“What a Wonderful Day!” as the main antagonist Proximo Cesar once put it in this latest installment in the Planet of the Apes franchise. “Planet of the Apes” has been an extremely long running franchise since the first film’s release in 1968, based on the best selling novel of the same name by Pierre Boulle. In that first film audiences would get their first glimpse into another world similar to our own except humans have been replaced by Apes. The original film would lead to a Box Office success and an abysmal sequel that I just wish I could nuke out of existence. But after the original sequel to the original film would fail in the box office, Fox still wanted to keep the franchise going however they would greatly decrease their budgets for the next three “Ape” sequels until twenty years later where Tim Burton would reboot the franchise. Only for that to fail and audiences would have to wait another ten years to revisit the “Planet of the Apes.” In 2011, Rise of the Planet of the Apes served as a soft reboot of the original series and would provide the franchise with a ton of success and usher in one of the greatest trilogies in Cinema with “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” and “War for the Planet of the Apes” coming out in years after “Rises” release.    

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” takes place roughly two hundred years after the events of “War for the Planet of the Apes.” Where human civilization is now gone, leaving nothing but human monuments now claimed by nature. The film follows Noa. A young Chimpanzee that lives peacefully with his tribe of Apes until a group of outsider Apes invade Noa’s village and capture all of his friends and family. Now with nothing left Noa must find his tribe and bring them home. The first act of this film is very well paced with a lot of thought and effort being put into the world building and the overall character development of Noa. However this nice pacing and character work is quickly thrown aside at the very start of the second act, where the rest of the film just tries to copy the “War for the Planet of the Apes” storyline. Leading to this film probably being the most polarizing film for me in the entire Planet of the Apes franchise. 

As I’m sure all of you have already guessed by now but I am a huge “Planet of the Apes” fan. Ever since my uncle showed me “War for the Planet of the Apes” for the first time I’ve been obsessed with this franchise ever since. With me probably going as far as saying that “Planet of the Apes” is my favorite Franchise in all of Cinema. So you could imagine my excitement when I first heard about this movie two years ago.  But like I said earlier I have a lot of mixed feelings about this movie. While I appreciate the scale and world building, to me this movie has a Philosophical misunderstanding on the original meaning of “Planet of the Apes.” The idea that humans and Apes can live together is really beaten over your head in this movie, and while I do admit that is indeed a part of the franchise’s philosophy this film completely undoes that by illustrating that fully cognitive smart humans are still around. Actress Freya Allen plays the main human character “May”. A human who has been forced to go on the run after her family was murdered by Proximos Apes. Fair enough motivation for her to be kinda the bad guy and not like Apes for whatever reason the film seems extremely hard pressed to get the audience to think that we should sympathize with her. Even though she’s clearly the bad guy. And I also don’t understand how there are still fully cognitive humans running around. Because the whole point of this virus is that it spreads like wildfire and at the end of “War” I think it’s safe to bet that all humans should now be infected after 200 years. I kinda can’t help but feel the writers were like “Let’s just do Fallout. Fallout’s popular ya let’s just do Fallout.” And now it seems like the next few movies are going to be this huge Ape vs Human war, even though we already had an entire trilogy that was already dedicated to that idea! 

Like I said earlier the main antagonist of the film Proximo is extremely well written and acted. To the point where he almost becomes the best character.  But he is horribly underused in this movie and the funny thing is that I actually agree with him more than half the other characters and that Apes should be able to just expand. An Ape that is inspired by Human Roman history is a really cool idea but I swear he has like seven minutes of screentime. But probably the standout character to me is unsurprisingly the religious Orangutan Raka. Raka is the perfect mentor character for Noa, with his awesome design and overall personality he really does shine as the best character. Cesar was the first Ape that led to the Apes becoming smarter. And because of this he’s essentially this religious figure to all Apes. This has been an established part of the lore even all the way back to 1968.  And with Raka now essentially being this religious Ape priest just makes him stand out even more. 

“Planet of the Apes” was built off of this philosophical question: “What would the world look like if Apes were to become the dominant species and humanity was nothing more than primitive animals?” This question was asked by Pierre Boulle after analyzing Charles Darwin’s theory of human evolution, where it is believed that humans were originally derived from Apes before they would start to transform into humans. Boulle would run with this idea and began to form another question. “If this were to happen, then how would the Apes be better than Humans?” “Kingdom” somewhat addresses these question but ultimately fails to shed any real answers except that humans are self destructive and Apes are better. In “Dawn for the Planet of the Apes” this question is explored very well with the character of Koba and how he is an Ape whose Hatred of Humans is only greater than his love for his fellow Apes. “Ape shall not kill Ape!” Which is a law that is unfortunately broken continuously throughout history. 

Anyway sorry for getting side tracked, back to the movie. But the reason why I bring all of these factors up is because these are principles that this franchise was established by. “Kingdom” has a ton of heart and passion put into it but it fails to uphold the standards that this franchise has established. The CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) is very good, although some parts would be a little too choppy. But the setting is intriguing enough to help audiences get more familiar with the movie’s setting. Owen Teague is a very promising young actor and I look forward to seeing him in more things. With that “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” gets three and a half potatoes.