War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

[MmzHrrdb]

Near the beginning of War for the Planet of the Apes, an albino ape is introduced. He is named Winter. Yes, really. One hundred-and-fifty million dollars and two screenwriters couldn't come up with a better name for a white ape than Winter? It's just baffling. This is the sort of name a young child might prescribe to her white stuffed animal (who also has a stuffed dog, cat, and lion, named Spot, Meow, and Lion respectively). Not the kind of name that two grown men who now have two superb Planet of the Ape movies under their belt would even joke about assigning to a supporting character.

Director Matt Reeves is the director and one of the film's two writers. He is therefore seemingly fifty percent responsible for this abominable error. But there are other factors. Of course the first would be co-writer Mark Bomback, who has written the screenplays for several dubiously received films over the years (including Insurgent, and the remakes of Total Recall and The Race to Witch Mountain). He could quite easily be the perpetrator.

But one has to take into account the other folks involved that could have spoken up in protest against this criminally dismissive name. The actors are perhaps less at blame than others, with their primate personas' communication limited mostly to grunts and hand-signs, therefore never being forced to say the name aloud and reveal its face-palming dumbness. Still, they would have all read the name in the script (and the actor of the lazily-named ape, Aleks Paunovic, did himself a great disservice by not speaking up on behalf of both generally discerning movie-goers and the screenwriters of America).

The editors are an ideal suspect, as they actually had to write out the name Winter many times as subtitles for the film. It would have been so easy to change the name of the embarrassingly-named ape in post, with or without the approval of Reeves. Just simply having a dialogue with the director might have awoken Reeves' logical mind ("Hey Matt, I know you've put a lot of thought into this script, but I don't know about the name 'Winter' for a white ape. How about something more subtle like 'Snow' or 'Polar Bear' or 'White Garbage Bag' or something?"). Either by their lack of confidence, tin ears, or outright spite, they approved the name for the final cut of the film.

It's incredible that bone-headed mistakes like this can still occur in big-budget franchise films with so much riding on them. This is a mind-blogging lapse of judgement that threatens to discredit the fact that this is one of the best Summer blockbusters since, well, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. To think that this laughable brain-flatulent name would streak the high-point of an outstanding trilogy, re-defining what the modern blockbuster can be while staying true to its genre roots and offering smart, thoughtful, and finally thrilling entertainment with powerful performances, stunning visuals, fantastic Michael Giacchino score, and genuine emotional resonance (and even a supporting comic relief character that actually works far better than it should, although that won't stop him from being unfairly dismissed as the weakest "link" by some). But really? Winter? Good grief that is dumb.

Score: 9/10

[TrySpace]

Interesting how worked up people get by the smallest things. *bee flies by*