Review: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes has the unenviable task of following up Hollywood’s finest blockbuster series since The Lord of the Rings. The Caesar trilogy is a needlessly moving, unsettling, exquisite examination of humanity’s relationship with its replacement. All three movies seize on the best aspects of Franklin J. Schaffner’s masterpiece Planet of the Apes and expand on them. War for the Planet of the Apes is the greatest franchise blockbuster ever made, an argument I’ll advance another day. To follow the Caesar trilogy is like trying to follow Charlton Heston, Franklin J. Schaffner, and Rod Serling. That’s a challenge the last three Apes movies rose to, and a damn near insurmountable one for Kingdom.

To its credit (and slight detriment), Kingdom responds to this challenge by opting not to reach for the dramatic heights of its predecessors. It’s a quieter, less plot-driven affair than the previous movies, focusing instead on a series of detours through ape society and the remaining humans (intriguingly called “echoes” by the chimpanzees). That’s a welcome change of pace in a blockbuster scene as mindless as this one. Kingdom is a cut above the average Hollywood franchise movie, with a strong cast and solid directing from Wes Ball (who I am told directed something called The Maze Runner, which I will never see).

Tragically, “above average” is insufficient for a Planet of the Apes movie. Kingdom’s pacing, which could charitably be called leisurely instead of sluggish, is almost fatally poor. The movie spends its first act languishing with a tedious coming-of-age story about a chimpanzee named Noa (played admirably by Owen Teague). Noa is simply not an engaging protagonist: he reacts to lots of things, but makes few decisions and mostly serves as a viewpoint character for the audience. Given that the last Planet of the Apes film came out seven years ago, this almost makes sense. But Charlton Heston elevated a viewpoint character in the original Planet of the Apes. Andy Serkis’ Caesar didn’t have to be a viewpoint character to be immensely sympathetic. Does 2024 cinema have so little faith in audiences that it gives us a wide-eyed chimpanzee to hold our hands? Apparently, because we’ll waste an entire first act on the single least interesting character of the movie.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes instead soars when it takes the focus off Noa. As a chapter in the Apes saga, Kingdom remains in dialogue with the series’ themes of cyclical history, theocratic overreach, and the slow replacement of humanity. Set 300 years after Caesar’s death, Kingdom presents the ape world as divided by its reactions to Caesar. Noa’s clan ignores Caesar, orangutans preserve his legacy and wisdom, and an ape kingdom led by the bonobo Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand) co-opts Caesar’s name for purposes of control. The second act is the best part of the movie because it explores this in depth. This vision of a halfway point between the Caesar trilogy and the original Apes is genuinely interesting. William H. Macy plays a man who collaborates with Proximus for his own survival, the sort of thing previous Apes movies skipped over. Peter Macon has a wonderful turn as the orangutan Raka. Mae, a reincarnation of Nova, is a high point, turning the mute savage woman of Apes ‘68 into a character with interiority. There’s also a compelling riff on Beneath the Planet of the Apes which I’ll let you discover for yourself — the first exploration of a resurgence of humans these movies have done in quite some time. I’m predicting now that a doomsday bomb will show up in the next two Apes movies.

When the movie wrapped, my girlfriend Janet said that she kept thinking throughout the movie “I almost really like this.” I think that’s where I’m at. The themes and imagery of Planet of the Apes are so compelling that competent delivery with moments of inspiration is almost enough to sell it. But not quite. Kingdom has plenty to admire, but I wish it weren’t just setting up sequels. It’s a perfectly decent Hollywood movie (if one that’s low on anything actually happening), but a lousy Planet of the Apes one.