Double Feature Duel: Battle for the Planet of the Apes vs. The Weight of Water

Double Feature Duel:
Battle for the Planet of the Apes vs. The Weight of Water

Bout #18: The last in a series of movies I am almost obligated to finish vs. the best looking of the 6 DVDs at my father-in-law’s house in Texas. The other 5 have got to have been better.

Battle for the Planet of the Apes: Maybe they made this for the money, maybe they did it to wrap things up, like Lost’s final episode. I don’t know. It was 38 years ago. But the result is a movie that tries desperately to tie together 2 distinctly different versions of how the apes came to power. The first and second movies of the series seem to suggest it was a nuclear war. The third and fourth tell us it was an ape from the future that led a rebellion? Oops! This last film has the daunting task of trying to put together pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit. And they did not do as good a job as Lost did. And that’s a TV show. 3 bugs

The Weight of Water: What the hell did I just watch? Why was this movie made? It’s a fake reporter reporting on an old fake crime that nobody in the first fake part of the movie cares about either. Which is obviously how I feel about that original fake and the fake fake part. 0.5 bugs.

Title: By far, the title was the strongest part of this fake movie. It went downhill and spiraling off a cliff from there. (Point, Weight of Water 0-1)

Funnier: Ugh. I can’t remember a single laugh line from either right now. I’ll base this point on the least painful. (Point, Battle 1-1)

Better Turn: I’m still trying to figure out what the hell happened in Weight of Water. When was I supposed to start caring about anybody or anything that happened? (Point, Battle 2-1)

Better Ending: The goal of Battle was to bring things full circle back to the original of the series. The goal of Weight of Water was just to be done. (Point, Battle 3-1)

Better Message: Good grief. The takeaway from Weight of Water is that if you’re going to have a shitty movie, put a naked breast in it and come up with a decent title and maybe you can make half the money you spent on Sean Penn back. Battle tried to have the good apes and the evil mutant humans and the evil war apes who oppressed the good humans and killed one of the good apes – which is definitely wrong, but then the good apes used the evil war apes to defend themselves from the evil mutant humans, so it turns out it was good to have the evil war apes after all. I don’t even think they knew what they were doing toward the end. (Point, Weight of Water 3-2)

Better Acting: Possibly a bright spot in this otherwise lousy movie. But I guess it’s easy to act depressed when you know you’re making a shitty movie. And I always err on the side of not being in a plastic ape costume. (Point, Weight of Water 3-3)

More Creative: I guess I’ll give it to Battle, for having its back up against a wall with its mission anyway. I don’t know if it successfully put together all the pieces from the different puzzles, but it at least took its mission seriously. I guess. (Point, Battle 4-3)

Poster: Weight of Water has 5 pictures on the front cover. The big one is of Sean Penn. Two are of boats on water, one is a chick in a bikini and another is of two chicks lying naked in bed together. At least the film knows its selling points. (Point, Weight of Water 4-4)

Watch again: I can’t believe this ridiculous movie made it this far. But I guess it’s not exactly up against The Nines. Here’s hoping I never have to see Weight of Water or really either movie again. (Point, Battle 5-4)

Overall: Everyone’s a winner in the Special Olympics. Not here. Winner: Battle of the Planet of the Apes (5-4)