Film review: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (12A) ****

The Planet of the Apes films prove their durability once again with this latest instalment, a refreshingly thoughtful blockbuster that serves as its own entry point into the ongoing sci-fi saga. That’s no mean feat. Picking up the story “generations” after the events of the excellent prequel trilogy that was released between 2010 and 2017, it’s the sort of film that could easily have tied itself in knots trying to connect the dots between those films and the events depicted in the 1968 original. Instead it takes a light-touch approach to the saga’s mythology: if you know the movies intimately there are little homages to both cycles of films; if you don’t, the brief prologue that recaps the salient details of the previous three is all the backstory you need to get sucked into this latest adventure.

That backstory reminds us there was once a super-smart simian saviour called Caesar who led an ape uprising in the wake of a man-made virus that rapidly accelerated the intelligence of primates while leaving the dwindling human population mostly mute. In the intervening centuries, Caesar (who was played by Andy Serkis; this is the first of the newer films not to feature him) has taken on mythic proportions. Like a certain other messiah, his teachings have been wilfully misinterpreted and exploited, in this case by a crazed, power-hungry, quasi-fascist pretender to his throne called Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), whose gorilla goons roam the countryside enslaving peaceful apes to do his bidding.

Left to right: Raka (played by Peter Macon), Noa (played by Owen Teague), and Freya Allan as Nova in Kingdom of the Planet of the ApesPIC: 20th Century Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Picking up on the franchise’s thematically evergreen ability to hold a mirror up to the times, director Wes Ball (the Maze Runner franchise) uses this one to explore ideas about zealotry, hubris and technology, but also the ways in which individualism and mistrust can make doing the right thing a more complicated proposition. The film’s hero is a young chimpanzee called Noa (played by Owen Teague) who sets out to rescue the surviving members of his tribe after their Edenic existence is destroyed by Proximus Caesar’s soldiers. Teaming up with a wise orangutan called Raka (Peter Macon — delightful), they form an uneasy alliance with Mae (Freya Allen), a young human whose motives for following them Noa can’t quite fathom as they embark on a journey through a ruined yet lush world of verdant skyscrapers, overgrown airports and underground bunkers – the remnants of late 20th century/early 21st century human endeavour now the Roman ruins of the future.

It’s a wonderfully evocative film in this way and Ball doesn’t fall into the trap of overloading it with relentless action sequences. Nodding to old-school westerns, it features some spectacular set-pieces, but like its predecessors it uses cutting-edge effects to enhance the relatability of the ape characters, not ratchet up the explosion count.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is in cinemas now.