Most of the podcast was really into this critically acclaimed sequel. Most.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/08/08/qt3-movie-podcast-war-planet-apes/
Woody Harrelson totally has the virus in the end – he got it of Nova’s doll, which is had her blood on it, when he picked it up from Ceasar’s cell.
You get a shot off it lying on the floor at the end.
Ah, I bet you’re right. It is conspicuous that there’s blood on the doll. I just thought he’d been reduced to beast state and was clutching the doll like a child. But if it infected him, that’s an interesting variation on the diseased blankets motif.
So if he was infected, doesn’t that mean he wasn’t making up the bit about how it reduces people to a state of beasthood? And that the mutated version of the virus does more than just makes people mute? Or did I misunderstand him? And if that’s the case, why isn’t Nova basically a mindless beast?
-Tom
It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve seen the film, but my understanding was that Harrelson was more or less right about the virus—it makes people dumber, unable to talk—but that it was sort of reducing them to a child-like state. “Mindless beast” felt right for his character as a slight exaggeration, to see an adult reduced to that would be a dramatic regression, but for an actual child like Nova, it would mostly just manifest in the loss of speech, and maybe being a little more childlike (which was hard to gauge with the situations we saw her in).
I also theorized—and this isn’t supported directly by the movie in any way, just my hypothetical situation—that it was more or less equalizing humanity with the “new and improved” apes. Most of the apes—while more advanced than before—couldn’t yet speak, but Maurice seemed to indicate they were slowly learning how. Perhaps humanity was at about the same level, forgetting how to speak, severely losing cognitive ability, but that it was really only bringing them down to the starting level of the advanced apes, and that maybe they could all continue to grow from that starting point. Like I said, that’s just pure speculation though.
That’s what I took away from it as well - diminished intellectual ability and muteness, but mindless beast is an exaggeration. Clearly you do retain some sense of self awareness, or he wouldn’t have killed himself.
It’s kind of annoyingly ambiguous though - Nova seems regular childlike, but naively wandering into the camp like that seemed off. And we don’t get much time with Harrelson, and he’s drunk to boot.
It certainly makes more sense to show the deterioration of Colonel Kurtz, in particular, than to have us have to piece it together based on a doll (that for some reason he’s keeping in his room) in the bathed-in-red-light scene.
I was disappointed in the structure of the night attack for this very reason. Reeves robs us of that great moment when Colonel Kurtz comes out in the morning and the cages are empty. Instead all is just chaos.
Imagine a scene where Colonel Kurtz is called out by his men in the morning. They show him the cages are empty, and he is apoplectic…but…he finds, suddenly, he cannot articulate his rage. To his men he is too angry to speak. But we can see, in his eyes, his utter fear that he literally cannot speak, and thus his rage turns to fear as it dawns on him what is happening to him.
Instead we get him lying on a bed and us having to piece it together. Meh.
-xtien
“This is a holy war.”
“You have symphonies in you, brother.”
I like that version better too.
Although, tbh, it was crystal clear what was going to happen since the time he picks up the doll (there was no narrative reason, neither character nor plot wise, for him to pick it up if it wasn’t going to infect him). I though showing the doll again during the scene was a little bit on the nose.
I would direct folks to listen to the Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation podcast and jump to the following spots in the podcast to hear one podcaster come up with the voice and another one run with it.
14:55
15:09
15:30
16:12
18:08
18:52
28:00
28:05
28:08
28:49
28:57
29:01
29:17
And I would also suggest you check out an awesome tweet by Qt3 forum goer axisandallies of his daughter doing the voice as well that you can find here.
I like that a lot, Wholly! Nice. So I’m going back to the point I was going to make on the podcast that I really liked that part of the script for how it built on the original movie’s idea of humans being unable to talk.
But I’m still a bit confused on the mechanics of a mutating virus. The Colonel says that everyone is infected with the virus, which makes sense. It has infected the entire human population, but some people resisted the effects and are effectively immune to the virus. These are the survivors. So far, so good.
But if the virus is mutating, doesn’t that mean a whole new version of the virus is springing up in random people and then spreading? Doesn’t that mean a second plague?
In other words, Harrelson’s character was right to take drastic measures to contain the new infection, wasn’t he? And by “right”, I mean he was putting the good of the human race above individual considerations. Of course, his actions were probably too drastic – why not quarantine his son instead of shoot him? – but he had the right idea. A second outbreak would need to be contained or human civilization would collapse. In which case, there are intriguing points of comparison with Girl With All The Gifts that I would have liked to explore.
-Tom
This was my take on it, yes. The new strain does not appear randomly, but it’s a specific mutation that started with one of his soldiers. By killing all the other soldiers he thought he’d eradicated it, but it survived on Nova.
I was surprised to see Nova go with the apes and thus not giving the virus to another soldier so the infection would spread and Charlton Heston could come in a movie or two.
Maybe that’s for the next movie.
OK, I’m totally going to use “You can eat your cookies now” the next time I just need to dismiss someone.
Oh my…this coming week is going to be an outpouring of hatred and bitterness toward TDT. I’m excited, even though it is kind of fun when one person dissents and defends a movie. (Except Avatar.)
Conversation with my girlfriend:
GF: What’s this week’s movie?
Me: The Dark Tower
GF: I’ve seen that trailer twice, and I feel like I’ve seen the movie five times.
Me: Oof.
GF: Yeah, you’re on your own for this one.
Ouch!
-xtien
“I see you.”
This podcast also features one of my favourite pieces of Kelly Wand wisdom: when discussing movies that wouldn’t be made now or “touched with a 10 foot pole” his answer is, “we should stop carrying around those poles.”
I’m very pleased to be reacquainted with that.