Hangout of the “Planet of the Apes”

Earlier this week I did a video broadcast with PeaceBang and NYT religion reporter Michael Paulson about religion themes in “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” which Mr. Improbable and I saw this weekend. Boy, the reading glasses were a mistake! But I had never done a Google hangout before, and wanted to keep an eye on the proceedings. We do give away most of the plot–elements that aren’t implicitly contained in the title, that is–so watch with caution.

More discussion after the jump –

I was very bothered by Caesar’s justification for allowing Koba to die. Koba quotes Caesar’s ethical principle back to him — “Ape not kill ape” — and Caesar replies, “You not ape,” and lets Koba fall to his death.

Caesar, no!

You could have said, “Sometimes wrong is right,” Caesar. You could have owned the terrible knowledge that our finest laws sometimes cannot answer our hardest cases. You could have said, “No one can see,” and acknowledged that sometimes ideals require back room deals. You could have said “This not kill,” and embraced a legalistic distinction between murder and self-defense.

But no, you had to go and throw Koba out of ape-hood. Because you wanted to feel good about yourself as a leader. Because you wanted to feel good about what leadership entails. You took all the horror of the situation and you put the responsibility for all of it onto Koba and labeled him not-ape and let him fall off a tower. You could have done it, confessed to your tribe, and moved forward as a more mature tribe, a tribe ready to become a nation with laws. But you didn’t, Caesar. You chose the path of denial and othering.

If that doesn’t come back to bite you, Caesar, then I flunked Torah and screenwriting.