Review of the 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes'
Is this the dullest 'Planet of the Apes' movie?
The original Planet of the Apes pentalogy, released between 1968 and 1973, is a truly fun and often giddily bonkers series of films. Everyone knows the first one, which starred Charlton Heston, was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner (the same guy who made Patton!), and had a script co-written by The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling, and that movie is indeed great. But for my money, the series really took off when screenwriter Paul Dehn joined the franchise.
Dehn, who also wrote the screen adaptations of Goldfinger, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and Murder on the Orient Express, was not involved in the first Apes, but he wrote all four of its sequels (Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and Battle for the Planet of the Apes), and was the creative team’s most consistent member other than producer Arthur P. Jacobs. Dehn didn’t have a plan for all these different movies; he kept painting himself into a corner with each sequel, and then had to devise ways out when the studio decided they wanted another one. This is basically how comic books are written, and unsurprisingly, Dehn’s sequel scripts have that same kind of pulpy sci-fi soap opera feel to them as the superhero stories of that era. Beneath introduces a secret society of nuclear missile-worshipping of subterranean telepaths and ends with the entire world blowing up; Escape involves time travel, and suggests that the whole series is a grandfather paradox; Conquest involves a slave uprising, and Battle has mutants. These movies not only consistently (if not subtly) smuggle in social issues such as bigotry, equality, nuclear war, police brutality, and the potential ills of religion; they also get weird in ways that few modern mainstream studio films would dare.
After a shamefully bad remake/reimagining from Tim Burton in 2001, the Planet of the Apes franchise was rebooted again with 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, directed by Rupert Wyatt; that was followed by Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes, both directed by Felicity co-creator Matt Reeves, and now Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, helmed by Wes Ball.
The defining characteristic of this era of the series has been not its imagination, but its mournful earnestness. It’s impossible to imagine psychics, time travel, and interspecies necking being a part of this run of films; they may follow the federally-regulated mandate that all contemporary sequels include a parade of callbacks to their predecessors, but their true inspiration is Christopher Nolan’s “realistic” Batman films, not the original, unabashedly fantastical Apes movies.
That worked out quite well when Reeves was at the helm; even if you don’t love all of his work (and I don’t), there’s no denying his talent. Not only does Reeves have a superior visual sensibility, but he imbued both the simian and human characters with dimensionality (his Apes movies have antagonists, not villains). Bolstered by Andy Serkis’ incredible performance as lead ape Caesar and Michael Giacchino’s elegiac score, Reeves’ films are about how two distinct cultures wind up at war with one another, and the tragedies that result from that conflict. They’re like Civil War with monkeys.
Alas, Wes Ball, best known for the forgettable Maze Runner trilogy, is no Matt Reeves. The best things about Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes are its special effects, which are frequently photo-realistic, and the moments it samples Giacchino’s music (Kingdom’s score was composed by John Paesano). Its characters aren’t as interesting, it’s not nearly so beautiful to look at as Reeves’ films, the action is entirely forgettable, and while it flirts with some interesting ideas about religious propaganda, it never actually works up the courage to ask those ideas for their digits. As a result, it’s mostly pretty boring; Kingdom feels three times as long as War, despite the actual difference in their running time being a mere five minutes.
Kingdom is set “many generations” after the events of War, which found homo sapiens lose their ability to vocalize while apes established their own society. Its protagonist is Noa (Owen Teague, Eileen), an ape whose clan worships and bonds with eagles. Early in the film, the clan is raided by a rival faction of apes, led by the despotic Proximus (Kevin Durand, Abigail), and while Noa gets away, most of his loved ones are captured and enslaved. He thus sets out on a quest to find and free them, enlisting two allies along the way: Raka (Peter Macon, The Orville), an orangutan monk devoted to the words of Caesar, and Mae (Freya Allan, The Witcher), a human of unusually-high intelligence. Drama and ape-on-ape violence ensue.
This plot is nearly identical to that of War, subbing out antagonist humans for antagonistic apes… but that’s the least of Kingdom’s problems. Its biggest issue is its one-dimensional characters. Remember when I noted that Reeves’ films had antagonists, not villains? Well, Kingdom has villains. Proximus isn’t doing bad things as part of an earnest attempt to keep his people safe; he’s just a power-hungry prick. In Dawn, the ape Koba (Toby Kebbell) distrusts humans because he was used as a lab rat for years; Proximus tells Noa he wants to wipe out what little is left of humanity, but the source of his beef with people is a mystery (they certainly don’t pose a threat to the apes). And while the movie tells us that he exploits Caesar’s teachings for his own gain (which is the religious propaganda part), we barely get to see any of that (and frankly, the bit we do see doesn’t make any sense - nothing Proximus says is a bastardization of Caesar’s words, and it’s not clear how those words would grant Proximus power regardless).
Even that might not be such an issue if Noa and his family were more interesting characters. Again, the movie feints towards giving Noa some juicy character elements, but lacks follow-through. We want to Caesar to find and free his family in War because we know Caesar and we know that family, but the only reason to care about Noa and his clan is that they’re the heroes of the movie. Nothing about them is actually intriguing.
Consequently, Kingdom feels extremely low-stakes. If Proximus is victorious, then a bunch of humans we’ve never met or even seen will be in danger, and Noa and his family will be forever part of this other clan. And…?
Yet Kingdom’s most disappointing aspect is the way it drops the ball on its Big Ideas. Its messaging is part of what has made Apes one of the consummate science fiction franchises; that Kingdom is so lacking in intellectually chewy concepts feels like its biggest betrayal of the series. I don’t know if Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the worst Planet of the Apes movie (it’s been a minute since I subjected myself to the Tim Burton disaster), but it’s definitely the dullest.