Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes (2024)

Review: written Jul 2024

A chimp off the old block

Kingdom marks a time shift forward from Rise, Dawn and War, kicking off a new series of movies with new characters and storyline. Largely successful, this first outing certainly does enough to justify the continuing franchise, without necessarily being a standout classic by itself.

We re-enter the planet of the apes ‘many generations later’ after Ceaser and the events of the previous trilogy. There is some significant effort put into world building, introducing Noa, the young chimp living in his fathers shadow. Their peaceful village with its own culture leaning heavily into falconry, shows an evolution in the Apes, more at peace and harmony both with nature, as well as the vegetation encrusted remains of cities from a previous time. Correspondingly, humans have devolved, now mute and roaming in herds. Peaceful equilibrium does not last long however, when a group of outsider armed gorillas come and leave the village burning, and set young Noa on a quest to rescue what remains of his clan. It’s well into the movie when we do meet the protagonist Proximus Caesar, whose power hungry motives drive the latter half of the movie, with his quest to enter a long closed vault possibly containing technology from an earlier time.

The start of the movie really takes its time introducing us to this new style of Ape culture, and the various characters. I rather enjoyed this pace, not least because the level of detail in the visual effects was absorbing – an early set piece of young apes climbing a crumbling skyscraper to find falcon eggs was particularly effective. Equally though, I’ve heard as many who found the pace sluggish and yearned to crack on with the guts of the story.

As Noa’s journey progresses we meet the obligatory other Apes species – as well as the invading gorillas, we have Raka, a wise orangutan seeking to keep the words of Caesar alive, and Mae, a human whose quest overlaps that of Noa, and isn’t all she first seems. At its best, Kingdom harks back to the original Planet of the Apes in terms of the development of the world, culture, and state of interaction between man and ape. But compared to that original, this is much more an Apes movie, and less a human movie, and while there are interesting ideas on evolution of religion and the corrupting power of guns in society which the movie touches on, these multiple ideas and plot strands are ultimately not fully developed. Rather, the makers lean in favour of delivering a popcorn action movie, as well as developing the world and characters enough for subsequent movies. The fact is, it’s delivered on those two fronts, so I’m going to count this as a qualified success, even if I’d have liked to see some more of the philosophical concepts explored.

Bottom line, I was absorbed, thrilled and entertained, so I’m certainly on board for what comes next. As one of the characters says at one point “You’ve got to stop thinking about the way things were and start thinking about the way they are.”