YMMV / War for the Planet of the Apes

• Adorkable: Bad Ape, a former zoo chimp who has developed the ability to speak independent of Caesar's group, might be described as this, with his clumsiness, big eyes and penchant for human clothing (the last justified because he's old and has lost most of his body hair). There's something very endearing about the way he refers to Caesar, Rocket, Maurice, Luca and Nova as 'friends' almost as soon as he meets them and repeatedly through the rest of the film.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Does the mutated disease actually deprive the humans of their intelligence, or just their voice? The Colonel claims the disease deprives humans of the capacity for thought, but there is little evidence to support this in the film as Nova and eventually the Colonel himself seem perfectly aware and thinking after being affected rather than being reduced to animals as the Colonel suggests. If one assumes all it does is affect the capacity to speak, it casts the Colonel in an even worse light.
  • Related to the above: Did the Colonel kill those infected (including his own son) to put them out of their misery, or because he felt their loss of speech and (apparent) thought meant they were no longer useful/competent? Also, is he a ruthless and Ax-Crazy military officer drunken by vengeance? An obnoxious Blood Knight taking pleasure in battles and torturing apes? Or is he a Well-Intentioned Extremist desperately trying to stave off the mutated disease and preserve the only thing that makes a human a human: the ability to speak, which no other animals would normally possess?
  • There is also the Colonel's last moments. Did he try to plead with Caesar to kill him because he didn't want to regress completely to animalistic level and become the livestock for the apes? Or, related to the above, did he hit a hard Despair Event Horizon after realizing that the virus simply took the human speech and thus he killed many people, including his own son, for nothing?
  • The Northern Army. Did they really send their entire contingent to what's essentially a Suicide Mission? Since all soldiers wear visors and masks and are apparently infected (no one speaks at all, there are only yells at the end of the battle), it's not hard to think that they were simply the cannon fodder, and their superiors are still operating somewhere.
  • Is the Northern Army as xenophobic as the Colonel claims? He specifically tells Caesar not to get any ideas about an Enemy Mine alliance right before claiming that the Northern Army hates Apes, and this could be a lie meant to prevent such an alliance if the Apes revolt when the army arrives. And only one member of the army points his gun at Caesar in the several seconds between seeing him and noticing the avalanche.
  • Caesar himself, specifically his death. Did he not look after his wounds after the final battle because he believed he'd crossed the Moral Event Horizon and was no longer fit to lead the Apes, even if it meant orphaning his very young son? Or were the wounds, combined with the mistreatment at the hands of the Colonel, just too much to overcome? Or was he already almost dead after leaving the base, but heroically fought to stay alive and moving long enough, while hiding his mortal wounds and otherwise crippling agony, to see his people to safety?
  • When Caesar is tied to the post, he hallucinates Koba in front of him, who tells Caesar to "join" him. Was he tempting Caesar to stop fighting for his life and join Koba in death, or to give up his faith in humanity and accept Koba's beliefs? Or is it both: for Caesar to die in a state of anger and hatred just like Koba did?
  • Winter; when told by Caesar that his betrayal had gotten Blue Eyes and Cornelia killed, was Winter displaying fear knowing that Caesar would kill him, or was it genuine regret upon realizing that his cowardice had gotten his friend killed? While the latter interpretation has been confirmed in the novelisation, it is still left ambiguous in the proper movie.
• Angst Aversion: Although it's widely agreed that the film is well-made, portions of the film are perceived as incredibly dark and difficult for audiences to get through, with most of the second act being about how much the apes suffer while being prisoners of war. The lack of fully-sympathetic human characters aside from Nova also factor into this since even though Dawn was also Darker and Edgier, that movie didn't portray humans as being Always Chaotic Evil.^note Of course, to be fair, it is stated in the movie that Alpha-Omega is so evil that they are outcasts from the other human militia, so they seem to be a special case. That being said, the movie's ending has been praised for making the sheer nightmare that the characters go through worth it.
• Angst? What Angst?: For a little girl, Nova shows remarkably little emotion over her father's death, and doesn't have many reservations traveling with Caesar, the one who killed him. Although it is still debatable as to whether the man Caesar killed was indeed Nova's father, or if he was associated with Nova at all.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Deliberately invoked with the Colonel. Both he and Caesar seem itching for a brutal battle to the death between them, but when Caesar finds him in his private quarters, he's become infected with the mute virus and is too pathetic to even stand up, and instead Caesar stands and watches while the Colonel shoots himself.
• Ass Pull: The avalanche at the end. It comes out of nowhere and isn't even hinted at until seconds before it happens. A short scene of the snow slowly crumbling apart at the start of the battle would have been enough to foreshadow the event.
• Awesome Music: It's Michael Giacchino, what do you expect?
• Catharsis Factor: Watching Preacher, the Ungrateful Bastard, get blown to kingdom come by the redeemed Red Donkey is intensely gratifying.
• Cry for the Devil: The Colonel is a vicious psychopath, but his tragic backstory (where he had to put down his own son to prevent the spread of the virus), sympathetic motivations and pathetic, agonizing demise makes him far more sympathetic than one would anticipate.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Colonel McCullough. He's a Knight Templar who wants to preserve humanity through extreme measures and has an understandable backstory for being a cold blooded killer but fans still tend to romanticize him as being a noble guy who deep down wants to preserve the human race. And even if we put aside how he murdered Caesar's wife and son, forces Caesar's apes into slave labor, and killed some of them in cold blood right in front of Caesar, his treatment of his fellow human beings is very sketchy and questionable at best or murderous and psychotic at worst. From the way he kills any of his own men who exhibited signs of the disease to how he murdered Malcolm, a human who was trying to work towards peace between humans and apes, in supplementary materials to how he killed so many people, including all personnel of a primate research facility and his own superiors, that other human survivalists in the Northern Army (who were hardly ape-friendly people themselves) deemed him enough of an uncontrollable psychopath and extremist who needed to be brought down. Even if one was to totally ignore his treatment of the apes assuming one fully supported humanity over ape-kind, the Colonel's actions in even a purely human conflict context can make him come across as less of a champion of the human race and more of a ruthless Totalitarian Utilitarian who will tolerate no dissent from anyone, ape or human, who might stand in his way.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Bad Ape is considerably well-liked for being an outsider from Caesar's group, having an interesting backstory, and providing comic relief that works in spite of being in an otherwise completely serious film.
• Evil Is Cool: Let's not beat around the bush here, the Colonel is a monster, but his complex motivations, tragic end and Woody Harrelson's chilling performance makes him an incredibly memorable and effective villain.
• I Knew It!:
  • Many fans guessed that the Simian Flu would be the reason the humans lost speech in the ape-ruled future.
  • Quite a few viewers felt that Koba would appear in either flashbacks or as a hallucination.
  • Due to the film being touted as the Grand Finale to the story arc started in Rise, Caesar's death was predicted by many viewers.
• It Was His Sled: Thanks to the film's marketing giving it away in the trailers, it's well known going in that Caesar's wife and eldest son get axed off early on.
• Jerkass Woobie: Colonel McCullough has an incredibly tragic backstory about how his life was ruined by the Simian flu, and his struggles are — from his perspective — about preserving what's left of the human race and humanity in general. It does not justify what he does at all, but it's an understandable Freudian Excuse. And then he's infected by the Simian flu version that destroys cognitive thought/the ability to speak, leaving him an utterly broken mess that is too pitiable for Caesar to kill.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • With a sudden surge of monkey-related memes in the 2020s, jokes about "Le Monke" and "Return to Monke" are commonplace and associated with this film.
  • Red being called Red Donkey drew plenty of references to Donkey Kong, with jokes referencing the DK Rap abound in comments.
  • Caesar's death is frequently memed by Jojos Bizarre Adventure fans with "SHIZAAAAAAA!" in reference to Caesar Zeppeli's death.
• Narm:
  • The Colonel's Title Drop is pretty cheesy in the trailer, although it's not quite as bad in the film considering that it's a part of a monologue that actually kind of works.
  • The movie poster with the apes in the back standing off against the humans at the front looks incredible... And then you get distracted by Bad Ape off to the right wearing an out-of-place blue coat.
  • A large number of critics and viewers tend to agree that the Colonel's exposition scene when he's talking with Caesar is awkward to sit through due to how long it goes on for.
• One-Scene Wonder: Toby Kebbell leaves a serious impression whenever Caesar has nightmares about Koba.
• Rooting for the Empire: Humans are basically Always Chaotic Evil in this film, either killing the apes or using them as slaves, and show no gratitude or morals. But taking into account that they are the last remnants of the human race, it is easy to understand their desperation and radical views.
• Special Effect Failure: The final battle and avalanche look very much like undercooked CG, especially next to the much, much more effective CG on the apes. Perhaps they should've let Andy Serkis mo-cap the helicopters. And the snow.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Viewers who had grown attached to Blue Eyes from the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes were pretty upset with him being killed off within the first 20 minutes of the film.
  • A considerable amount of viewers were disappointed with Preacher's role in the film, hoping he would fill the spot left by Malcolm from Dawn, particularly due to having a decent motive to side with Caesar along with showing visible signs of internal conflict with his position. Instead, he remains an antagonist through the entire film, and is killed before having any chance for redemption.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The actual War between Apes and Humans comes off feeling relatively minor as the film plays out more like a prison escape thriller after a few skirmishes early on. The U.S. army that fights against the Colonel could have made for a neat end twist had it turned out that they were actually an army of apes, which would have made the war title feel a lot more acceptable.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Being this far into the reboot series (along with five decades since the franchise's debut), nobody expected that we would see "Nova" again.
  • Not a lot of people expected that Caesar’s unnamed second son would turn out to be Cornelius.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: If one accepts the movie as ultimately tying up with the original, in which humans are little more than wild animals, then McCullough is very much right in everything he says, how much the virus destroys cognitive thought is left ambiguous but could be handwaved as merely progressing in stages, bringing the apes' survival and the wiping out of the humans at the end that much closer to a Downer Ending.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: It's to be expected in the third Planet of the Apes reboot movie, but just the first trailers already look miles better than even Dawn of the Planet of the Apes did. A particularly impressive moment in the second trailer is Luca smiling at the little girl.
• The Woobie:
  • Bad Ape! Having been abused by human survivors ever since he gained intelligence, he's been isolated afterwards so long that he has no idea that other apes can speak, and the poor dude has to wear human clothing since he's practically bald.
  • Cornelius. In the span of presumably a week, he has lost his entire family. First, his older brother and mother are murdered by the Colonel, with the heavy implication he was present to witness their deaths. His father leaves to seek revenge and Cornelius begs his father to stay. At some point, he and the other apes were captured and sent to a work camp. Then, when everything looked a little brighter when they finally reached a safe home, his father dies. Poor kid...
  • Nova. In just a few days, she loses her father, witnesses one of the apes who cared for her killed, is exposed to the brutal horrors of war, and when it looks like she finally gets a new home, she loses another of her friends. Add to the fact that she cannot speak and doesn't have any other family members, and you have probably one of the most tragic characters in the film.
  • Surprisingly, Winter. "Revelations" elaborates on his cowardice being a result of his insecurities at fitting in with his fellow gorillas due to his albinism. While this does not excuse his betrayal, one can't help but pity Winter, who had once wanted to be brave like his father, whom he idolized. Other novelizations also reveal that Winter was used and constantly betrayed by Red when the latter was staging an insurrection against Caesar, putting further doubt on his beliefs as to where he stood. Even worse, before his death, Winter was beginning to realize he made the wrong decisions and was planning to abandon the humans. Sadly, he didn't get the chance.

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