3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

2024, Wes Ball (The Maze Runner) -- cinema

I am only now, almost a week later, realizing I don't have much to say about this movie beyond, "It was alright." I am not invested in these monkey movies, like Kent is. I guess my post about the previous one was eaten by That Year, but if i am honest, I barely recall it. All I remember is that it was supposed to bring the Caesar story to a close. But we still haven't reached a stage in this version of the franchise where an astronaut shows up confused as to why apes are riding horses and shooting guns, so at least one more series was required?

But a romp with Kent is more than a good excuse to see a movie in the cinema.

In watching the movie, it was an entirely enjoyable affair. It looks spectacular. The overgrown ruins of the city are entirely my po-ap jam. But if I think about the reaction I had past the moment, it all falls apart for me. It ends up striking me as a movie by assignment, lacking any true motivation beyond purple suits saying, "We have to kick off a new series in the franchise -- here are some notes on what to include. Go write a script and find a director able to handle 99% CG."

The movie picks up "generations later" -- as Kent pointed out, ape generations are probably shorter lived than human generations, so in theory even young humans could remember a world with technology and where they ruled? That doesn't really matter, as the movie is willing to dance all along the possible timeline to retain the rule of cool.

Anywayz, years later, we have an chimp community focused on the raising of eagles. Noa (Owen Teague, The Stand), Soona (Lydia Peckham, Cowboy Bebop) and Anaya (Travis Jeffrey, Before Dawn) are three coming-of-age chimps who climb the vine covered ruins to attain eggs, to bring back to Noa's father, the master of eagles. Insert the challenges of living up to an important father's expectations. But an "echo" is following them, a human from the forbidden valley beyond, and she cracks Noa's egg. He has no choice but to head back to the ruins for another egg, but as he travels he comes across outsider apes, riding horses, baring electrical weapons. They are hunting the human Noa bumped into. He rushes back to his village, finds it in flames, his people taken captive. He is unable to save anyone and his father dies.

Noa's Hero Journey is to find and free his people. Along the way he connects with Raka (Peter Macon, The Orville), a monk-like Orang who preaches the legacy of Caesar, in that apes together are stronger, and ape shall not kill ape. He is a compassionate ape and possibly the best depiction via motion capture and voice acting -- so naturally he is killed off. But not before they find out that the human they were pursuing / being pursued by is May (Freya Allen, The Witcher), an intelligent, speaking human (remember, the virus that uplifted the apes, also stole away human voices and other aspects of higher thinking) who despite her stinky, scruffy nature wears well tailored, nicely fitted, manufactured clothing.

Noa's village was captured by Proximus (Caesar) (Kevin Durand, The Strain) a ruthless leader who feels a need to bring all other ape communities into his Kingdom, by force if necessary. He also needs to get into the sealed military bunker, where we know there must be tanks, and guns, and much much worse. May is actually there to get into it as well, but for .... something else. Noa and May both know that Proximus cannot attain the weapons within or their entire worlds will change. So, she goes from being scruffy, hunted girl to resourceful action girl in the blink of an eye. With the help of Noa and his friends, they break into the vault, get what she wants, open the doors and flood the place and defeat a very angry Proximus.

Are we supposed to root for the humans? For May and her people who trying to Get Back On Top? And for apes, as long as they are peaceful and have no worries about the humans scrambling to get back ownership of the planet? May is duplicitous, she manipulates Noa to get what she came for, and is ready to shoot him down, should she need to. If anything, at least its a complicated character in a not very complicated movie.

I told Kent I felt like this was an episode, a required entry to setup other movies, which I assume they also want to be bigger in scope, more bombastic, more violent, more confrontational. And again, I have to say that despite all my misgivings as I write this, I did enjoy watching the movie and in some ways, isn't that the whole point?