Epic Apes-centric new-world building

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/05/2024 (860 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Muscular and immersive, with some spectacular world-building, the latest Planet of the Apes outing is let down a little by some generic beats in story and character.

Since 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, we’ve had three solid, serious, even epic movies about talking apes. Now the series is moving forward again with director Wes Ball, who’s helmed the Maze Runner franchise, and a team of scripters (Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver) who are also franchise veterans, having worked on the Planet of the Apes reboots, as well as Jurassic World and Avatar: The Way of Water.

As with so many franchise films, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes feels somewhat hampered by the necessity of fitting into the extended Apes universe. There are faint foreshadowings of Charlton Heston and the “damn dirty ape” days, which is where the timeline is heading. (We see that gorillas are the soldiers and orangutans are the thinkers in this society, for instance.)

Mostly, though, this story is building on the recent Apes trilogy while also setting up its own series arc. Its ending clearly gestures towards a sequel — or two.

Set many generations after the death of Caesar, the principled primate leader of the most recent three films, this new story is deeply ape-centric.

We are introduced to a clan of forest-dwelling chimps, whose lives are set out in almost anthropological detail. Humans are only rumours and campfire tales in this peaceable place.

Our hero is Noa (Owen Teague of It), an uncertain adolescent chimp who has father issues. (Of course he has, this being Hollywood’s go-to character motivation.)

When his community is hit by a raiding party of thuggish gorillas, who kill many chimps and kidnap the rest, Noa must prove himself. Vowing to bring the captives home, he ventures into the forbidden territory known as “the Valley Beyond.”

This turns out to be a place of once-human habitation, the buildings and infrastructure now reclaimed by nature.

On his journey, Noa encounters Raka (Peter Macon from The Orville), a thoughtful, wryly funny orangutan, and the pair ends up being trailed by a feral female human (The Witcher’s Freya Allan). “We will call her Nova,” proclaims Raka, a nod to the original franchise. Nova’s “smell is potent,” according to Raka, but she seems to be smarter than the rest of her kind.

This mismatched trio ends up in the armed camp of Proximus (Canadian Kevin Durand), an ape who has proclaimed himself the New Caesar and holds creepy, fascist call-and-response rallies.

He’s obsessed with breaking into a concrete vault he believes holds the remnants of human technology. William H. Macy makes an appearance as a worn-out human courtier, forced to laugh at Proximus’s jokes and read him Roman history.

There are some good-looking action set-pieces, though some will feel maybe too familiar to Apes fans, such as a scene of gorillas on horseback hunting humans with nets.

After a long buildup, the conclusion is rushed and crowded, simultaneously tying up several subplots while setting up the next instalment.

In between, the storyline broadly examines the themes of leadership, power and the possibility of peaceful co-existence between different species. Relations between apes and those hubristic humans continue to be complicated, though as we’ve seen in the 2000s reboots, this series tends to side with the apes.

This isn’t hard when the ape characters come to life so effectively and authentically, thanks to strong vocal performances and a seamless, magic mix of live action and digital effects, mostly played out in real-world locations.

If only the script had monkeyed around a bit more with new possibilities, instead of falling into overly generic tropes.

alison.gillmor@winnipegfreepress.mb.ca