Monday, July 14, 2014

An Engineer Reviews the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

I am a fan of the monkey movie. I can remember where I watched the original Charlton Heston version - the post theater while at Fort Riley, Kansas on a Boy Scout overnight. After a month of monkey mania and building anticipation, I was a bit disappointed.  I would rate it much better than most sequels - - go and see it, just see it with reduced expectations.

Several of observations:
  • The IRS has been in the news the last several months over the case of missing e-mails.  As Dawn, The Walking Dead, 28 Days, etc. have all pointed out, the future of human kind is not threatened by missing e-mails from the IRS.  The real threat is someone at the CDC either losing something very bad or someone taking something home that they shouldn't.  Hasn't the CDC been in the news recently over the case of the missing really bad biological whatever?  Most dystopian futures have a major screw-up by the CDC in the plot (OK, Snowpiercer does have a bad case of failed geoengineering - - in attempting to cool a warming  planet, we go a little too far.)  Someone in the House of Representatives needs to get busy on the CDC and a potential monkey future.
  • If someone handed me a modern automatic weapon, I would be totally clueless without the instructional YouTube video or the app.  How many humans can immediately fire your basic Heckler Koch MP5?  One has to admire the weapons training the monkeys received from someone at sometime.  
  • I agree with other reviewers that have commented on Cesar speaking in a cross between Gandhi and Che Guevara.  Which is not a bad combination - - listen to Bloomberg News interviews and how many human CEOs speak in a language part Che and part Gandhi.  What shareholder wouldn't like the human version of Cesar.  I found myself warning our two Siamese cats on Sunday during a cat disagreement - - "Cat don't kill cat."
  • What is it with monkeys and only riding really dark black horses?  Review all the movies.  Have you seen a monkey riding a painted horse?  The National Painted Horse Association needs to jump on this for the next movie.
  • In a post-human world, the civils and electricals are in the biggest demand.  So petroleum and chemical - - you are taking a significant salary and status cut in a post-human world.
  • The multi-technology, multi-communication part of the movie - - computer generated monkeys, talking in sign language, with subtitles.  This illustrates our own advancing civilization and progress. 

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