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

6. Caesar "Dies"

While the humans are celebrating the return of their power, an angry Koba has hatched a plan to become the leader of the apes himself, after Caesar previously beat him in front of many of the other apes. Caesar covertly returns to the ape settlement after murdering the two humans and stealing one of their guns, sets fire to the ape home and fires a bullet into Caesar's chest, causing him to fall from the trees and presumably to his death. With Caesar being the only one to see who fired the round (while Koba blames the humans), Koba is free to stand as the leader of the apes. Even though our better instincts told us that Caesar wasn't really dead (after all, we didn't see his "corpse" for a long, long time and there was no grand, operatic final moment), the moment still proved to be extremely jolting because it was so sudden and wasn't hugely built up. The shocking nature of it really made us think that Caesar's days might actually be numbered, even if he wasn't necessarily dead at that moment.