Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes (2024) – Review

Ever since Disney absorbed Twentieth Century Fox into its amorphous being, there’s been a noticable revival of a number of their franchises – Star Wars was a no brainer, of course, but aside from that, the Predator went back to its roots in Prey and we have another Alien movie on the way in the form of Romulus. However, maybe the most surprising return was the Planet Of The Apes series lurching back to life after Matt Reeves closed out a near perfect reboot trilogy in 2017 with War For The Planet Of The Apes. The simian trifecta – which was kicked off with Rupert Wyatt’s Rise and then followed up by Reeves’ Dawn – saw the life and times of Caesar, a genetically modified, intelligent ape that saw himself suddenly as a key figure during the collapse of the human race that not only gave us a three picture arc to rival The Dark Knight Trilogy, but saw Mocap performances spectacularly come of age.
Can Wes Ball make a return trip to the Planet Of Apes a worthy and necessary journey?

Many generations after the death of Caesar (around 300 years, give or take the odd fortnight), we find that the apes have spread across a lush and fertile United States into separate clans and factions who are seemingly ignorant that each other exist and the concept of Caeser himself has fallen into near-religious legend. Here we find Noa, a young chimpanzee who is a member of a peaceful tribe that has learned how to tame and train eagles to hunt for them and as he gears up for his coming of age ceremony, he heads out with childhood friends Soona and Anaya to collect eggs. However, after a chance meeting with a human – which Noa’s people call Echoes – the young ape suddenly gets drawn into an adventure when a rival clan thunders into his life and turns his life upside down. Firstly, the human catches his attention because she isn’t the feral beast that other humans have devolved into, and secondly, this rival clan of enemy apes seem to be after her, but instead take his entire tripe hostage and march them off after they burn the village to the ground.
Awaking in the ashes, Noa has to put personal losses aside in order to try and track these warrior apes in order to rescue his tribe, and so he begins an odyssey that takes him into forbidden areas and starts unraveling what he thought he knew about the history of his kind.
However, after teaming up with the human, May, and an orangutan named Raka, a sort-of wandering pilgrim who studies the teachings of Caesar, Noa eventually wanders into the kingdom of Proximus Caesar, an ape despot who is desperate to study human history in order to use technology to “evolve”. It is Proximus who is responsible for the enslavement of Noa’s village and the endless pursuit of May, but as our heroes plot to thwart his plans, can Noa actually trust a human who has lied to him from the outset?

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes has a lot to do to match up to the previous trilogy as the previous trio of releases were the rarest of things – gargantuan blockbuster franchises loaded with CGI characters and complex world building that cherished character, plot and ideas over big booms and gratuitous set pieces. While Wes Ball’s filmography suggests that helming the Maze Runner trilogy means he’s got what it takes to deliver another dystopian future, theres a certain stillness to the Apes reboot trilogy that’s tough to replicate in a time when OCD cinema goers are just waiting for the next action sequence or wise crack to kick in. With this being said, Kingdom takes a rather surprising tact by slowing things down even more and making things even quieter as it kicks of a movie that the filmmaker hope will blossom into a trilogy of it’s own. As a result, our reintroduction into this arena feels a lot like James Cameron’s Avatar as it makes the deep dive exploration of a world three hundred years on from Caesar part of the plot. While world building has always been one of the Planet Of The Ape’s strong points (yes, even Tim Burton’s godawful remake), however, with Kingdom, there’s a feeling that the franchise has somehow outdone itself.
Maybe it’s because the reboot saga is inching ever so closer to the world seen in the nightmarishly iconic 1968 original, or maybe it’s because staring at the micro expressions that flick across the faces of WETA’s astounding digital apes is as fascinating as ever, but I found myself enraptured with his universe like never before.

It’s a good thing too, because, if we’re being brutally honest, Kingdom’s biggest negative issue is that in order to set everything up for possible sequels, there’s a real sense that the movie is playing things a bit too safe and misses some of the urgency of previous trilogy opener, Rise. As a result, the long stretches of travelling and occasional side missions sometimes make you wish Noa and co. would get a little bit of a shift on to help the film get to the point quicker.
Still, the performances, despite being buried beneath mountains of pixels, are still as affecting as ever with Owen Teague’s Noa being a decent and vunerable leading ape to fill the Andy Serkis shaped void left by the absence of Caesar. Elsewhere, Peter Macon’s Raka steals scenes and Kevin Durand gives good spit-flecked, megalomania as evolution-obsessed despot, Proximus, and once again, the notion of a summer blockbuster balancing its expansive budget on notions of subverting both history and religion to hold power is impressive stuff, but so can’t help shake the feeling that bigger and more complex battles are planned for down the line.
This is is never more evident than watching the arc of Freya Allen’s May attempt to negotiate this world of armour plated gorillas and taser waving chimps with nothing more than her wits and a whole bunker full of secrets and it’s here where the immediate future of the Planet Of The Apes lies.
Yes, the Franchise Of The Apes has always been a series on movies whose foundation is based on ideas that often havn’t been afraid to full nutzoid with its concepts, but Kindgom’s attempts to try and out-meditate the previous film biblical leanings may tend to drag a bit for some.

However, the main question is this: does watching Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes make you want to see what happens next? If the answer is yes – even if its chiefly from the goodwill the franchise has built up since 2011 – then Wes Ball has done his job well. However, if the next installment could take the same amount of musing, but monkey around with the pace, the apes will have yet another trilogy to be hailed.

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