Headscratchers / Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

• How does a virus have the an intelligence-boosting effect on chimps, orangutans, and gorillas, but kill humans? Chimps and humans are more closely related to each other than either is to the other great apes.
  • The virus acts at a genetic level in the brain. It seems to cause some "excessive" effect in humans because humans have larger/more interconnected/"faster" brains.
  • That would explain how in the sequel War for the Planet of the Apes the virus is causing exactly the opposite effect in the surviving humans making them mute and dumber, as it was the way how humans adapt to survive the effects of the virus, by having simpler brains.
• Okay, this technically centers around the first interquel promo video but for lack of a better spot I'll put it here. What amounts to little more than a box right next to a major checkpoint that anyone could walk up to and has one side made of glass that...okay, it's probably bulletproof but it certainly isn't 'idiot driving into it' proof. THAT'S their idea of a proper quarantine?
  • I may be misjudging the strength of that sort of glass, but it being bulletproof doesn't mean it'll hold if a vehicle plows through it at full speed.
  • Exactly. Any idiot who hits the wrong pedal or any anarchist hell bent on causing chaos or any ecofanatic that thinks Kill All Humans is a good idea only has to ram it. Bonus points if they kill her cause that'd be the most lethal dying breath ever.
  • When the world is collapsing around you, you don't get to use your ideal material. You use the material you have at hand. It looked like the check point is a repurposed toll booth of some sort, which makes sense since it would already be in more or less the right place.
• How did the apes learn to use guns so fast? It's not like they had anyone teach them, even if they saw humans fire them or just experimented and learned that pulling the trigger = bang, how would they know how to switch magazines or even aim properly? Or be proficient enough to internalize "booger hook off the bang switch"?
  • A) The hell does that even mean? and B) I'm honestly not entirely sure some of them even got past trigger=bang. Koba only would have been concerned with attacking the humans ASAP and less about attacking well. Trigger=bang would have been enough for him. Or c) they figured it out on the fly.
    • The apes sure know how to use their guns, but they never seem to hit anything - which is not surprising, seeing how they fire them with one hand. And there were probably enough loaded weapons from the arsenal to go around, so they probably didn't even bother reloading their old ones.
    • It could also be possible that the apes coerced some humans into showing them how to load magazines and switch them out. Even trying to trick them would be quickly found out by test firing and beating the saboteur.
• Inspired by this Cracked Article. Where do all the apes come from? Only a handful of the escapees at the end of the first film were intelligent, most of the rest were regular apes. 10 years later we find they are almost hundreds, if not thousands of smart apes. Similarly, where do the smart gorillas come from, when the only smart gorilla in the pervious film got killed. Apes take several years to mature (12 for gorillas) so this hasn't been enough time for their population to explode so much.
  • They probably came from other cities and states. Like zoos, research facilities, primate sanctuaries, or maybe from other households (pretty much anything can be a pet nowadays). They must have heard news about the uprising in San Francisco & decided to join them. A decade is plenty of time to travel to another state, even by foot. Especially since things are turning worse for the humans. Also, we saw at the beginning of the film that the virus was spreading worldwide. Remember from the first film that the virus was created to be aerolized, which makes it very easy to spread rapidly. Also remember that it causes death towards humans, but causes heightened intelligence towards apes.
  • Cracked ? Really? The website that's known for its infamous Critical Research Failures?
• Then there's the end of the film. The humans are freed, Koba is dead, and a human army battalion is on their way. Why the hell does this still mean war? If Caesar is back in power, why can't he continue his struggle for peace? There are still all the surviving humans who have helped saving him. Can't they meet the approaching army and tell them that everything's okay and there's now an armistice, and that the apes are ready for diplomacy or something? There really is no reason for the fight to go on, despite the tragic misunderstandings of the last few days... For some reason, Caesar got in his mind that further violence is unpreventable, and nobody bothers to object. It doesn't hurt to ask!
  • Ask who? The humans who just had their entire city invaded and were enslaved by a bunch of apes? Even if a few of the apes managed to save them and turn things over, I'm sure the vast majority of the humans (who were already afraid of the apes to begin with) are not going to be that forgiving that quick. The entire movie made a point that both sides had little to no trust with the other at all. Remember, Caesar almost lost his trust with the humans when Carver began whacking at his kid and they found a weapon in his case. If the mutual trust was that fragile, then Koba took the trust humans had with the apes and completely shattered it beyond repair.
  • Besides, even if, say, Malcolm approached the army and tried to convince them to give the apes a chance, the army's going to think Malcolm has Stockholm Syndrome before they actually believe him.
    • According to Word of God, this is exactly what Malcolm did after Dawn: He tried to explain to Colonel McCullough, the main villain of War for the Planet of the Apes, that Koba was the one who led the attack on the humans, and with Koba dead and Caesar in charge, the apes were willing to make peace. The Colonel's response to this was to shoot Malcolm dead.
  • His first priority is keeping his people alive, not making peace; if he tries to negotiate, apes will die. The army is coming to attack, not to investigate, not to negotiate. They're likely going to be shooting before they're anywhere near negotiation range, since it's been demonstrated (see above) that the apes are armed and dug in, but not great at using firearms. Besides, it was Dreyfus who called for backup, and then he died; he probably conveyed everything he "knew" about the apes, including their apparent hatred of humans.
• It's not at all clear just why Caesar thinks Malcolm is a 'good man,' besides the film needing a stand-in for Will, that Caesar can 'bond' with. While Malcolm is not a 'bad' man as such, he is, like it or not, the main cause of all Caesar's problems in the movie. A lot of people might (mistakenly) assign that Role to Koba and Dreyfus, but that wouldn't really be accurate. If I were Caesar, I would think of him this way: You may be a 'good' man by human standards, but your actions have led to me getting shot, precipitated a war, my village burned to the ground, my people divided, and my trusted lieutenant's (Rocket's) son, is dead, among other things. So you'll understand why my feelings about you are conflicted to say the least, but a 'good man' is probably not how I would describe you.
  • Remember, Malcolm was the one who went into Caesar's camp to try and negotiate a truce: "Help us restart the dam, and we'll leave you alone". As time went on, Caesar began to trust Malcolm more than the other humans and figured while he was stupid, at least Malcolm was trying to do the right thing. And honestly I think it's unfair to blame everything on Malcolm. If it hadn't been for Koba, Carl, and Dreyfus, all that chaos wouldn't have happened.
• Why do the survivors of the ALZ plague still live in San Francisco? 'Modern' North American cities are so poorly constructed and resource-intensive to maintain, not to mention unpleasant in the absence of electricity, centralized water system, garbage removal, fossil-fueled supply, toxins would be everywhere, and needless to say, totally unsuited for food production except in the most limited way. Caesar and his group had the right idea. But the humans? Not so much. They should have moved to the outskirts-or just built a new community from the ground up. Modern cities, besides being a source of salvage, would be places best abandoned early on as indefensible and downright dangerous as they quickly start to fall apart.
  • A combination of forced habit, vain hopes that someone will rescue them if they stay in that place, and this particular set of people not knowing better. They don't even know if the Simian Flu out there can still kill them, even if some (like Ellie) suspect that everyone alive is immune to it.
  • Tie-in material states that Dreyfus was the Chief of Police in San Francisco, and that he became San Francisco's mayor shortly after the start of the ALZ plague. It's likely that the survivors in San Francisco and its environs looked up to him for leadership on account of him being the last remnant of the pre-pandemic municipal government, hence their willingness to live in (or around) San Francisco under his leadership.
• After it is established that the apes are intelligent and capable of speech, why don't the humans try to open up trade relations instead of just immediately working on the generator? Offer knowledge, medicine, better weapons (to hunt game with)? Why not train the apes to do some simple work on the dam (which will require maintenance and oversight), and offer to build new ape homes with electricity and heat?
  • Because both movies make it crystal clear the apes would never agree to such a proposal. They simply want to be left alone. Nor do the apes need, or even want, human technology. The enhanced apes are not anti-knowledge as such, we do see Maurice teaching written English to the new generation. Rather, it's that being on the receiving end of human technology, kept in Zoos, used as scientific test subject, pets, and hunted by humans (with high-powered weapons), has had a profound impact on the apes' attitudes towards humans and their tools. The anonymous black guy even spells out explicitly how the apes are different, and stronger, than humans for not needing their elaborate and complex tech, on which humans are totally dependent for even basic survival. Not a headscratcher at all really.
• What about the apes in their natural habitats? Like the gorillas, bonobos, and chimps in Africa? Killed by humans? Unintelligent? Or are there separate tribes with different leaders, and if so, is there any communication or even knowledge of them with the other ape tribes?
  • Keep in mind that all species of apes are on the brink of extinction in their natural habitats. They might easily be extinct by that point in the future when the movie takes place.
  • It's likely that they do, if they exists, it's just that there's no way how they can know about them as global communications are a thing of the past.
• If Koba spent all of his life in a lab, tormented, how was he aware of the "silly chimp" stereotype he tried to pass as when he investigated the armory? Did he learn it from the other apes? Or did the people working at the lab mock him with the stereotype?
  • Apparently, according to the prequel novel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Firestorm, Koba was a television star during his childhood, performing in the show Monkey in the House. This justifies how he knows all those tricks.

---