by Chris Bakker, Contributing Writer
The Apes franchise has an interesting trajectory. A successful and beloved original that is iconic regardless of whether it’s a classic, that turned into a series that became cheaper and less profitable over the next five years. An ill-fated remake by Tim Burton in 2001 all but buried the franchise almost 30 years after the last of the original series was released.
Despite that, it was only a decade later that Rise of the Planet of the Apes came into being. In the modern age, where movies are brands first and art second, Rupert Wyatt delivered a prequel that could have been as doomed as Tim Burton’s attempt but instead gave us the emotion and the humanity behind the concept of the franchise. The movie nodded at the earlier installments but promptly paved its own way, and gave us Caesar; a simian lead played to the hilt by performance capture legend Andy Serkis. Matt Reeves’ Dawn and War cemented the Apes prequels as modern classics and made sure they were in the conversation among the finest trilogies ever made.
We knew Disney would not let the franchise lie fallow after the FOX acquisition, but Caesar’s story was done. Matt Reeves had moved on to rehabilitate Batman. Nobody would have minded if 20th Century Studios didn’t make another one. In fact, some people would have preferred they didn’t.
But Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is here, and despite so much of the pedigree and points of connection with the Caesar trilogy being gone, it knows what it needs to do. Kingdom takes the story of Caesar that it knows is so beloved, and builds itself directly upon it.
Owen Teague plays Noa, a young ape who is part of a clan that tames and bonds with eagles to scout and hunt. Noa and his friends Soona and Anaya must brave a climb to locate eagle eggs for their coming-of-age ritual, and on their journey to collect their eggs they come across something they haven’t seen before; signs of the mysterious Echoes of the old world. Chasing an Echo to an old train tunnel, they collect proof and return home to warn their elders of the Echo’s presence. But the Echo came from somewhere, and that somewhere is the territory of an ape called Proximus who has named himself Caesar. When Proximus’ apes invade the Eagle Clan’s territory in search of this Echo, it falls to Noa to rescue his people from the clutches of this new King of the Apes.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes builds on what came before, and at its core is once again the fundamentals of human civilization. The movie tackles history becoming religion and the way old stories can change the way people think and behave based on the way those stories are told. Noa meets several characters on his journey that both inform him of what existed before and challenge his perception of what the world is like now.
Alongside that central theme, Kingdom is an adventure movie that gets its thrills out of Noa’s discoveries of the world outside of his Clan’s territory, and the conflict with Proximus Caesar, played charismatically by Kevin Durand. Through Proximus, Kingdom continues the franchise’s track record of antagonists that can be understood and whose motivations are not only clear, but reasonable. If you’ve seen the Caesar trilogy and found yourself siding with the apes over the humans, Proximus supplies more of that perspective. Opposite him is Freya Allan’s human character, referred to as Nova as another callback to the time of Caesar.
It is with Nova that the movie makes its only choice I’m not sure about just yet, but as with Rise it’s clear that this movie can stand on its own but leaves plenty of space to weave a new story of its own. This choice could potentially pay off in a big way going forward, but we can only think about the movie we have now, and personally I thought this particular element was slightly detrimental to the movie.
Visually, Kingdom is stunning, but stunning in a different way than Matt Reeves’ movies were. Wes Ball directs the movie like the adventure movie it is, as opposed to the grimy drama of the last few outings. There are instances of the CG apes moving through CG environments, where the movie is slightly weaker, but especially the scenes where it’s clear the actors are on a set look terrific. This is of course also on account of the realization of the apes, and the actors who do some very fine work in bringing them to life. Andy Serkis is no longer on screen, but it’s apparent that the actors who portray these apes take their job seriously, and the techniques behind realizing these characters have only developed to greater heights.
In short, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is not only a worthy successor to a brilliant modern trilogy, it is also potentially a building block of something that could grow to rival its predecessor.
Rating: High Side of Liked It.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is currently playing in theaters
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