-Written by John Cajio.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a film that mostly does not suck. An overall worthy successor to the original reboot trilogy in The Planet of the Apes series, Kingdom of the Planets of the Apes does not rise to the same heights.
Taking place “many generations later” after the events of 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes, Caesar, Maurice, and Rocket are long dead. But Caesar’s specter looms large over the plot here. The apes continue to grow in intelligence, while it’s established off screen that humans have continued to go feral thanks to the simian flu virus that mutated in the events of War for the Planet of the Apes. Apes have now spread throughout what used to be California, but are not singularly united like they were in Caesar’s time. They are splintered into multiple clans. We follow young Noa (Owen Teague) and his friends Soona and Anaya (Lydia Peckham and Travis Jeffery respectively) as they embark on a coming-of-age rite of passage as members of the Eagle Clan. They encounter a young human woman (Freya Allan), which turns their world upside down.
Directed by Wes Ball, based on a script by Josh Friedman, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is well composed and well shot. It is a glorious feast for the eyes. But, crucially, there’s not a lot under the hood. The strong emotional traits that made the previous trilogy memorable are missing here. I didn’t feel the same strong bond for Noa that I felt for Caesar, and I really wanted to feel a similar bond. Noa simply does not possess the gravitas that Caesar did. Allan is underutilized in her role. Her character serves more as a means to keep the plot moving forward than actually being human. Kevin Durand’s villainous Proximus is your typical charmer that presents very nicely on the surface but brutality is always near at hand. He lacks the sympathy that Koba in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes garnered or even what Colonel McCullough managed to cobble together in War for the Planet of the Apes. There’s simply nothing complex about him.
Raka (Peter Macon), the emotionally intelligent orangutan character that Noa encounters towards the end of the first act, is the only character I developed a real attachment to, as the last surviving member of The Order of Caesar, a monastic-like order of apes devoted to spreading the truth of Caesar’s teachings, which Proximus has hijacked and twisted to serve his own nefarious needs.
It’s clear that Ball and Friedman used Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes to set up a sequel (or a new trilogy more likely), which ultimately hinders the film further. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was not made exclusively as a vehicle to prepare us for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, but the writers and director of that film cleverly planted seeds that could have been used in a potential sequel, without taking away from the present story. If the reboot started and ended with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it would have been perfectly fine: all critical plot points had been cleanly resolved by the end, with no actual need for a sequel (but the seeds were there). Certain plot points here in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes are clearly setting up a potential sequel, and will not be resolved unless, and until, we get a sequel. In fact, the first words spoken by my friend after we left the theater was his joke title for the obvious sequel.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a drop dead gorgeous film with beautiful cinematography, but it does not possess nearly the depth of its predecessors. The longest film in the reboot (145 minutes) is clearly only halfway finished due to the need for a sequel. But it is still, in the end, a solidly enjoyable film, albeit with a few fairly significant issues.
Directed by Wes Ball.
Written by Josh Friedman.
Starring Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Peter Macon, Kevin Durand, Lydia Peckham, Travis Jeffery, etc.
6/10 = WATCH IT FOR FREE
