The only movie franchise that can get away with having “Of the” in the title twice, returned once more this year with “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”. The previous trilogy of films (Rise/Dawn/War) effectively told a complete story over the three films documenting how the world of Man could turn into the world of Ape. That story is over and to be honest was starting to get a little boring by the end. So, to come back to the franchise means finding something new. This is the test to see if there is any more to squeeze out of this franchise. A series that already sat at a total of nine films (this now being the tenth). One more film after this will see this reboot series equal the original in number. Quite a feat for a reboot. But anyway, is it any good? Let’s find out!
Building A Kingdom
Taking the directors chair for the franchise return is Wes Ball. Wes is only really known for the Maze Runner series, which was probably more miss than hit. However, Nintendo/Sony have enough faith in him to give him the tent pole “Legend of Zelda” movie. Josh Friedman (creator of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”) provides the script. Owen Teague stars as the voice of “Noa”, and Freya Allan as lead human “Nova/Mae”. Support comes from Kevin Durand as his nemesis “Proximus”, Peter Macon as wise old Orangutan “Rakka” (A librarian of sorts, which has to be a Terry Pratchett reference) and William H. Macy as the only other human with a notable role, “Trevathan”.
The film is set an unspecified number of years after the reign of “Caesar” (the primary character of the previous trilogy) and depicts a world where humans are feral and rare and where most apes live in isolated villages with their own customs and cultures. Once such village is Noa’s which has a tradition of raising and working with Hawks. The apes here form an almost spiritual bond with the birds of prey. Noa’s village is attacked by local warlord Proximus Ceasar. Noa’s father is slain, the rest of the village are captured and Noa is left for dead. Waking up to find his home destroyed, Noa sets off to find and attempt to rescue his tribe. Along the way he teams up an Orangutan historian “Rakka” and an intelligent human they call “Nova”. She has her own reasons for finding Proxima’s base, a location that has many secrets of it’s own to reveal.
Echoes From The Past
I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. The previous two movies while relatively solid simply trod the same ground as “Rise”. That movie ultimately implied the completion of that journey and didn’t really need sequels to flesh it out. Those were movies more impressive visually than they were with their storytelling. I was hoping we would get something different here and we did. That said, the movie is very much a post apocalyptic adventure and hits many of the tropes you would expect from such a story, just with the twist of the world now being dominated by Apes. Proxima’s base could be straight out of a Mad Max movie or possibly a Fallout game. The Ape perspective though is interesting, when they find an observatory, Rakka sees murials depicting humans and concludes it was some kind of reserve that the apes homed the humans in.
One potential negative is the deliberately vague passage of time. At some points it seems like centuries have passed, but the surviving intelligent humans act like they actually remember the old world and their goals and places they inhabit don’t quite fit with it being centuries after the fall of man. This can be explained a little by humans having about twice the lifespan of most apes. So twice as many generations of ape will pass in the time of one human generation. Also while these apes can talk, they appear to not be able to read, making it more difficult to pass on information between generations. Still, there are a lot of questions that remain. Future entries may prove this to be an interesting bit of world building instead of a flaw, time will tell.
Evolution Of The Franchise
Visually the movie is a big winner. It looks great and the action scenes involving the apes are impressive. The film takes a journey through a great variety of locations and provides some action in each. Each environment looks unique and provides something new for those action scenes. That said, many of these set pieces are only unique within this movie, not the action genre in general, so there is nothing ground breaking but it is definitely entertaining. But it’s not just the action, the characters all have somewhat of an emotional journey and their own agency and goals. The movie is longer than I would like at 2 hours and 25 minutes, but it doesn’t drag. While there are elements that could have been cut, there wasn’t anything I felt needed to be left on the cutting floor.
This is a good, fun movie. Not terrible original and definitely not ground breaking (Ten movies in, no surprise). However, compared to the last trilogy it changes things up enough to not be boring. The story feels like one worth telling and while I’m not sure how much more life the franchise has in it in general, I would like to see more of this branch of the story. That said, the movies largest flaw is it is predictable and that is largely the franchise at this point. There are only so many times you can push the “Apes used to be kept in zoos” reveal. At some point this reboot series needs to break away from setting up the events of the 1968 original and answer the final question: Can humans and apes actually live in peace? This is a strong 6.5/10 and a recommendation.
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