Story: One day after Caesar, an adolescent ape will strike out on a path that will lead him to refine his notion of a distant past – and reshape the future of both apes and humans.
Review: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024), directed by Wes Ball, deposes the veneration of the character Caesar and announced that his titanic story was complete. In its place, the film forces us empathise with Noa (Owen Teague), a young chimpanzee who survives a horrific attack on his village. A quest for vengeance and meaning leads Noa down a path that tells us more about his species’ controversial relationship with humans and its ruler’s taxation without representation – the fascistic Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand). Noa is joined in his journey by Mae (Freya Allan), a human girl beholden to a plot device with unexplored gravity; Raka (Peter Macon), an orangutan whose name signifies Caesar’s lost ideals of nobility in a new age of ape dominance; and Kaya (Laura Harrier), a gorilla who doesn’t believe Proximus is as bad as she says.
The story and characters in the new instalment are not nearly as compelling as the previous trilogy but sets the stage for a potential exciting journey, for imagining a future ripe with possibilities for richer narrative. Most of the major characters are chiefly computer-generated apes, materialised with the computer-generated visual effects and motion-capture performances of skilled technicians and artists. You feel the realism in these characters’ physical ways and gestures, their facial expressions and emotions in each of the three films of the Planet of the Apes prequel. The characters wouldn’t be believable building communities that are either good or bad if it were not for the sheer genius of technical effects in computer graphics.
It’s visually impressive to see this bleak world reclaimed by nature and its subjects – the decaying skyscrapers are beautiful, and the forest scenes are all so detailed. I wish it didn’t sometimes linger on them quite as much, though: there are times when the pacing could be sharper and there’s more to be learned about its protagonists. People will emerge talking and discussing whatever ‘Endgame’ is – this movie is somewhat like that: you watch because of the early trailers. There are hints throughout about what might happen in a third and fourth film; at times, it seems less like a story than a set-up for a series of stories. But then we are left with a cliffhanger: who did the chopping, and how are they going to get home?
For all its plot weaknesses, it’s still a breezy adventure that keeps you interested. The performances, particularly from Teague and Durand, are good, and the visual effects also set new standards for the franchise. It might not be as memorable as the previous trio of films, but Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is still a worthy addition to the series, with equal parts action, drama and visual astonishment.
