Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Celebrates The 4th Of July With JFK
Tomorrow, as you celebrate your independence from the tyranny of King George and the British by burning meat and blowing things up, remember to be thankful that you’re not battling a vicious plague or a crew of super smart apes. Unless you are. But if that’s the case, you have more important things on your plate than dicking around on the Internet, so you probably won’t be reading this anyway. To celebrate the day, 20th Century Fox has released a special 4th of July message from their upcoming Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. And if you’re still trying to decide how you feel about the sequel to the reboot, just remember how truly terrible Tim Burton’s 2001 attempt was by revisiting the horror show in the latest offering from “Honest Trailers.”
This new TV spot features and excerpt from John F. Kennedy’s famous address from Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on July 4th, 1962. The juxtaposition of this well known speech over the images of apes and men massing in the streets, preparing for an inevitable, and violent, war that looms on the horizon, adds an ominous layer of tension and dread. You feel them pulling the strings tighter and tighter, and you’re waiting for them to snap and for everything to explode.
We’ve been excited about this movie ever since Rise of the Planet of the Apes turned out to be way better than most of us expected, and so far we haven’t come across anything that has tempered our optimism. In the ten years that have passed since that climactic battle on the Golden Gate Bridge, a terrible manmade plague has torn through the human population, while the apes have thrived in the interim. For the moment they two camps have established an uneasy peace, but that won’t last long, as forces on both sides of the fence push for war.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes stars Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Andy Serkis, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Judy Greer, and opens everywhere July 11.
While we’re excited about Dawn, let us never forget the darkest chapters in the Of the Apes family, Tim Burton’s ill-advised attempt to reboot the franchise. If you need a refresher course, but don’t actually want to subject yourself to a movie that you’ve hopefully blocked from your memory by this point, the folks at Screen Junkies are back with their popular “Honest Trailers” series. This time out they take direct aim at one of the low-points of Burton’s career. If you’re familiar with this video series, you know exactly what to expect from this one. They pick at just about every one of the numerous major flaws with Burton’s Apes, from the awkward interspecies make out session to Mark Wahlberg’s rampant mouth breathing—seriously, it’s like he can’t close his mouth, I seriously think he may have had jaw problems.
