The same deep down

The most common theme being played out this summer at the movies is: No matter who you are, deep down, you are just the same as everyone else.

The smartest of this summer’s offerings, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, depicts a future in which most of humanity has been wiped out by an ape-born illness. The remaining apes commandeer the planet and evolve quickly; they speak, ride horses, and—unfortunately for the surviving humans—fire weapons. A postapocalyptic San Francisco provides the perfect backdrop for a man-versus-ape battle.

But the film’s moral punch is the claim that apes are not so much different from us: they speak and give evidence of higher thought. Likewise, we humans are the same as apes deep down because we are animalistic in our barbarity. When the film’s human characters have opportunities for either kindness or meanness, they show their wicked selves in full glory, detonating weapons designed to wipe out the apes. The apes’ leader Caesar (Andy Serkis) is more noble than anyone the humans can muster; the villainous human Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) is willing to stoop to any level to perpetuate his wretched species. The film is too good to be quite this preachy, but the point is clear: we and the apes are the same below the surface. Darwinism’s most enthusiastic evangelists couldn’t have made the point more clearly.