REVIEW:
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is surprisingly good. In fact, it happens to be one of the best movies in the reboot of the Apes series, which start with Caesar and Rise of the Planet of the Apes over a decade ago. Maybe that’s because all of those movies were good, (well, except for War of the Planet of the Apes with Woody Harrelson,) but none were especially great. Rise was probably the best of the bunch with James Franco and John Lithgow telling the human side of how this all got started, not to mention the great Brian Cox as a villain.
But this new movie, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is way better than expected. First of all, the effects are just off the charts. I suppose they always have been in this series going back to Andy Serkis’ motion capture work. But they seem better now than ever, as the technology has only gotten better. The opening sequence of our protagonist, Noa, trying to catch some food and nearly falling off a cliff in order to do it, is especially fantastic.
But what really makes this movie work is the story and the characters. Unlike some of the Avatar movies, with this movie you can really get into these characters and differentiate between them. You can actually keep track of them without mixing them up. Credit that to how different each one is. For example, there are multiple villains, and each one more or less dominates half of the movie. In the first half, the villain that we come to meet is Sylva, as he leads attacks on our heroes over and over again. In the second half, we meet Sylva’s boss, Proxima Caesar and arrive at his compound.
Regarding the story, the situation these characters are in keeps changing. They go on a journey and travel from one place to another, and the constant change of location goes a long way to making this movie always feel fresh. But then there’s also the way this story handles Caesar from the original series (the reboot series.) It would have been so easy for this movie to go the lazy route and make the story about Caesar’s kids. After all, the kids were even established in the last movie. But this film does something smarter. It makes the story about Caesar’s legacy. About his message. The film is set in a time where nobody who is alive today actually knew Caesar. Instead, they know of his teachings, and often have disagreements about how to interpret them. That’s a very interesting idea and it definitely works here. This is either the best or the second best movie in the series, and instead of just accepting that there is a built in fan base for these, and giving us the usual, they push the ideas and find a way to give us something creative. Job well done.