Another worthy entry in the franchise that’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
I have better judgement in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise than I did with the “Jurassic Park” sequels because of how their last two entries “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” and “Dominion” have stunk out the joint, while “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” has produced two worthy sequels in the trilogy. Now, we begin a new trilogy (not reboot) with “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” which continues the legacy of Caesar, who sadly passed away in the last entry. Now, centuries have passed and there are more talking apes than there are non-speaking humans. You’d be lucky if you were able to speak again after this virus outbreak.
The apes are still adapting to sentences and acknowledging what power the humans had over them. I think we can agree that it’s more interesting than how the villains keep getting eaten in the dinosaur franchise. At this very moment, it’s true that apes are smarter than dinosaurs. Or maybe I’m overthinking things. But then again, I’m no zoologist or archeologist.
In this sequel, an evil tribe of apes have twisted Caesar’s messages about how they should continue surviving (“Apes, Strong, Together!”). Their leader is Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), the self-proclaimed Caesar, and he covets human technology to benefit their future, and he’s willing to sacrifice his apes to do so.
To clarify (or, at least, I’ll try to), there is a vault, which they constantly try and fail to open, and it could hold the very key to the concept of evolution. And whatever is keeping the apes from opening it is killing a portion of them.
Before we travel to that society, we meet a small tribe of eagle training chimps, including the main protagonist Noa (Owen Teague), his girlfriend Soona (Lydia Peckham), his friend Anaya (Travis Jeffrey), his mother Dara (Sara Wiseman), and his father Koro-the Master of the Birds (Neil Sandilands). Then, the scent of a feral girl attracts the attention of the evil ape tribe, who attack their village and kidnap a few survivors, which include Noa’s remaining family. So, he must begin a trek to save them.
Along the way, he’s accompanied by a wise orangutan named Raka (Peter Macon), who informs the young ape that the original Caesar’s message was supposed to be for good purposes, and that feral girl whom the orange ape named Nova (Freya Allen from “The Witcher” and “Gunpowder Milkshake”), who is smarter than most humans.
The most disappointing aspect of ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is when Nova meets a human historian (William H. Macy), who has to be revealed as a bad guy. And even if we predicted he was a bad guy, he doesn’t rank with David Oyelowo or Woody Harrelson, because he doesn’t have the kind of edge that they displayed.
But it’s really the ape villains we’re more intrigued with, and Proximus Caesar is an entertaining villain, because of how makes Caesar’s words into a slogan and how Durand’s performance displays what could be a sign of ape Nazism. He reminds me of how good Toby Kebbell was as Koba in “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.”
The motion-capture effects for the apes are still as captivating as the franchise intends to be, and I bet it’s probably easier on Teague or Durand than it had on Jesse Eisenberg or Riley Keough when they were disguised by make-up and prosthetics in “Sasquatch Sunset.” And Teague (who has appeared and given fine performances in artisan films like “To Leslie” and “Montana Story”) enters the genre with both a sense of awe and a sense of courage. He really delivers as the new main ape.
“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” directed by Wes Ball (the “Maze Runner” trilogy) and written by Josh Friedman (“War of the Worlds”) continues the debate on whether apes and humans can live in such a dystopian world, and they make the film damn good looking and really entertaining.
