“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” Review: A Worthy New Chapter in One of Cinema’s Great Franchises

​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