Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Rise of the Women?: Screening Women in Science Since 2000

This guest post written by Amy C. Chambers originally appeared at The Science and Entertainment Laboratory and an edited version appears here as part of our theme week on Women Scientists. It is cross-posted with permission.

One of my major issues with the most recent addition to the Planet of the Apes franchise, Dawn of the Planets of the Apes (2014), were the roles available to women – both human and ape. In an article I wrote about the film, immediately after its release, I noted that (the very few) female characters were only “represented as child bearers and care takers.” The fabulous Judy Greer, a former dancer who studied simian movement and motion-capture for months in preparation for the role, gets barely any screen-time playing the wife of Caesar (Andy Serkis). Cornelia doesn’t actually get referred to by name so you have to look to the posters or IMDb if you want to know it; interestingly her name is a reference to Cornelius the male chimpanzee from the first three Apes films released in the late-1960s and 1970s (Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and Escape from the Planet of the Apes). The female human, Ellie (Keri Russell) is the only scientist in the film. She is revealed to have worked for the CDC as a research scientist and medic, but in the film she is only given the opportunity to use her medical skills to treat Cornelia’s post-natal complications after she births another boy for Caesar. Ellie’s medical intervention essentially diffuses male aggressiveness and reinforces lazy stereotypes. The women are background characters, barely involved, and overshadowed by their male companions.

I am interested in thinking about how women have been represented in recent Hollywood/American science-based fiction cinema and whether we have really moved beyond relying on stereotypes, sex, and spectacle. Female scientists are increasing in frequency in Hollywood, but they are not being given adequate representation – they are often secondary to their male partners. Any discussion of women in science fiction will often look to the 80s hero, engineer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien (1979). Ripley wields her guns, her attitude, and her brains with pride and power, and she blurs the boundaries between feminine and masculine character traits and stereotypes. She has no love interest, she doesn’t need rescuing, and makes better decisions than her male counterparts. She is a young, educated woman, a survivor, and a hero – her gender is not the most important or interesting thing about her. Ripley was originally conceived and scripted as a male character and some of her strength and progressive nature may be attributed to that. But despite the gender-swap history of character, Ripley is still one of the strongest female characters in a science-based movie. I think it is absurd that a character created before I was born is still considered the strongest female character in a science-based movie; it’s 2016, not 1986.

Female scientist characters are often defined by their relationships to men – as a daughter, a girlfriend, a wife, an assistant, or a colleague. Women are rarely presented as having achieved their scientific status and agency without the aid or inspiration of male character. For example, recent blockbuster Interstellar (2014) included two major female scientist characters Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) and ‘Murph’/Murphy Cooper (played as an adult by Jessica Chastain) both of whom are manipulated and inspired by their fathers. Brand is the daughter of the orchestrator of the film’s central mission, Professor Brand played by Michael Caine. But in addition to this relationship, Amelia Brand is willing to sacrifice herself, the mission, and potentially the future of humanity to be reunited with her boyfriend – Dr. Wolf Edmunds. Interstellar’s male lead ‘Coop’/Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) abandons his daughter Murph and for much of the film she is shown as a woman consumed with anger towards her father. She holds a grudge that spans decades, seemingly unable to appreciate that her father left on a mission to save humanity. Her scientific career and brilliance is apparently driven by her emotion, rather than her own ambition.

I have lots of issues with the Star Trek reboot, and it seems vaguely unfair to pick on just one of them. But let’s talk very briefly about Dr. Carol Marcus (Alice Eve), a Star Fleet Science Officer with a PhD in applied physics and a specialism in advanced weaponry who features in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). Marcus is ultimately defined by her position as the daughter of Admiral Alexander Marcus – the head of Starfleet. She initially hides her true identity by using her mother’s maiden name: Wallace. Yes, Carol does indeed do some science and saves Kirk, but in one scene this potentially brilliant female scientist is simply, and frankly unnecessarily reduced to a sexual object. It’s a short scene played for laughs, but when one of only two major female characters in a huge science fiction franchise — the other being Zoë Saldana’s Uhura, now in a relationship with Spock — is shown in her underwear (for no reason) you have to wonder about how and why filmmakers incorporate female scientists, and female characters more generally, into their films. This brief sequence feels as similarly out of place as the scene at the end of Alien when Ripley strips down to her underwear. As Xan Brooks comments in an article about Ripley as a revolutionary heroine: “It is as though the makers were so alarmed by what they had unleashed that they tried to rein her back at the last minute.” It was out of place in 1979, and it is unacceptable now.

These are just a few poor examples that caught my eye and they are based upon my own viewing, so I asked my social media hive-mind to help me with producing a list of female scientists in Hollywood films released since 2000. It was not extensive. Interestingly, I could find far more female scientists in films released during the 1990s. We will have missed some, but it should not be that difficult to come up with a list of female characters that took on prominent scientist roles in the last 5, 10, or 15 years.

Excluding Brand and Murph from Interstellar, Carol Marcus from Star Trek Into Darkness, and Ellie from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, we came up with: evolutionary biology student Karen (Brit Marling) in I Origins (2014), archaeologist and paleontologist Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) in Prometheus (2013); medical engineer Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) in Gravity (2013), geneticist Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz) in Bourne Legacy (2012), astrophysicist Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman in Thor (2011) and Thor: The Dark World (2013), veterinarian Dr. Caroline Aranha (Freida Pinto) in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), xenobotanist (studying alien plant life) Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) in Avatar (2009), genetic engineer Dr. Elsa Cast (Sarah Polley) in Splice (2009), and botanist Corazon (Michelle Yeoh) in Sunshine (2007). Of the women listed here few are, besides Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus and Ryan Stone in Gravity, their film’s central protagonist. For example, in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Caroline Aranha is a thinly drawn scientist character and love interest who assists Will Rodman (James Franco), and in Bourne Legacy, Marta Shearing is a brilliant but dangerous geneticist working in a secret lab who becomes a love interest and damsel in need of rescue for/by Aron Cross (Jeremy Renner).

In Thor (2011), Jane Foster is an astrophysicist rather than a nurse, as she appeared in Marvel’s Thor comics. She is apparently given an intellectual upgrade and a sassy non-scientist female intern named Darcy (Kat Dennings). Jane was changed from a nurse to a research scientist following discussions between science advisors provided by the Science and Entertainment Exchange and the filmmakers, who wanted to update the character for a 21st-Century audience. Portman prepared for the role by reading the biographies of women scientists and was interested in creating a female scientist that could extend beyond the clichés of what a female character could be and do.

“I got to read all of these biographies of female scientists like Rosalind Franklin who actually discovered the DNA double helix but didn’t get the credit for it, the struggles they had and the way that they thought — I was like, ‘What a great opportunity, in a very big movie that is going to be seen by a lot of people, to have a woman as a scientist.’ [Jane]’s a very serious scientist. Because in the comic she’s a nurse and now they made her an astrophysicist. Really, I know it sounds silly, but it is those little things that makes girls think it’s possible. It doesn’t give them a [role] model of ‘Oh, I just have to dress cute in movies.” – Natalie Portman

The decision to make Jane Foster an astrophysicist was motivated by a desire to incorporate references to ‘real’ science and to incorporate a female scientist who might act as inspiration for future female scientists. It is indeed great to see a major female character in a blockbuster movie franchise as a scientist. But in the presence of Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Jane just goes googly-eyed and her scientific career and research become secondary to this new love interest (who just happens to literally be a god). She accepts his framing of science as magic without questioning (as any leading scientist would) and her research seems to ultimately become about finding him after the Bifröst Bridge is destroyed at the end of the first movie. In a great scene from Thor: The Dark World (2013), Jane is on an awkward blind date that she cuts short when Darcy crashes the date with new findings and readings that had previously preceded the arrival of Thor. Jane was framed as “the woman of science” in the film’s 2010/2011 marketing campaign, but in the film itself, her scientific prowess has NO influence upon the plot. Jane’s advanced understanding of astrophysics and her research is seriously under-used and so is the character who given little chance to develop beyond being Thor’s human love interest.

For a genre that is defined by its futuristic otherworldly framework and its potential to imagine alternate societies and power relations, the cultural politics of the science fiction genre have been consistently Earthbound. Movies reflect the period in which they are created and they often present both hopes for progress as well as revealing deep-seated prejudices. Filmmakers often fail to fully realize their attempts at progress – although this can be due to a number of reasons across the production process, including interference from the studio, and in the reception of the film that is outside of the director’s control. As feminist science fiction writer and critic Joanna Russ famously noted, science fiction narratives present a type of “intergalactic suburbia,” where Western society is presented with only a few futuristic additions, tending towards showing “an idealized and simplified” past that retains traditional power relations. The world has undergone huge advances across STEM but traditional, binaristic gender relations remain in tact. Russ’s comments criticize not only gender representation but also race and class by recognizing the preservation of traditional structures in futuristic and near-future narratives.

Is it possible to change perceptions of women in STEM through better and more pervasive representation of women in science-based popular cinema? Would more female scientists in popular cinema help to encourage young women to pursue STEM careers? Several groups are working to improve the representation of science, and women of science in the film industry. For example, The Science Entertainment Exchange “is a program of the National Academy of Sciences that connects entertainment industry professionals with top scientists and engineers to create a synergy between accurate science and engaging storylines in both film and TV.” They work to create a stronger relationship between the industry and experts in order to present a more realistic image of science and scientists, both women and men, on-screen. The Scirens promote the need for increased science literacy in the general public and consider how women can be ambassadors for this cause. One of the Scirens, Taryn O’Neill, wrote an interesting piece on this subject called “Actresses for STEM“ that inspired the project; it is worth a read. They have all worked to improve representation by encouraging a movement away from clichés in order to engage and retain audiences.

A study published in 2005 by Jocelyn Steinke looked at female scientist representation between 1991 and 2001. She found that about 30% of scientists in the movies released in her survey time-frame were female and that those women tended to be sane, eschewing the “mad evil scientist” stereotype, and tended to avoid questionable scientific experiments. Although in more recent cinema, Elsa in Splice and Marta in Bourne Legacy do use science in an ethically problematic fashion, with Elsa splicing together the DNA of different animals to create new hybrids for medical use, and Marta experimenting upon and maintaining genetically altered super assassins. Despite these two recent examples, women scientists on-screen are generally positive figures. At least until you consider how restrictively they are packaged – as Eva Flicker notes in her Public Understanding of Science article “Between Brains and Breasts“:

“[The female scientist] is remarkably beautiful and, compared with her qualifications, unbelievably young. She has a model’s body – thin, athletic, perfect – is dressed provocatively and is sometimes ‘distorted’ by wearing glasses.”

An interesting example of this from recent TV is computer scientist Felicity Smoak in Arrow (2012-) – she wears glasses in the lab and removes them when she goes undercover as ‘the beautiful woman’ allowing her to slip into venues unnoticed. She’s more than just a bit of sci-candy as her abilities are integral to the mixed gender team she works with, but it is intriguing that she still falls into a visual classification that can be applied to the representation of female scientists since the 1930s. Although arguably, female scientists and highly-intelligent female characters should be allowed to be both beautiful and brainy, shifting away from the idea that beauty and brains are mutually exclusive, Hollywood is still offering a restricted image of the gifted woman. Science can be as the European Commission recently campaigned ‘a girl thing!’ – but there must be scope to communicate the notion that science is for everyone regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, age, disability, or class (Alice Bell wrote a brilliant response to the European Commission campaign).

Some major future-dystopia film franchises have shown the potential for multifaceted female characters. The Hunger Games and Divergent do provide smart female protagonists: Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Tris (Shalene Woodley). But these women are fighters and leaders, not women of STEM. Both of these franchises are based upon young adult (YA) novels and therefore do not necessarily work well as comparisons to the adult science-based narratives I have been discussing. The rules are different for YA adaptations; since the immense success of The Twilight Saga teenage girls have become a major market for Hollywood and films are made to specifically cater for this influential and profitable group. The problem seems to be adult women. The idea that women, and perhaps even some men, might want to see a film with a female lead and a cast with more than a few token women is seeming incomprehensible for contemporary Hollywood. The desire for big opening weekends and early high profits has possibly created a culture of stereotypical gender representation, and a tired narrative cinema that relies upon reboots, sequels, and reaffirming traditional structures. Rise of the women? Not really.

Amy C. Chambers is a postdoctoral researcher at Newcastle University in the UK researching the intersection of science and entertainment media. Her newest project explores the representation and the projected futures of women within scientific cultures in science fiction. She blogs about her research and interests at the Science and Entertainment Laboratory and The Unsettling Scientific Stories Project, and you can follow her on Twitter at @AmyCChambers.

Seed & Spark: The Bad Mamas of Contemporary Cinema

This is not an article that will chronicle empty mother characters. This is for all the badass mamas out there—the honest mother roles that women have nailed. Hopefully this will present a case for why we need a million more. Here’s to the female characters who have outlived the digital revolution and will continue to. Characters that live with us and remain faulted heroes. And here’s to the women who made them so electric.

Badass mom warrior Patricia Arquette in Boyhood — Badass mom warrior Patricia Arquette in *Boyhood*

This is a guest post by Mara Gasbarro Tasker.

Women have been speaking the hell up about gender in Hollywood this year and it’s been an awesome uprising to see. There has been an outpouring of voices across multiple demographics in media getting aggressive about the lack of opportunities available in all of its platforms.
What I find challenging, though, is the near constant focus on scarcity—the highlighting of women missing chances to shape film and media.

Rather than dive into the dark abyss of what feels a regression of women’s roles in the world, I decided to focus this article on what is working. On our successes. It’s much easier to model our creative designs and ourselves after things that we can see. So, if I had a beer right now, I’d pour it all out for my female homies who have trail blazed contemporary cinema. Here’s to the women who are “crushing it” in complex roles, who take every opportunity on screen to serve as their own victory of what can be done.

Last week I went to see this summer’s hot blockbuster Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Now I will fully admit that this black and white, Italian Neorealism nerd fully enjoyed the ride. Much to my surprise, the film actually had me thinking of Shakespeare and Greek tragedy because— in terms of technicalities of story and character structure— they pulled some classic tricks out of the bag and that’s always cool with me. But during the movie there was one note that kept hitting the wrong key. Can someone, anyone, please explain why Keri Russell had only a one line backstory (that she lost her child as the Simian Flu spread) but then was never touched on again in the film? She was prescribed the role of mother, lone survivor, who clings to others and is a surprisingly talented nurse on a whim. But where in the film did she represent what a woman who has lost her child in a bleak new world might actually be like? There was a human being missing in her character.

(Also brief aside, ladies we’re not really going to survive the apocalypse based on the ratio presented in the film. Because, uterus.)

Keri Russell in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes — Keri Russell in *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes* after walking into ape territory

This article is not one that will chronicle those empty characters. This is for all the badass mamas out there—the honest mother roles that women have nailed. Hopefully this will present a case for why we need a million more. Here’s to the female characters who have outlived the digital revolution and will continue to. Characters that live with us and remain faulted heroes. And here’s to the women who made them so electric.

Boyhood is, by logline and poster art, a film about a boy. But I was not alone in walking out of the theater thinking, “Patricia Arquette, you are a baller.” She is undoubtedly the silent hero of the film. From the start, she’s energetic, imperfect, driven, smart (but not genius) and loves her kids even though she wants nothing more from them than to go the hell to bed. She was a single mom who worked hard, got tired, got things moving in her life, and kept on. We’ve seen the foundations of her role a thousand times. (I will hold my comments about any Tyler Perry rendering of real life.) As the film evolved, she made mistakes; her body changed; at times she was involved with her kids and at times she was distant. What to me makes this a successful female role is that if you were to remove the rest of the cast from her, she still has an identity. Motherhood is a part of what she does in the same way that being married or single is a part of what she does. But stripped of supporting cast, she remains a real person with ambitions that grow internally and thoughts that are driven by her own needs and wants.

You see, there was always a storyline that belonged privately to her. She was the master of her own life and the force behind her children’s. When they grew, she grew too. She was very much a mother character AND an individual. It’s roles like these that are needed time and time again in the process of redefining the women we want to see on screen. She is multidimensional and therefore, truthful. (And, yes, I realize the film spans a very real 12 years in the world but even so. ) Kudos to Arquette for rocking the mom jeans like a warrior for 12 years.

Patricia Arquette in Boyhood — Mother and individual: Patricia Arquette in *Boyhood*

Definitely more overbearing but equally complex was Melissa Leo’s character in The Fighter. She was so nuanced. She got violent, volatile, and was packed with emotion. While she was unpleasant at many points in the story and her motivations were often outwardly selfish, she was honest. It was a straightforward portrayal of a mother not wanting to be outdone, even by her own children. She channels her own life through them and while this may not be a method condoned by any parenting books, she was very much alive and outspoken—faulted and capable of deep love. Again, if robbed of the other characters in the story, she was still a complete human being. There was nothing sexy added to her and yet her ferocious state of mind made her enigmatic and inescapable. (We need not bare tons of boob to get people to watch.) Her dynamic portrayal of a woman in a particular region and socioeconomic position, coupled with the hyper masculine surrounding pulls from her a wealth of complex emotions and decisions. And, let us not forget, unlikeable characters can still serve as outstanding representations of the depth of the female mind, soul, and existence. One of the elements ignored by women’s press this year is crowdpleasing. We want more opportunities. In every way. But I don’t care about crowd-pleasing characters. I go to the movies in search of truth. Give me that.

A complicated mother: Melissa Leo in The Fighter — The pistol Melissa Leo in *The Fighter*

Taking it even farther into the realm of complex is Julianne Moore in her disturbingly on point performance as Amber Waves in Boogie Nights. Apart from the fact that the movie itself is genius, much of its success is brought out by the powerful performances of its all-star cast. Moore’s character is particularly wild to follow. She has the softness and natural nurturing quality of a mother who has always wanted to be a mother. She is a soothing source of support but this, in the world of Boogie Nights, of course becomes complicated and perverted by the fact that she is also sexually drawn to the very young Mark Wahlberg. Her attraction to him, their on camera sexploits, and her simultaneous motherly qualities make her immediately full of wonder, questions, and provocations.

Adding to that, she’s an exciting hot mess. The woman likes her cocaine as she proves when doing hearty lines with Heather Graham in the bedroom one fateful afternoon. While in this heightened state, if you will, her inner life comes bubbling out and she emotionally confesses about how much she misses her son. She may be all over the place and her nose miiiiight be white at the end of it but she’s given fair treatment by the filmmaker and audience alike. She is trapped by her history, moves in certain ways because of it and, like any fully formed human being, when in a vulnerable position (or totally f***ed up), her inner demons come out into the world. She misses motherhood and longs for her child. It’s a part of her wiring and yet she continues to live outside of it. A hot mess with a real history—it’s a beautiful, vital performance. She embodies multiple elements of a woman in the world in this time and place and she won’t let you look away from it.

Hot mess of a mother: Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights — Julianne Moore before the infamous coke binge in *Boogie Nights*

Compared to the Hollywood backup female roles we usually passively sit through, not one of these roles and not one of these women has created as a silent, flat, disturbingly calm character. That is an untruthful portrayal in this spectator’s opinion. They came out screaming. Their exuberance breathed into these will written roles the fiery heat of a person with a true life, true purpose and fluid identity. These are the kinds of roles that make more room for women to prove that we thrive in the complex—that we are complex and that we want truth on screen.

Examples of female roles that kick ass exist. Women who will not let their roles become secondary exist. It’s been done since the beginnings of film. Alice Guy Blache’ didn’t take any shit and that was at the turn of the 20^th century. She directed, produced and wrote more than 700 films. She was doing it then, and women behind and in front of the camera have done it ever since. It’s our job now, in 2014, to recreate what we can accomplish based on our current industry model and find ways to make sure that truthful performances enter the marketplace. Hollywood films have always had plenty of fluff roles. But they’ve always had standouts. We are still in this position. We have model characters who broke ceilings once before in storytelling and will again. So…carry the torch and rock on.

In case you need further encouragement: Eva Khatchadourian in We Need to Talk About Kevin, Ofelia from Pan’s Labrynth, Kym from Rachel Getting Married, Nina Sayer from Black Swan. Marnie, Briony Tallis, Thelma Dickinson, Kate “Ma” Barker, Marge Gunderson, Bonnie Parker, Shoshanna Dreyfus, Nikita. Judy Barton/Madeleine Elster, Amelie, Evelyn Mulwray, Blanche Dubois, Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn, Coffy, Mia Wallace, Lisbeth Salander, Jackie Brown, The Bride, Hermione Granger, Clementine Kruczynski and Annie Hall.

Like Costner said in The Untouchables, “Let’s take the fight to them, gentlemen.” (ladies)

Mara Gasbarro Tasker is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She’s currently working as an Associate Producer at Vice Media and has co-created the Chattanooga Film Festival, launching later this spring. She holds a BFA in Film Production from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is directing a grindhouse short in April and is still mourning the end of Breaking Bad.

‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes:’ My Dear Forgotten Cornelia

‘Dawn’ lacks strong female characters. How much more interesting the story could have been if Ellie had taken the lead in negotiating with Caesar and restoring the dam! Likewise, a fighting female ape could have provided interesting contrast while either avoiding or spotlighting appearance-based tropes about violent women.

Written by Andé Morgan.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) is an artful and visually appealing summer blockbuster, and it almost makes up for Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014). Unfortunately, like that movie and almost every other recent film in its genre, Dawn has a dearth of significant female characters.

Dawn was directed by Matt Reeves and written by Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. It is the sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011).

Featuring much less James Franco (thank you, Noodly One) than Rise, Dawn stars Andy-Serkis-in-a-digital-monkey-suit as Caesar, Gary Oldman as Dreyfuss, leader of the surviving humans, and Jason Clarke as Malcolm, an utterly unmemorable white male lead. Keri Russell plays Ellie, a former CDC doctor and Malcolm’s companion.

The introductory news montage dovetails with the end of Rise. The Simian Flu, unleashed by Franco’s character, has killed almost everybody. A clutch of genetically-immune humans has outlasted the violent first 10 years of the apocalypse. Like characters in a late ’70s sitcom, they’re scraping by and doing the best they can in the bottom of a San Francisco high-rise.

In contrast the apes, led into the Muir Woods by Caesar in the previous film, have built a cellulose utopia. No cages, no electricity, no artisanal cat videos, no bullshit. Reeves and company do an excellent job of establishing a believable community, and of illustrating the depth of the inter-ape relationships. The father-son drama between Caesar and Blue Eyes is particularly well done, both in movement and in dialogue (such as it is), and was my favorite element of the film.

Malcolm and Ellie form a post-apocolyptic nuclear family with Malcolm’s son, Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Malcolm leads them and a small group of stock characters into the Muir Woods to locate and renovate a hydroelectric dam so that the survivors can power their peripherals. This quest precipitates the inevitable confrontation between the humans and the apes.

That's Ellie in the back. — That’s Ellie in the back.

Did I mention less James Franco? Also, the visual elements were excellent. Filming took place on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and Reeves and Michael Seresin (cinematographer) really sell the lush rain forests of the Pacific Northwest. The scenery works well with the CGI and motion capture techniques, and the scenes where Caesar and family hunt and fish are beautiful and seamless.

If only the humans could have been apes. I know the film was really about the apes, anyway, but it was hard to identify with the human characters enough to care about their fate. Speaking of humans and unsympathetic characters, Gary Oldman was woefully miscast as a former military special operations badass. Judging by his stilted and unenthusiastic delivery, he wasn’t sure what he doing there, either.

Also, dystopia, again. I know, the whole series is about the fruits of war and hubris, but I’m just feeling saturated. Lately, it seems like every wide release can’t wait to tell me about how humanity is so over. What’s more, the dystopia in Dawn is not dystopic enough (if it sounds like I’m complaining out of both sides of mouth, I am). It’s too shiny, and the humans are too happy and well fed. The survivors’ colony looks more like a saturday morning farmers’ market than the last remnant of humanity. Post-tribuation San Fransico actually looks more livable covered in vegetation and sans traffic.

Similarly, the ape community is shown as a bit too idyllic (at first, anyway), and initially conveyed a subtle look-at-the-happy-natives vibe.

The movie so badly wanted to be taken seriously, but the score did not help. It alternated between ineffective back ground movie muzak and hokey homage to the cheesiest riffs of the original films. The film was best in its dark moments, and it should’ve gone darker instead of relying on poorly-aged instrumentals and noble savage tropes.

As Kyle Buchanan notes, Dawn’s dystopia is similar to its contemporaries in one important way: women need not apply. Of the many female survivors depicted, only Ellie has any lines. Almost all of which constitute her comments on or validation of the acts of Malcolm and Alexander. For example, Sam Adams references a scene where Ellie marks Malcolm’s development by saying, “That was a brave thing you did.” What little we see of her trails off to nothing in the third act as Malcolm goes adventuring solo, as a man should, apparently.

The Muir Woods don’t fare any better. It’s a bit more difficult to tell, but I reckon that the only female ape shown on screen was Caesar’s spouse, Cornelia (Judy Greer). We meet her as she gives birth (it’s a boy!) in the first act. She spends almost the entire remainder of the film in the same place, suffering and shivering from an infection contracted during the birth. As a device designed to humanize Caesar and to foster a bond between the survivors and the apes, I guess she works. As a well developed, depthful character, not so much. In fact, no one even addresses her directly — you won’t even know her name unless you stay for the credits.

Maurice, a male orangutan and Caesar’s confidant, was played by female actor Karin Konoval (she also played Mrs. Peacock in the infamous X-Files episode Home). Unlike the other male apes, Maurice doesn’t seem particularly conflict-oriented. While he acknowledges that his experience as a circus ape exposed him to the bad side of humanity, he seems to understand Caesar’s sympathy for the survivors. In one of the best scenes of the film, Alexander looks up from reading a graphic novel in his tent to see an observant Maurice quietly sitting outside. He goes to Maurice, and they read together.

Dawn was sorely missing a strong female character. How much more interesting the story would have been if Ellie had taken the lead in negotiating with Caesar and getting the dam up and running! Similarly, a fighting female ape could have provided interesting contrast while either avoiding or spotlighting appearance-based tropes about violent women.

Some critics have posited that Dawn’s lack of female characters was justified due to the film’s supposed focus on “primal urges.” Primal usually means essential or original, but apparently primal means violent when we’re talking about hominids. And women, and stereotypically feminine values like empathy and non-violence, just aren’t primal. Except that they are. Indeed, even modern male apes aren’t universally violent or paternalistic. I wonder, where were the Bonobos?

Regardless, Dawn isn’t about primal urges. Instead, it is about the physical and mental frailty of humankind. Like most other contemporary blockbusters, it reflects our modern anxieties, including our feelings of helplessness and discord — feelings held by men and women alike.

Also on Bitch Flicks: Depictions of dystopias in television and film.

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about film, television, and current events. Follow them @andemorgan.