Movie Review: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

By John Corrado

When the Planet of the Apes series was revived in 2011 with the pleasantly surprising Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it led to one of the best modern blockbuster trilogies with the two Matt Reeves-directed follow-ups Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes.

This was always going to be a tough act to follow, but the latest film in the series, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, presents a solid start to this next chapter of the franchise. It doesn’t quite reach the heights of the previous trilogy, but director Wes Ball (The Maze Runner), taking over from Reeves, crafts a strong adventure movie.

The film is set several generations after the death of Caesar, who has now become a Christ-like figure. The apes have become the planet’s domination civilization, with humans having returned to being primitive creatures. The story centres around Noa (Owen Teague), a young ape living in a clan that raises eagles as companions.

One of the best aspects of Kingdom is how there’s a real sense of discovery to how the new characters explore their surroundings. The film opens with Noa and his friends Anaya (Travis Jeffrey) and Soona (Lydia Peckham) swinging through the trees and towers they have built in search of eggs. There is an early civilization feel to their village, rich with its own customs and traditions that have formed outside the influences of the rest of the world.

Noa finds wonder and danger around every corner as he learns about humans (“echoes,” as his clan calls them), and discovers the history of Caesar. The curious young ape gets swept off on an adventure when his village is attacked by Proximous Caesar (Kevin Durand), a powerful king who has perverted Caesar’s teachings to build what is essentially a cult with himself as ruler.

Noa encounters a wild human woman (Freya Allan) also fighting for survival, as well as Raka (Peter Macon), a wise and peaceful senior orangutan. The screenplay by Josh Friedman explores the different cultures that have branched off and formed following a few centuries of ape evolution, as well as the different religious factions that have have developed around what amounts to a worship of Caesar.

Despite its underpinnings as an action-adventure movie, and it delivers on that front, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes also doesn’t shy away from the more philosophical ideas of the series. While the apes have now evolved to our level, they have also taken on our most unfortunate traits of falling prey to tribalism and fundamentalism (the seeds of this were planted in the prior movies).

It’s a thematically textured blockbuster that takes its time (the film does run a little long at 145 minutes), giving us more to chew on as it builds to the well-orchestrated suspense of the grand finale. Despite this being the first of the new Apes movies not to feature Andy Serkis, the motion capture performances remain compelling. Teague’s Noa is an inquisitive, fully-formed character, while Durand’s Proximous Caesar is a threatening and imposing figure. The visual effects blending these talking animal characters with real backgrounds are seamless.

This is a different film from the saga of Rise, Dawn and War, setting things far into the future (there are remnants of human civilization beneath the overgrowth of the jungle), but having the feel of a classic frontier Western. There are also, of course, hints at what we know is to come in the original franchise that began in 1968. I’m looking forward to seeing where they take this series next, because it remains one of the best blockbuster franchises we currently have going.

Film Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)