Jason Clarke, with the animated performances of Andy Serkis, Toby Kebbell and Karin Konoval (WETA TM and © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Man projects their deepest fears and desires onto the animal kingdom: Bambi represents our separation anxiety; a Lassie episode where (s)he falls in love with a ventriloquist’s hand puppet (its voice thrown by a young Ted Knight) touches our anxiety about romantic deception; chimp movies sublimate a fear of infantilism. The Planet of the Apes franchise splits the psychic difference, extracting man’s base animal nature to a convenient Other whom we can either fight or befriend.

The struggle in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is not just between man and ape, but between man, his own past and future, “the world we lost” and the future we create.

It takes forever to get in gear. The film opens with a montage of news reports that spell out the crisis at the end of Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), wherein a simian-borne virus devastated humans and a colony of intelligent apes escaped science labs for the protected sanctuary of Muir Woods. Ten years later, Muir Woods is like a jungle, and the film’s early scenes plod along to show the social dynamic the apes have built in their hairy Eden. It is some time before humans enter the picture, and of course, they do so destructively.

But with few exceptions, this isn’t done with much flair. The characters aren’t particularly developed and the landscapes somehow not particularly majestic. The shallow surface does hide some cinematic subtext. The apes’ home base of Muir Woods was one of the shooting locations for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which director Matt Reeves directly quotes. That film’s anxiety about the past is reflected in the city’s anxious geography, full of dizzying heights. There’s a warning from Icarus to man and ape alike that when they reach for the heights they are bound to fall.

It all sounds Very Serious because it is, with no joker around to resolve the Vertigo resonance with an ape dressed in a nun’s habit. If Vertigo deals in rich psychological conflict, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes traffics in something simpler. Humans need to tap a dam near the apes’ habitat to rebuild the San Francisco power grid. Cesar (Andy Serkis) and Malcolm (Jason Clark) trust each other, but on both human and ape side, there’s a rogue figure that understandably doesn’t trust the other side’s motives. The film’s basic conflict is of human and ape groups trying to survive but falling into mistrust and power grabbing, just like humans. It may resonate with any given political conflict, but with a few exceptions is emotionally flat.

It’s not the apes’ fault. They look great, their fur finely detailed, their faces fully expressive. In an age of cheap CGI, you would be forgiven to yearn for the days when Ray Harryhausen would spend four months on a three-minute scene of fighting skeletons. But these animators, who based ape movement on motion-capture suits, do a bang-up job of making these creatures watchable and credible friends and foes—from a tear trickling down their cheek, a la Iron Eyes Cody, to the vicious Koba (Toby Kebbell) riding a horse and carrying not one but two machine guns.

The trouble is that Koba is the most vivid character on either side of the evolutionary fence. Gary Oldman, as the distrustful Dreyfus, eventually loses his shit as is he does so well, but the proceedings lack a sense of urgency. The previous franchise entry had the benefit of more character study, more emotional investment, and, in John Lithgow and James Franco, a more compelling human cast. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is great on special effects, and it gains steam in battle, but its most human scene stars a baby ape that scampers around like a kitten. There’s a lesson for blockbuster filmmakers in that: think smaller, and cuddlier.

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Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Directed by Matt Reeves
Written by Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver and Mark Bomback
With Jason Clarke, Andy Serkis, Keri Russell, Gary Oldman, Toby Kebbell
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi vioelnce and action, and brief strong language
Running time 130 minutes
Opens today at a multiplex near you