Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, 2024.
Directed by Wes Ball.
Starring Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, and William H. Macy.
SYNOPSIS:
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes arrives in a digital edition that has scant extras (just a short making-of and deleted and extended scenes). The so-called “raw cut” that will be found on physical disc releases next month isn’t included here, so plan accordingly. However, the film is a fun ride and a worthy successor to the previous trilogy. It will be interesting to see where the franchise goes from here.
On one hand, does everything have to be a franchise? On the other hand, is it wrong to take a franchise and try to build it into something better? That’s how I feel about the rebooted Planet of the Apes movies. The original series was a mixed bag after the stellar first movie, with the quality steeply declining by the fifth film, and the less said about Tim Burton’s 2001 reboot, the better.
But this modern day Planet of the Apes franchise has managed to avoid any problems of diminishing returns by maintaining a consistently high level of quality through its initial trilogy and this movie, which leaps 300 years into the future.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes features a world in which the apes have established various clans that don’t always get along, while humans have become the feral, non-speaking creatures they were in the 1968 movie. (There are a bunch of nods to the first movie sprinkled throughout this one, which most fans should easily catch along the way.)
One such ape clan raises eagles as pets and hunting companions. They make their homes high in the remains of ruined cell phone towers and practice a coming-of-age test involving the capture of an eagle egg from a nest.
Noa (Owen Teague), whose father Koro leads the clan, faces his test and sets out with his friends Soona (Lydia Peckham) and Anaya (Travis Jeffery) to scale a nearby mountain. Noa is successful, but plans for his ceremony the next day come undone when apes from a rival clan attack and destroy the village.
Those rivals are led by Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), who has misinterpreted the teachings of Caesar from the first three movies. He’s ruthless and autocratic, overseeing a coastal colony that is trying to gain access to a vault created by humans when the war between apes and men happened. The vault is said to contain powerful human technology.
On his own after escaping the carnage, Noa comes across and befriends an orangutan named Raka (Peter Macon). The pair soon meet Mae, a woman who at first seems feral but later reveals she can speak and have conversations with them. She is connected to a group of humans who also want to gain access to the vault for their own reasons.
Noa and Mae end up captured by Proximus Caesar’s forces and placed in his fortress, where Noa reunites with his friends and meets the human Trevathan (William H. Macy), who teaches the tyrant about human history and is subservient to the ape’s whims.
The storyline builds toward an obvious conflict between Proximus Caesar and Noa and Mae, who don’t want him to have the technology in the vault but also have slightly competing goals for their own people, so to speak. Meanwhile, Trevathan is the fly in the ointment who just wants them to go along to get along.
The latter part of the movie faltered for me a little bit, given Proximus Caesar’s lax attitude toward keeping an eye on his new captives. In general, he sees the apes in his colony as slaves, but he also lets them freely wander around at night, which seems odd for such a powerful leader.
In the end, though, if you can get past that bit, as I did, the rest of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a satisfying ride with a conclusion that doesn’t tie up the conflicts with a neat-and-tidy bow. In particular, Mae keeps her true agenda hidden from Noa, complete with an ominous reveal at the end, which I imagine will set up a conflict in the next film.
My review copy of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was provided as a digital code that I redeemed at Movies Anywhere. If you’re looking to pick this one up on disc, you’ll need to wait until August 27.
The digital edition doesn’t feature the so-called “raw cut” that serves up the film sans the finished special effects, but it does include the making-of and deleted scenes that you’ll also find on the physical discs.
Inside the Forbidden Zone: Making Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes runs about 23 minutes and offers a pretty basic rundown of the making of the movie. One thing that popped out at me was the amount of on-location shooting director Wes Ball and his crew did; I’m sure that was helpful for the actors, since I imagine that working only in front of green and blue screens must get tedious.
You also get 32 minutes of deleted and extended scenes, some of which didn’t make it to the final special effects stage, so you only see the ape characters as their human actors wearing motion capture suits. Optional commentary with Ball is provided too. He’s interesting to listen to; too bad he didn’t record a commentary for the full film.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
