Movie Review: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) directed by Wes Ball

A peaceful group of chimpanzees live raising eagles on the fringes of ape society. Their idyllic life is disrupted by two things: the presence of humans (who are called "echoes" by the chimps) and an attack by gorillas. The gorillas are part of a larger clan trying to unite apes under the memory of Caesar, the main ape from the previous movies. Caesar is long dead and the gorillas have altered Caesar's message to their own ends. Their attack leaves most of the chimps in captivity except for Noa (voiced by Owen Teague), son of the clan leader and a bit of a failure in the eyes of many from the clan, though not his parents. He promises his father to bring the clan back home. Noa is being followed by Nova (Freya Allan), a female human who is more intelligent than other humans. They travel with Raka (voiced by Peter Macon), an orangutang who has a much more accurate history of Caesar. Their journey to the gorilla's home base is one of discovery about their world and themselves.

The plot is reasonably interesting but the storytelling is quite often drawn out. A lot of scenes go on too long and don't seem as important to the narrative as they should be. The whole culture of the eagle-raising chimpanzees is shown, much more than is needed and not very interesting for the viewers. Nova's character is implausible from the beginning, through the middle, and until the very end. She should have an air of mystery but nothing is done for her character before the last scenes. And the more you think about it after the movie, the less plausible her actions are. Noa is a cliched character at the start, the bumbling young boy with ambition to live up to his dad's expectations. He is smart enough to grow through the film and comes off more as a person than any other character. The cast overall isn't bad, it's just the material they have is not enough, even with the extended down-time between action sequences. The movie needs some tightening up in the editing and a bit more work on the characters.

Mildly recommended for Planet of the Apes fans, not for anyone else.

Movie Review: War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) co-written and directed by Matt Reeves

Caesar (CGI Andy Serkis) and his group of apes tries to hold out in a California forest but they are perpetually hunted by humans. After two harrowing attacks, the second of which resulted in the deaths of Caesar's wife and eldest son, the apes decide to flee to a seeming paradise across a desert. Well, everyone but Caesar decides to go. He wants to take revenge on the Colonel (Woody Harrelson), the leader of the local humans who took a personal hand in killing Caesar's family. Three of the apes decide to go with him to make sure he returns alive to the tribe. Caesar has a difficult journey, both literally and figuratively, ahead of him.

I found the story engrossing and the plot developments interesting. The Colonel is a tough-as-nails villain with just barely enough humanity to make him understandable but certainly not sympathetic. He is superficially modeled after Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, a film that is referenced in other ways as well. Almost the entirety of the rest of humanity is unsympathetic and one-dimensional, the one exception being a young, mute girl adopted by the apes on their journey. Caesar and the apes, by contrast, are fully-rounded characters who form the heart and soul of the movie, dealing with issues in a human way. The characterizations are biased, which is especially interesting as the movie grapples with the worthiness of humanity's continued existence. The ultimate answer is consistent with the story and unsatisfying for me.

The movie is interesting but bleak, which I suppose is a core component of the Planet of the Apes franchise. This movie is particularly bleak.

Movie Review: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) directed by Matt Reeves

A decade after the events of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the ape-ocalypse is in full swing. The apes have built a primitive community in the hills outside of San Francisco, where they hunt and gather and speak in sign language. They haven't seen any humans for two years but that changes quickly. Two friends go fishing. As they are walking back they run into a single human male who panics and shoots one of the apes. More humans show up and try to ease the situation. The gunshot is heard by the apes, too, and a bunch of them show up and start shouting "GO!" at the humans. The humans leave but they can't stay away. They are running out of fossil fuels in what's left of San Francisco and want to repair a hydroelectric dam that is near the apes' home. Malcolm, leader of the humans, begins a tense and precarious negotiation with Caesar, leader of the apes. The humans back in Frisco want power at almost any cost (and they do have a lot of weapons); the apes in their community want nothing to do with humans. Can we all get along or will there be all out war?

The movie is very tense and exciting, filled with action and complicated themes and ideas. The apes have a law that no ape kill another ape, which of course gets broken during the course of the movie more than once to great effect. Member of both the ape and the human communities look on the others as lesser beings and as fair game. The leaders work for a more nuanced approach to the others, hoping to preserve peace and well-being for everyone involved. The moral and political tension is just as high as the action tension. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a thoughtful and exciting sequel well worth watching.

Movie Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) directed by Rupert Wyatt

 

MPAA rating

PG-13 for intense and frightening sequences of action and violence

ZPAA rating

Too intense for the under 12 crowd for sure!

Gore level

2 out of 10--while there's lots of mayhem and violence, there's relatively little gore--some blood splatters here and there, occasional bloody wounds, including one finger that's bitten off (you can sort of barely see the bloody stump).

Other offensive content

Minimal bad language, animal cruelty (mostly on the animals, but some by the animals on other animals), corporate amorality; lots of violence; one discreet bit of kissing.

How much zombie mythology/content

No zombies here, just crazy apes.

How much fun

The movie provides some laughs with references to the classic Planet of the Apes movies and other natural bits of humor.

Synopsis & Review

After the disappointing Tim Burton version of Planet of the Apes, my expectations were pretty low for the franchise going anywhere interesting. Along came Rise of the Planet of the Apes two years ago and I couldn't have cared less. Reviews seemed to run fairly positive though mostly they were the "it's a lot better than I expected" variety. I'm not sure that really means a movie is any good. So I passed it by until I saw it this year on Blu-Ray.

The story follows Dr. Will Rodman (James Franco), a scientist working on a miracle drug that will restore and improve brain function. His motive is revealed fairly early--his father has Alzheimer's Disease and is rapidly deteriorating. Rodman's drug is tested on chimpanzees and seems to be working well. He's about to present his star chimp, Bright Eyes, to the company's board of directors to convince them to approve human trials. Her handlers have problems; she breaks free; she tries to escape. The chase through the building is exciting and ends when she crashes through a wall monitor onto the board table and is shot by security. As you might guess, the drug is not approved for human trials. The CEO orders all the trial monkeys to be put down, including the post-mortem-born son of Bright Eyes. Dr. Rodman can't bring himself to kill the baby chimp. He takes the chimp home and raises him in secret while he restarts his drug research.

This all happens in the first five or ten minutes of the film. The movie keeps up the brisk pace as the chimp (named "Caesar" by the Shakespeare-loving father) grows stronger and smarter, eventually coming into conflict with the human world which gave him his incredible abilities. As with many science fiction films, some bits of it seem a little too improbable (like the crash through the monitor onto the board room table or the number of simians living in San Francisco) but the movie moves so fast and delivers its images so well that I found it easy to go along for the ride.

On the other hand, the movie sympathizes almost exclusively with the apes. Caesar is definitely the star and the hero. He is smart but misunderstood; loyal but over-protective; loved but under-appreciated. He and the other apes are abused and downtrodden, so their rising up against their captors makes them look more like freedom fighters than a menace to us humans. Caesar is unwilling to kill humans deliberately and stops a group of apes from beating a person to death. He has more compassion than most of the humans have for the monkeys or for each other.

It will be interesting to see if future films continue this trend, seeing the apes as the good guys and the humans as bad guys. The theme of apes being better off without humans has run through all the movies, as has a cynical attitude toward humans and their behavior. It was never quite this cynical before.

Movie Trailer