is bad enough, but the prequel comic to the next film shows that the tower explosion was exactly what saved Preacher's life when he was in San Francisco. In short, Dreyfus indirectly (and unknowingly) saved the person who would cause Caesar's death in War.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Carver, in a way. After insensitively brought up Malcolm's wife and Ellie's daughter's deaths from the Simian Flu, Foster tells him to shut up or he'll injure him. An upset Carver said "Oh sure, I'm the asshole!" and walks off. He also has an Alas, Poor Scrappy death scene, killed just after finally showing true happiness upon seeing the lights restored to the city.
    • Dreyfus also counts, especially when he browses through the family photos on his tablet when the power is restored. He outright bursts out sobbing when he looks at the photo of his wife and children, showing that deep down, he is ultimately one of those who survived yet lost people they cared for in return. Even when he finally jumps the slippery slope towards the finale, he literally had his community he had been working so hard to build overrun and ransacked by the apes. It's little surprise he refuses to believe Malcolm's claims and ultimately chooses to take his own life out of disbelief that he is doing the right thing.
    • Koba could be considered this in spite of the cruel, sadistic, violent, treacherous, bloodthirsty, hypocritical tyrant he becomes. Whatever he has done, Koba is a broken ape traumatized by a lifetime of abuse, torture and heartbreak as shown in the Firestorm prequel novel. The loss of his beloved mother, his time as an abused trained ape, and his years as a tormented, isolated lab ape, all of which eventually causes him to turn on his fellow apes to avenge his past, are all downright depressing. After his insatiable hatred of humans has become so strong that he came to view Caesar and any other ape that might not want to wage war on humanity as being little to no better than humans, his own actions cause Caesar, who was once like a brother to him, to think similarly of Koba, stating to his face "You are not ape" before dropping him to a Cruel and Unusual Death - a painful end to a life filled with pain.
  • Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Carver is more loathed then the film's Big Bad Koba, lacking the latter's tragic backstory and Evil Is Cool aspects and instead coming off as a whiny, xenophobic jackass who contributed to the Ape-Human war starting up. Unwittingly, yes, but still...
  • Love to Hate: Koba. He's easily the film's most frightening and monstrous character, with the sheer extent of his villainy making him a fascinating and intriguing character played excellently by Toby Kebbell. Adding onto this is that he's not completely wrong or without sympathy and when push comes to shove he backs up his deplorable actions by proving himself to be a highly competent threat.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Koba has two major points where the audience can say he crossed the line. The first is this when he shoots Caesar, lies about his death and frames the humans for it along with setting fire to the apes' camp. If anyone still had sympathy for him at that point, then he definitely crosses this when he executes the young Ash just for refusing to follow his orders to kill an unarmed man.
  • Narm: Most of the film's trailers edit the order of exchanges during the humans' talk around the campfire. In the trailer, Carver shows prejudice towards the apes for the Simian Flu. Ellie points out that the virus was created by scientists in a lab, and Carver can't blame the apes. Carver says "who else am I gonna blame?" Uh... how about the scientists in the lab she just mentioned, Carver?note 
  • Narm Charm: You would think that, given that all of the Apes's spoken dialogue is Hulk Speak delivered with No Indoor Voice, the film would be hard to take seriously. However, the actors deliver it so effectively that it's convincing, and at times, terrifying.
  • No Problem with Licensed Games: Played with. A deal between 20th Century Fox and Ndemic Creations, AKA the creators of Plague Inc. (which, interestingly, whose creator took inspiration from this reboot), resulted in the film's signature Simian Flu being used in said game, effectively making it into sort of a licensed game. And since Plague Inc is considered a good game already...
  • Outgrow The Trope: Never brought up but so far it seems like cats and dogs were wiped out by Simian Flu much like in the original series.
  • Signature Scene:
  • Special Effects Failure:
    • The film packs truly incredible special effects. With that being said, a digital grizzly bear at the beginning of the film looks quite bad.

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