It is hard to name
a movie trilogy as perfect as the Planet of the Apes prequels
starring Andy Serkis as monkey-savior Caesar, clumsy titles aside (seriously...
why on earth does Rise of come before Dawn of?).
But despite the trilogy’s conclusive ending it was always inevitable that the
mostly-lucrative Apes series would continue into a tenth entry
as long as there was money to be made, and I was just happy to learn that Kingdom
of the Planet of the Apes (maybe awkward titles are just inherent to
the series) wasn’t yet another reboot. The Serkis trilogy was always going to
be a tough act to follow, but despite the odds they pulled it off: Kingdom is
great.
Set several generations after Caesar’s story
wraps up (and no, you don’t really need to be familiar with this story, nor any
or the other previous movies in the series, to understand what’s going on in
this one), Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes focuses on a new
damn dirty ape named Noa who clashes with the titular Kingdom and learns about
those damn dirty humans who preceded them. The CGI is excellent in its
inconspicuousness, and just a few minutes in I forgot that I was watching what
was essentially a sophisticated cartoon (barring an actual human or two) and
not actual monkeys who had learned how to talk. This also speaks to the ability
of the actors, who are sometimes a bit hard to understand when they communicate
in their halting apey cadence, but as long as I was paying complete attention
to what was going on I didn’t have much of a problem.
This is partly because Kingdom has
a fairly straightforward story with a clear goal, but it isn’t the kind of
story that spells everything out for the audience either. There is some
conflict between Noa and Mae, our main human hero, that I didn’t really
understand until I thought about it afterwards, but maybe I’m just dumb and
don’t understand what might be obvious to other people. The ending in
particular was a bit confusing to me in its implications, but again, I figured
it out eventually. Honestly I prefer it that way; there’s nothing worse than a
movie that feels the need to over-explain to its audience.
Somehow Kingdom feels much
shorter than its two-and-a-half hour runtime, a fact that speaks to solid
directing and editing. The first half is a bit more interesting than the
second, but it never gets boring, nor do things ever really slow down. It’s
also a pretty film that never fails to showcase the haunting beauty of nature
retaking the land that sits beneath the infrastructure of our modern age.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes not
only meets the bar set by previous films but might also arguably raise it.
Humanity’s future may be uncertain, but for the apes it is looking pretty good.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is
now playing in theaters.
This review was first published in the Keizertimes
on May 24th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com.
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