Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Review: 10 Awesome Moments

2. Caesar Kills Koba

One thing we knew that Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was leading to was a climatic showdown between Caesar and Koba. At the end of the movie, as the two fight, Dreyfus detonates C4 explosives which cause the tower to begin to collapse, ultimately leading to Koba hanging perilously from a ledge. Caesar walks to the edge, pulls Koba's arm up, and Koba says to him, "Ape not kill ape", a reference to one of the apes' key commandments. However, Caesar retorts, "You are not ape", letting go of Koba, and causing him to fall to his death. Had Caesar simply blindly followed the commandment in the sort of way Batman nonsensically follows his no-kill rule, audiences the world over would have been groaning: Koba was no good, and there was absolutely no way that his nature was going to be changed, so he had to die. Making the kill all the more satisfying is that Koba doesn't simply fall to his death: he hits a steel cable on the way down and then slams into a metal structure, before finally plummeting to his doom as he screams in horror.