Greetings and Happy Mother’s Day here at Mindless Movie Reviews. I got the pleasure of going to see this with my wife (and mother of my children) at one of my favorite theaters, so it was a fun night anyway, but the icing on the cake was a delightful movie in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise. I was glad to see them continue the stories that were started in the Andy Serkis Planet of the Apes films instead of rebooting everything again. There are so many more stories they could still tell, and this one followed that path. As usual, here is your official spoiler warning if you decide to move forward and read this. If you want to wait until you’ve seen it, you can go here to see other reviews, or here for my Planet of the Apes marathon.
My choice this week was “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” by director Wes Ball (the guy that did the Maze Runner films). Ball had an ape-sized challenge in front of him trying to pick up this story without Caesar (Andy Serkis) leading the way. Like most movies in this genre, you will have vastly different opinions about how good the movie is. My personal opinion is that it leans more towards the great side. It may even eclipse the other three that came before it.
As it starts out, we quickly learn that this takes place “generations” after Caesar’s reign, no exact timeline given, but it’s definitely been a while. Throughout the film, we get references to both Caesar and the famous symbol that was the window in Caesar’s room from the first movie he was in. These are very nice Easter eggs that are fun to pick out, but doesn’t distract from the overall plot of the movie if you haven’t seen them in the previous films.
The three main characters (apes) are Noa (Owen Teague), Soona (Lydia Peckham), and Anaya (Travis Jeffery). When we meet them, they are doing some ceremonial climb to get an egg from a nest from which they will raise it as their own. When Noa’s egg gets broke, he ventures out to get a new one, but accidentally leads a group of bad apes to his home where they burn it down and capture his whole clan. From there, Noa sets out on a journey to get them back.
Along the way, he meets Raka (Peter Macon) a very old and wise orangutan who is filled with knowledge of Caesar and the past. He assists Noa not just on his journey physically, but also teaches him about the past and what is he needs to know about humans. This comes in handy as they are followed by a human named Mae (Freya Allan). Reluctantly, Noa ends up helping her and the three of them become allies as they search for Noa’s family.
Eventually, Noa and Mae are caught anyway, and Raka is seemingly killed. I seriously thought several times he was going to make an appearance and he never did. They are taken to big ape tribe that lies on the ocean where Noa is re-united with his clan. Mae is also introduced to another human named Trevathan (William H. Macy). I have to admit, I was surprised to see this. I didn’t know Macy was in this and it’s always nice when I get surprised in a movie. The ape in charge is Proximus (Kevin Durand) and he isn’t really evil, but he does rule them all with fear and makes them work. His goal is to open up a big vault door so he can get the weapons that are hidden inside.
Eventually Mae talks Noa, Soona, and Anaya into making the climb to the top, so she can get inside it first, but not before she has to kill Trevathan to stop him from getting Proximus. Once inside, she somehow knows everything about the bunker, knows exactly where to go and how to turn everything on. That part isn’t really explained, but based on the ending, you can sort of figure that out for yourself. She grabs a drive and once they open the doors, blows up the wall holding back the water, releasing it into the bunker and destroying everything inside.
As Noa and his clan climb to safety, there is one final battle at the top where Proximus is trying to throw his weight around the song to call the birds finally works for Noa as they attack Proximus and knock him off the side. Then we get a nice moment of the apes starting to rebuild their home as Mae stops by to tell Noa bye, she oddly has a gun hidden behind her back. Was she planning on shooting him? But, she doesn’t, makes her way to some base and gives them the drive. Using that, they are able to make contact to somewhere else in the world. This may play a part in a possible sequel.
So, my final thoughts are this: This is a fun movie and definitely worth seeing on the big screen. Lots of great action and not a lot of “down” time if your looking for a bathroom break. You can tell they have made some advancements with the facial technology since “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” came out as all the apes look really great. The story of the feral humans and the small group of operating humans also makes this an interesting story and I’m looking forward to a couple more of these over the next decade or so.
My score for this is right on par with the ones that came before this one and is sitting at a 7 out of 10. Maybe 7.5 since 8 seems a little too high.
Hope you enjoyed this and come back again next week when we will have some more mindless movie fun.
