We are centuries in the future of Wes Ball’s “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”, but we could also be centuries in the past for all the ways the world we spend the film in seems like a kind of Dark Ages. The new film, the fourth instalment in the rebooted “Planet of the Apes” franchise, follows the mythology set up directly from the ending of the 2017 “War for the Planet of the Apes”. In that film, we left a dying Caesar after his painful and successful journey leading his tribe of enhanced apes to a promised land away from their increasingly malevolent human enemies. It was the beginning of a new world for the apes, and the ending of an old one, that saw intelligent apes developing as the Simian Flu rendered humans mute. Now, centuries later, these enhanced apes have developed diverse clans – many of whom do not know who Caesar is. And our entry point is one such tribe.
This is one of the sharpest choices of this new film written by Josh Friedman and directed by Ball. A brief prologue establishes a religious undertone to the film’s relationship with Caesar, but for much of the first hour of the film (which runs for 145 minutes) Caesar is an incidental figure. Instead, we have a greener protagonist – Noa, a chimpanzee from a falconry-practising clan whose coming-of-age becomes the fulcrum that this formally precise, emotionally earnest, and altogether winning blockbuster is built on.
The technical precision on display in “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” has only grown more engaging and astonishing since the last entry in the franchise. In the first scene after the prologue, we watch three friends on the brink of their coming-of-age scavenging for the eagle eggs that will be somehow central to their coming-of-age ceremony. In some moments, it is easy to forget that the emotions in those early scenes – excitement at finding an egg, dismay at the loss of one, building tension as they succeed in retrieval – are all rendered through computer-generated visual effects. The trio move with the familiarity of friends, with the childishness of those too young to be adults but with the maturity of those who are clearly no longer children. It’s a dynamic that will be critical as the film goes on.
Noa, later revealed to be the son of the falcon clan’s leader, is immediately the most dynamic. Some of this is in the way the camera knows to frame his movements, or in the technology that tracks an ambitious capturing of an eagle egg. But it’s primarily in the way the motion-capture retains so much of the spirit of Owen Teague who voices him. Teague established himself as one of the promising actors of his generation after his thrilling work in the sibling-drama “Montana Story” in 2021, and his work here is the newest in a long-line of argument that represents the value of considering motion-capture acting on par with usual live-action performance. Teague threads an emotional heft to Noa’s journey that makes the slow, but engaging, set-up of the stakes here so effective.
Despite Caesar’s legacy of “apes together”, this new world is not one of community and a menacing bonobo Monarch (Kevin Durand as Proximus Caesar) soon descends on the peaceful falcon clan causing destruction and leaving a now-fatherless Noa with a character motivation as familiar as storytelling. The story’s complications begin in earnest when an injured Noa sets out to find where Proximus has taken the rest of his clan and to gain revenge for his father’s murder. He soon encounters two people that will change his life: Raka (Peter Macon) a wise orangutan who gives him a crash course in the importance of Caesar and a seemingly mute human (Freya Allen) whose presence will reveal an important goal of the menacing Proximus Caesar.
With only three instalments of the “The Maze Runner” under his belt, Ball’s work in “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” reveals a filmmaker with an impressive eye for visual detail and an impressive ability to recall classical storytelling. Every movement forward of the film reflects a graceful and thoughtful sedateness that feels meaningfully engaged with the emotional acuity of these characters and the world they live in. William H Macy, who appears as a human figure late in the film, is the closest thing to a star on screen with every other major character but the two human figures being apes. It leaves all the work on the story and its structure to stoke our empathy and it’s a task that the film accomplishes winningly.
Ball keenly has his eye on how this story works within the larger framework of the entire franchise which has reverberated with the query of whether intelligent apes and intelligent humans can ever live peacefully. The thrilling last few minutes, for example, promise a wealth of complications to the singular story that offer many potential offshoots for where this story could go. But, there’s a special specific thrill to the way that “Kingdom of the Planet of the Planet Apes” saves its strongest – in theme, in action, and in emotion – to the building of Noa as an ape who must come of age for himself, his family, and his legacy. Even removed from the exigencies of its franchise framing, it’s emotionally lucid work that left me touched and moved for the way every character in this world feels like a figure considered with thought and tenderness.
By the climax of the film, which hinges on a community remembering the things that kept it alive for so long “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”, despite its cumbersome title, assures the audience that this not a perfunctory entry in extending an IP but a story rooted in the best qualities of storytelling. Noa may not be human, but every baleful glance, every frustrated scream, and every agonised tear are part of a character whose heroic attempts are meaningful and profound. And it’s the kind of character work that establishes this as one of the year’s best studio films.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is playing in cinemas
