Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Wes Ball, 2024)
If you like apes, you’ve come to the right place. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the excellent fourth entry in the Reboot series that began in 2011 with the (also terrific) Rise of The Planet of the Apes.
Quality has been key throughout the whole reboot series and I’m happy to report that, even though the franchise may never be King of the Mountain commercially it continues to justify itself in an artistic way. Which is as it should be.
As it is never explicitly specified, Kingdom (as I will now call it) takes place either several generations or hundreds of years after the events that took place in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and the conclusion of War for the Planet of the Apes (2017).
That’s fine either way, as humankind has long been reduced to living in the shadows, with apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, there’s even some mention of gibbons) being the dominant species and living the monkey version of the good life on an earth that has grown more and more to look like a proper jungle. Finally, everything has gone green again!
It is grimly ironic how, considering the state we are currently in, humanity is constantly referred to as a thing of the past, in a ‘they had their chance and blew it’ kind of way.
In this setting, there’s a new king, who goes by the name of Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand) who is suffering from delusions of grandeur and sees himself as the worthy successor of the original Caesar (Andy Serkis), who like Moses brought the apes together and led them to the promised land.
Proximus however, is a bit of a dick, as he begins to enslave other ape groups in an attempt to find human technology, which he believes will make him immortal.
Proximus makes the mistake of making an enemy out of a young ape called Noa (Owen Teague), by taking his clan prisoner, including his girlie Soona (Lydia Peckham) and his best friend Anaya (Travis Jeffery), and leading them away to an unknown destination.
Left behind by Proximus, Noa promises his dead father to find his family and bring them back. Along the way Noa meets an older orangutan called Raka (Peter Macon), who has aspirations of being a teacher - their conversations soon turn Yoda. He also makes the aquaintance of a young Echo (= feral human) called Mae (Freya Allen), who apparently smells pretty bad but still becomes a big part of his plans to thwart Proximus, even while it is pretty clear that Mae has an agenda of her own.
Written by Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds) and directed by Wes Ball (The Maze Runner), Kingdom once again uses state of the art technology to make both the Planet and the Apes come to life in the most convincing way possible.
As has been true since the very first Planet Of The Apes (1968, based on the original novel by Pierre Boulle, who himself was influenced by even older adventure stories like Gulliver’s Travels), Kingdom tackles important issues of class, race, (animal) rights and (human) nature, while this science fiction action adventure also delivers the spectacle scenes that are essential to any modern day blockbuster.
That it does so in a highly cinematic way - Ball and his cinematographer Gyula Pados - really know how to make full use of the big screen - only adds to the allure. They also know their classics, as shown by one climactic scene that echoes The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock.
I’m not always a fan of franchise filmmaking, but when it is done right, it can serve as a communal experience and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes provides just that in a time that theaters desperately need more of your butts in their precious seats.
I know movie tickets are pretty expensive these days, but for me Kingdom is up there with Dune 2 and Guardians 3 as a piece of bravura filmmaking in the disguise of a franchise picture.
To me, Disney has finally hit one out of the park with one of their 20th Century Fox-properties. My only real complaint is that at 145 minutes I felt it could have gone on for another half an hour and tell a completely rounded story. Instead, there are some late in the day twists and turns that would make Robert Zemeckis proud and set up the next movie. But that’s the nature of the sequel game.
So, if you do venture out to the cinema, try to see it in IMAX, cause the movie looks absolutely gorgeous in it.
Note: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is released in most of the world this week.