It strikes me that the Planet of the Apes movies, particularly the better ones, are something of an odd fit for most moviegoers. Despite the sci-fi setting, they’re often more philosophical than action-packed, questioning the relationship between intelligent species sharing a single planet. They’re also clearly big budget productions given the way that the apes themselves are often depicting. I’m thinking particularly of the Caesar-trilogy where Andy Serkis’s Caesar character was born, grew up, gained intelligence, and sought to find a peaceful place for other intelligent apes to live even as humans basically didn’t really want them to. I really enjoyed those movies, but now there’s a new installment in the franchise, following a new ape protagonist as he learns more about the world around him.
If nothing else, I was sure there would be some highly impressive apes on display.
Noa (Owen Teague) is a young chimp of the Eagle Clan, a group of reclusive chimps who practice falconry with eagles. One night, he has a blanket briefly stolen by an “echo” or human, and that somehow brings the attention of some apes armed with what look like electric staffs. These apes ransack Noa’s village, taking most of the inhabitants away. Noa’s father (Neil Sandilands) is killed during the attack, and Noa himself is left unconscious and believed dead. He isn’t, so he violates his clan’s laws to find his missing friends and family, intending to bring them home. He is soon after joined by orangutan scholar Raka (Peter Macon), an ape intent on understanding Caesar’s time and teachings, and a surprisingly intelligent echo, initially called Nova (Freya Allan).
As it is, there’s a reason why the Eagle Clan was taken away: an ambitious ape fancying himself a king and calling himself Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand) is looking to get as many apes as he can to get into a vault left over from when humans ran the planet. Proximus believes that he deserves to have whatever is in there. About all anyone can know for certain is Proximus shouldn’t be allowed to have anything like that if anyone deserves it. Noa will need to navigate differing views of what the original Caesar might have wanted in a time when, well, no one knows. Raka has some ideas, but so does Proximus, and whatever the original Caesar would have wanted, he probably wouldn’t have approved of how Proximus has reinterpreted “Apes together strong!”
What I said above is basically true: this is another philosophical sort of movie. There are some action scenes, and it is worth pointing out that it is a movie where most of the characters and probably a lot of the setting are entirely digital. The apes are still an impressive-looking bunch, and while Noa isn’t quite as compelling a protagonist as Caesar, this is a movie set far after Caesar’s death, particularly since the movie actually opens with Caesar’s funeral. Apes aren’t exactly archivists or anything, and Caesar has become more of a legend than anything else. No one quite knows what Caesar actually wanted or meant, but that doesn’t stop characters from asserting purported truths.
All that means is Noa needs to figure out for himself what is really going on. What should apes do about the surviving humans? The virus of the previous trilogy has left them all effectively silent beasts that are more inclined to hide than anything else, but that may not be the case everywhere. However, just as Noa is not quite as compelling a lead as Caesar was, the movie itself isn’t quite on the same level as the previous trilogy. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes isn’t a terrible movie by any stretch of the imagination, but I think given the choice, I would rather revisit any of the movies from the Caesar Trilogy. Kingdom is a good movie, but it is still a step down from the movies that told the story of Caesar’s life.
Grade: B-
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