“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” Review: A Worthy New Chapter in One of Cinema’s Great Franchises5/9/2024 The Friendly Film Fan Breaks Down the New Film from director Wes Ball. Franchise storytelling is difficult, to say the least. How many film franchises can moviegoers name off the top of their heads which have not only continued well past their original iterations into entirely new eras of cinema but have continued to evolve, innovate, and offer new and exciting ways of telling the same story? And how many of those have the same longevity of something like the James Bond films without having to reset or alter their continuities every few entries? It’s a rare feat to begin with – X-Men, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, and even Lord of the Rings to some degree have all failed to net a consistent-enough batting average across all of their films to be considered among the great franchises beyond their legacy contributions to cinema itself – but this accomplishment is rarer still when the sci-fi genre is involved. Alien, Terminator, Predator – in the history of sci-fi filmmaking, not one of these has scraped by without multiple true duds embedded in their being…but that story changes with Planet of the Apes.
With one notable exception (the failed 2001 Tim Burton remake), the Planet of the Apes franchise has perhaps the most consistent batting average in not only sci-fi filmmaking, but all of franchise filmmaking. Even with entries that work less than its best ones, or don’t work very well at all, there is at least offered some sort of innovative spin on the material these movies choose to tackle. The 1968 original – a sci-fi classic – has its twist ending, the third film switches up the environments, and the most recent trilogy takes viewers all the way back to the beginning of when the apes’ intelligence came into being with the original Caesar. It is that most recent trilogy, in fact, which made me a fan of this franchise, becoming not only some of my personal favorite films, but what I consider to be one of the greatest and most undervalued film trilogies ever made, thanks largely to the talents of those VFX teams and the director of the latter two films, Matt Reeves. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which is directed by former Maze Runner trilogy helmer Wes Ball and sports an entirely new cast of characters, sets its story some generations after the events of Caesar’s time. Noa, a young ape living in a small woodland village and this movie’s primary protagonist, seeks to impress his eagle master father by raising and training his own bird from birth. Right away, the audience is endeared to Noa and his friends on a difficult climb which they all make in order to collect eagle eggs for what is known as Bonding Day. Complications arise, however, when another tribe of apes which Noa does not know attacks his village and kidnaps his clan under the belief that they shelter a human. With no choice left to make, Noa sets out to rescue his clan, encountering two companions – an Orangutan called Raka and a human woman – along the way. What sets Kingdom apart from the preceding Apes trilogy, apart from the large-scale time jump, is the scale at which the filmmaking takes place. It may not boast the specificity of image-making that Matt Reeves’ films did, but it offers grandiosity in return, and that grandiosity is a wonder to look at on a big screen. Large vistas of woods, great mountains, enormous rusted tanker ships…even the runtime is the longest in the entirety of the franchise. That can sometimes lead to pacing issues, or an act three that’s a tad overwrought in its execution, but on the whole, this may be the most spectacle-driven Apes film to date, and it more than earns its place amongst the most beautiful-looking of them all, especially in regard to the visual effects, which stay remain the most impressive thing to see even within some already impressive set-pieces. The apes themselves have rarely looked better than this, and under Wes Ball’s steady direction, the performances aid that look admirably. The film also makes a brilliant choice not to ignore the events of the previous trilogy, but to instead mythologize them, echoing notes of what the original series does with its “law giver” character in making Caesar into a quasi-religious symbol whose words different tribes of apes twist to fit their own meaning, something Raka – the Orangutan – addresses upon first meeting Noa. As characters go, Raka (Peter Macon) is the most fun and Mae (which we learn is the human woman’s name, played by Freya Allen) is a more complicated character than one might give her credit for at first, but the real standouts are Owen Teague as Noa and Kevin Durand as Proximus. The latter of the two unfortunately doesn’t really come into play until the third act of the film, but when he does, Durand is the imposing presence the story needs in order to keep things interesting during what ends up being the most ill-paced part of the whole thing. He commands every room he’s in with a performance practically born for this sort of part and knows just how to carry himself so that he overtakes the film’s scenery without outright chewing it up. In contrast, Owen Teague’s Noa is a more emotionally-driven character, and Teague is well up to the task of carrying a film like this on his capable ape shoulders. It’s from Teague’s performance that the emotional notes of the film – when Wes Ball chooses to employ them – get their power, and it’s from his eyes and facial expressions that the viewer understands his character. There are a lot of close-ups and medium close-ups on him in which he’s made to hold the camera’s gaze, and he plays it all beautifully. The film does struggle – as noted – with pacing in a few spots, which seems to come from the idea that the film follows both of the distinct tones present in the preceding trilogy, rather than committing to one or the other; the first half of this film is closer to Rise in narrative flow, whereas the second half sits closer to what Dawn and War (especially the former) were going for in their earlier moments. This is most prominent in the third act, which feels as though the script had two different third acts in mind and simply smashed them together in lieu of throwing one of them out. The way that Mae’s journey plays out during this third act is also written quite broadly but without the necessary clarity of character that comes with having to paint with such large brush strokes. Freya Allen is executing on this admirably, but there’s only so much she can do with what’s not on the page. Still, these are relatively minor complaints compared to what the film offers on the positive end, and I certainly wouldn’t begrudge a filmmaker having to follow up one of cinema’s great trilogies a few lackluster elements here and there. In the end, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes may not carry the same gravity as its immediate predecessors, but given that very few films ever could, the fact that it’s still this good is a win for movie fans everywhere, and especially for fans of this franchise. It looks great, the performances are all very good, the scale is beautiful, and just being in this world again is sure to be enough to remind viewers why they fell in love with it in the first place. It’s clearly setting up for a further series of adventures with Noa and the rest of these characters, and if they can manage the same miracle as Caesar’s trilogy – a tall ask, but entirely possible – we’re in for something really, truly special. I’m giving “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” a 7.8/10 - The Friendly Film Fan
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The Friendly Film Fan Breaks Down the Latest from Disney and Pixar. There was a moment, back in the 2000s and towards the middle of the 2010s, that it seemed no animation studio could ever top the sheer ingenuity of Pixar. Films like Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wall-E, Inside Out, and Coco have become not simply some of the best offerings of the studio’s catalogue, but in the history of animated filmmaking (and let’s not forget the brilliantly tragic prologue to Up). Even more recent efforts like Soul have come close to joining those ranks. And then, of course, there’s the franchise by which Pixar came into being – the Toy Story quadrilogy. Not simply some of the greatest animated films ever made, but some of the most essential in forwarding the medium towards its greatest heights, both in storytelling and in aesthetic glory. One needs only to see the vast leap from the o.g. Pixar debut – the first-ever fully CGI animated film – to its (potentially) final offering in Toy Story 4 to observe just how far forward animation has come since 1995. Its animation is near photoreal, its storytelling much deeper and more philosophical than anything one might expect from a movie largely led by a cowboy doll and a talking spork. So why is it that Lightyear, a Pixar-made sci-fi adventure featuring one of the Toy Story series protagonists on an intergalactic mission through uncharted space and time, feels so…plain?
Billed as the movie Andy is watching in the early minutes of the original Toy Story, and the one upon which the Buzz Lightyear toy he receives in that film is based, Lightyear moves along a decent clip with the occasional fun action sequence, some fun side characters, and lots of quippy dialogue for about an hour and a half as its protagonist pushes the limits of space travel, encounters alien robots, and learns that he can’t finish his ultimate mission alone. If the film accomplishes any goal almost perfectly, it’s that it does seem like it would have been a child’s favorite movie in the mid-90s. However, by Pixar standards, the movie finds itself somewhere between “average” and “decent.” That’s not to say it’s bad – though it certainly could be better – but whether audiences have been conditioned to settle for “solid” filmmaking from what used to be the leading studio in animated innovation because of their past output is a question worth asking. There’s no moment in Lightyear where the audience or the characters in it are truly challenged, or even asked to sit with an emotional beat for more than about thirty seconds, tops. In its lowest moments, the film almost immediately skips to whatever the next joke or plot revelation is meant to be, often seeming as if it’s afraid the audience will get bored if it doesn’t keep moving at any cost, including the cost of poignancy or genuine distress. It never slows down or sits with anything whenever things go wrong, apart from maybe twice in the entire runtime. Multiple plot points of the movie almost feels as if they were supposed to be longer, but had to be rushed through in order to keep the film under two hours. It feels as if the runtime mandated the story being told, rather than the other way around. That method of storytelling also extends to the film’s ultimate message, which essentially boils down to “don’t be afraid to ask for help/don’t be stubborn and do your mission alone,” but the movie never really hammers that home until after the climax of the film has come and gone – a climax which raises way more questions than a movie like this has the ability to answer – the actual execution of which seems to be pointing towards an entirely different message about clinging to the past that the film has spent almost no time building toward. Although this other message does give the film’s protagonist a place to go arc-wise, it’s so brief that it never really registers until after the credits have rolled, and even then, it seems as though Disney itself refuses to learn that lesson. There’s something to be learned, but no real challenges to be overcome in learning it that can’t be resolved with a blaster. As Buzz (voiced by Chris Evans in this iteration) moves through his own story, the film never actually challenges him in a meaningful way apart from physical difficulties; at one point, he forgets to inform his ragtag team that [redacted], and it ends up that he has to fix his mistake via another small action sequence. This largely extends to the other characters as well – all true challenges are physical, all emotional battles are clipped by more jokes (most of which don’t land). If anything, the one thing Pixar hasn’t lost is its ability to churn out fun animal side characters like Sox, a robot cat given to Buzz to ease his emotional state after his off-planet escapades rocket him through an extensive time jump. No doubt this will boost toy sales significantly, so the corporate benefits of the character are abundantly clear from the get-go, but nevertheless, when Sox is on screen, he’s always the most watchable part of the movie. Visually, the film looks very good, but there’s not much that it’s doing differently than most other animated films. Compared to recent efforts like DreamWorks’ surprisingly charming adaptation of The Bad Guys, the animation itself feels fairly plain – at least by Pixar standards, and especially after Soul’s breathtaking lighting. That said, what’s there works well enough for most audiences, and you most likely won’t hear many complaints like mine about whether it looks interesting or just pretty good. There’s not as much space action past the first act as one might desire from a film about a space ranger, but what’s there is at least engaging to look at, if only because there’s just so much visual noise squeezed into nearly every frame. In the end, Lightyear gets the job done, but doesn’t put up a lot of effort in getting there. As a sci-fi adventure, it’s solid enough, and kids are unlikely to get bored by it, but for anyone wanting something deeper from Pixar, it’s unlikely they’ll find anything above your run-of-the-mill, average studio animation. There’s little innovation here, but it works on the terms it sets for itself, and it does have a few moments that both kids and adults can latch onto, as well a pretty good lesson for kids to learn (however muddled the teaching of that lesson may be). I suppose the most important question one must ask themselves in the face of something like that coming from Pixar is this: is that enough? I’m giving “Lightyear” a 6.5/10. - The Friendly Film Fan |
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