Film review: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes pushes story forward

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Is Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes a sequel? Well, technically yes. But also not really. It’s similar to the way humans are technically a kind of ape. It’s true, but you would never confuse us with the gorillas, unless one was wearing a lot of prosthetics and makeup. Or performing in a motion capture suit.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes follows the series’ previous instalment, 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes, by some 300 years – or “many generations,” as the opening credits of this one put it. Thus Caesar, the leader of the apes, winningly played by Andy Serkis, is long dead – though not forgotten.

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In fact, the echoes of Caesar’s philosophy have started to transform his image from a teacher into something more like a messiah. We meet Raka (voiced by Peter Macon), a gentle orangutan and the last surviving member of the order of Caesar. (In a nice callback to Caesar’s origins in 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Raka’s “church of Caesar” medallion is the same shape as the window of Caesar’s childhood home. It’s like a mini lesson in how a mere item becomes iconography.)

But this chapter opens with a chimpanzee named Noa (Owen Teague), who has never even heard of Caesar. He’s part of a band of apes who live in long-abandoned hydro towers and train eagles – the first scene is a vertiginous, verdant affair, as Noa and two companions clamber up cliffs and into trees on the hunt for eggs, which they’ll nurture and raise as companions.

Noa’s village is subsequently burned and its occupants captured by a marauding band of apes who, tellingly, also claim to follow the teachings of Caesar; how quickly religion forms, only to fracture into schemes and schisms!

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Noa survives and sets out to find his clan, which is when he runs into Raka. He also meets a feral human, played by Freya Allan. “We will name her Nova,” Raka intones. And then, to explain the callback to Linda Harrison’s stone-age hottie from the 1968 original: “We name them all Nova. I don’t know why.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes without a king. That would be Proximus Caesar, played by Kevin Durand. His Latin name roughly translates as “the next Caesar.”

Proximus puts the evil in evolution. Holed up in a rusted cargo ship from the Before Times, he’s made it his mission to find a way into an ancient human bunker that, he’s certain, will contain all he needs to cement his rule over apes and any humans still kicking around.

The latter camp includes Trevathan (William H. Macy), an opportunistic human who has thrown his lot in with Proximus for a reward I can best describe as “tenure.” Convinced that apes are destined to rule the world, he wants to be the first to welcome his simian overlords. Others, including Noa and maybe even Nova, are not so certain.

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The newest Apes movie was directed by Wes Ball, whose helming of the forgettable Maze Runner trilogy would not have suggested he’d do so well on this one, although it did give him a thorough grounding in post-apocalyptic set design. Will he also deliver unto us humans a new trilogy?

Perhaps. The studio is already talking threesome, as studios tend to do – have you seen Challengers? – and Kingdom ends on a rather blatant note of “but wait, there’s more!” Of course, the series has a history of driving itself into the ground – witness the terrible sequels to the fantastic 1968 original, not to mention two TV series – one animated, one live-action – and Tim Burton’s unnecessary, ill-advised, un-asked-for and mostly forgotten 2001 remake.

But recent history has been more kind, with Rise, Dawn and War for the Planet of the Apes each delivering powerful moments of storytelling. Kingdom is no different in that respect. Well developed motion capture and computer graphics allow for some truly fine emotional beats, even when the characters doing the emoting are pan troglodytes, a.k.a. chimps.

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There were moments where Raka’s looks of surprise, or Noa’s frustration, struck me as exceedingly human. Here’s hoping I don’t sound like a mis-ape-thropist for saying that.

There’s also action aplenty, and a great deal of ruinous after-civilization set pieces. If, like me, you get a perverse thrill from seeing what a few centuries of neglect will do to our buildings and machinery, Kingdom will deliver. But more than that, it offers a real sense of morality as played out in a topsy-turvy world. We could learn a thing or two from these apes.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes opens May 10 in cinemas.

4 stars out of 5

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