Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes - A Worthy Enough Addition to the Apes Legacy
Following the events of Caesar’s reign as the ruler of the ape colony, a young ape named Noa (played by Owen Teague) goes on a quest to free his people from being captured by a cult like leader (played by Kevin Durand) and as he continues this journey, he begins to discovers things that will not only will challenge and question what’s the best for the apes, but also the relationship with the human kind.
Now the Planet of the Apes franchises have come and gone since 1968 (which at the time of writing this, I have only seen the 1968 film the recent Caesar trilogy, and this. I will plan to watch the other ones soon) and throughout the many films, the central conflict between the apes and the humans have always taken center stage and become the most interesting idea that keeps the audience’s attention. The 2010 decade has found the franchise at arguably it’s highest point thanks an incredible trilogy of films consisting of Rise, Dawn, and War shifting the focus less on the human side and more on the brilliant character journey of Caesar (played spectacularly by Andy Serkis) and ended up become not only some of the most boldest and most brilliant blockbusters to come out in the last decade, but also a trilogy of films that can be considered as one of the best film trilogies we’ve gotten. So making a new Planet of the Apes film following up the insane high standards of the pervious trilogy was a difficult task to accomplish. But director Wes Ball, screenwriter Josh Friedman and the entire cast and crew of this film were willing to take that risk and the end result is an Apes that while doesn’t reach the same highs as the Caesar trilogy, is still a solid blockbuster that’s worthy to be apart of the Apes legacy.
I think the film’s biggest strength for this film is building on the foundation set by the pervious trilogy and knowledges it, while also trying to be a story that can stand on its own. It allows for the film to not simply ignoring the pervious films that so many people (including myself) adore, but recognize the importance of the trilogy and allows for this film to use it as a way to explore new themes and ideas about legacy, blind worship, the importance of proper teaching, and how we should define the world we live in. The way it those explore those ideas that are very solid and gives the world the apes lives feel more grounded and connect to our own reflections of the legacy of those who came before and how does it define the world we live in now. Sure some of those ideas I would love to see be explored in a little deeper sense (especially when it connects back to the human part of the film), but the layout for the the story and the themes it wants to explore is really solid.
There’s no doubt that the filmmaking presented in Kingdom is simply top notch across the board. From the VFX work that makes the apes feel alive based on their texture, movements, and overall design that makes things easier to connect with, to the different locations that felt like they were alive and lived in (plus shooting a good amount of it on location helps a lot), to the beautiful cinematography by Gyula Pados that gives so much dynamic movement and color choices that allows for nearly every moment to sink in and draws us deeper to the characters and the world they’re inhabiting in, to Wes Ball’s overall directing that efficient and tense in ways that keeps the audience’s attention in a solid enough way. Which is really impressive for a blockbuster that is costed an estimation between $160–165 million to make to use all of it’s resources are utilized in their fullest potential and gets the audience emerged everything they see and make them believe they’re in a world that goes than just watching a big budgeted SNL skit like a lot of blockbusters today are.
This mentality is also translated to its story and characters. The story isn’t exactly the strongest story being told, but sort of what I was referring to earlier, it does a solid enough job to build on the foundation set by the pervious trilogy and tells a story about an Ape world after Caesar and how does it affect the ape culture as a whole like in they way they start talking more human like, and how they made a place for themselves. and the way its being told keeps you interested thanks to the characters attached to it and how they response to the events that occurred during the film. Much like with the pervious trilogy, the most interesting characters are the Apes themselves. I liked Noa and the journey he goes throughout this film from being a member of the new Ape colony to being someone more important that will challenges his place in it and Owen Teague does a good job convey the needed emotional depth and nuance needed for his character with the motion capture performance he provided, especially when we’ll most likely follow his character in potentially future films in this new era of Ape films.
However, the best character in this film is Raka, played by Peter Macon. He’s a orangutan who understands the true teachings of Caesar and what he stood for in the Ape colony, and I love much of his character. From the performance from Peter Macon, to the cool design of his character, to way he brings so much life and energy to the world of this film not just in terms of how his character’s beliefs constrats the ideas of the other characters in this film, but also provides a nice sense of humor and warmness that is a bummer that he’s not in this film as much the marketing makes you believes he is. But regardless, he was truly the mvp of the whole film and really left a big impact on me afterwards. The whole cast in general (both the apes and human characters) all turned in really good performances and they do a good job on conveying the needed emotions to make their individual characters as interesting as they needed to be.
That being said, there are some elements in this that didn’t completely worked for me. My biggest problem with Kingdom is the pacing. Despite having a 2 hour and 25 min run time, the pacing just goes all over the place that it’s hard to keep a consistent pace to let everything on screen to leave an impact on the viewer watching it. Because it often would have stretches of time where pretty slow (tho still engaging) and can drag at times, but it will also have moments where goes fast and we’re rushing to the next big action set piece without allowing to let things settled and get completely emerged with what the film wants to say and how the characters react to it in an meaningful way.
This issue is nowhere more prominent than within the film’s main villain, Proximus Caesar. Despite a really fun performance from Kevin Durand and loving the general idea for his character (that being that he’s cult leader of Caesar and misunderstanding his ideas and covering other apes in that same belief), I never really felt like he had a real affective presence throughout the film. Partly because we don’t get to see him and the remote island he has placed with the apes building his empire until more than half way through the film, and when we do get to know him as character and the island at large, he isn’t given enough time to make him a treating villain because once he’s introduced, we’re rushing to get out of the island without the proper time to feel any form of dread and desperation to get out of his island and why we should feel any threatting presence from him. I think if the film had established him early on and have more of an interesting/personal dynamic with our protagonist Noa, then it would add a lot more compelling drama and would make Proximus more interesting of a villain. But as it is, he’s not that compelling of a villain for me, despite being great on paper.
Another issue I had with the film is as much I really like a lot of the ideas the film had set up and wanted to covey, I feel like it didn’t go quite as deep with those ideas as much it wanted to and didn’t have enough time to explore other ideas it wanted to say, and most of that comes within the human characters, particularly with Nova the main human character in this film. Now Nova is an interesting character, because she is one of the few humans in her tribe where she is more functional both in terms of capability and overall knowledge, and the best part of her character is when is she communicates that without any dialogue attached to it. But once the dialogue comes into play, it makes some of the mysterious vibe within her gets lost, and despite a decent performance from Freya Allan, I couldn’t really get all that attached with her character and many of the choices she makes throughout it. Especially with how the film ultimately concludes (without going into spoilers obviously) and how its ending makes me worried that we would forget some of the more compelling ideas this film established in favor for walking into familiar ground that we have seen the other Apes films tackle before. But we’ll see once they continue this series (considering they have plans to do 9 FILMS in this new Apes series) and what direction they will take with it.
So overall, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a enjoyable film that is worthy to be apart of the Planet of the Apes canon. Yeah the film does have its drawbacks from making it great due to its pacing and script problems and it isn’t on the same level of quality as the Casear trilogy (especially with the two entries directed by Matt Reeves), it still does a very good job on carry out that legacy while also doing enough to make it stand on its own two feet thanks to it’s great filmmaking, solid characters, a beautiful sense of scope and scale, amazing VFX, and the new perspective it adds to the series as a whole. I will be very curious to see what direction the series goes from here, because if they keep up with the level of quality of good films these last 4 Apes films had, then we’ll be in good hands and hopefully it will make more people consider Planet of the Apes as one of the best film series we ever gotten.