Director: Wes Ball
Cast: Owen Teague, Freya Allen, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, William H. Macy
Screenplay: Josh Friedman
145 mins. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence/action.

At the tail end of 2019, I appeared on a few podcasts and put together a list of my ten favorite films of the entire decade, and War for the Planet of the Apes appeared on it. You could say I’ve been excited to return to this world and see what would happen next.

Many generations after the death of Caesar, Eagle clan ape Noa (Owen Teague, It) has been preparing to become a larger member of his community. When his home is invaded by another clan of apes who destroy their village and take his people hostage, Noa sets out on a path to rescue them. Along the way, he meets a human woman on her own journey and an orangutan who teaches the word of the great ape Caesar.

Kingdom has a lot of heavy lifting to do for the Apes franchise. The previous film was a perfect closure for Caesar’s journey, and the generations-long time jump make early in the film leaves the audience in uncharted territory. Have we gotten to the time of the original film yet? Or are we still somewhere in between? While not providing all the answers, Kingdom does assert itself as a new start for the franchise by introducing a character like Noa, a young chimpanzee on a coming-of-age journey. As Noa discovers the world around him, so do we. He’s likable and accessible and functions quite well as an audience placeholder within the narrative.

The inclusion of Raka (Peter Macon, Friendship!) catches us up to speed while introducing the central conflict and exploration of the film: the perversion of great words for terrible deeds. It’s tragic and heartbreaking to see the way that Caesar’s words are used to commit horrific acts. While the previous film’s showcased Caesar’s wanting to see “Apes Together Strong” and a united front of protecting one’s people, our new antagonist, Proximus (Kevin Durand, The Butterfly Effect) seeks more power and effectively convinces his clan that he is the Next Caesar, the next leader who will bring them safety and security through the subjugation of others. How often have people used their religious ideology to impose limits, take power, and commit violence on others in the past and present? Director Wes Ball (The Maze Runner) asks if we will continue on this path into the future. Ball circles around to the failure in understanding history, keeping a living document of truth in all its messiness, to showcase that even the apes are making the same damn mistakes that humans have made, creating strife and conflict to give the upper class more power.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is able to continues on its predecessor’s path of pushing the envelope for computer-generated imagery and motion capture performance. The movie looks absolutely astonishing, and the performance are seen through the CG. This is done through the use of real sets and locations as opposed to a big blue screen background to figure out later. Ball has spoken about his preference for getting his actors into tangible places to get the best from them, and it helps.

There are a lot of great ideas and questions being posed in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, but it does let down a series of increasingly frightening villains with Proximus. Durand puts everything into his performance, but the writing tends to undercut his character’s motivations once he’s introduced in the latter half of the film. Our characters keep hearing that he’s misusing Caesar’s legacy, but we never really dive into it when Noa arrives at Proximus’s village. The narrative shifts to more “villain being villainous” sequences instead of diving further into the film’s thesis statement.

While not as strong as the previous few installments, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a powerful new jumping-off point for the franchise that left me wanting more while evolving this consistently incredible franchise for the future. It has some solid performance and great ideas mostly executed well about the nature of mankind’s fault through the lens of the apes, and I was consistently entertained. If this is what the future of the Apes franchise is, I’m all here for it.

3.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of Rupert Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, click here.
For my review of Matt Reeves’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, click here.
For my review of Matt Reeves’s War for the Planet of the Apes, click here.