Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

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When it comes to establishing any sort of a timeline on these later "Apes" movies, those first three still make for a very solid stand-alone trilogy about Caesar's uprising and the birth of the Planet of the Apes, eventually connecting to the 1968 classic. 'Kingdom' takes place "many generations later," however, and is a new, stand-alone film that follows its predecessors' greatness and gives us a fourth damn near perfect movie in its series. The only other series of four I can think of to surprise me in such a way was 'Toy Story.'

I've mentioned this many times before in my 'Apes' reviews, but one of the things that makes these movies so good is that they simultaneously have you routing for the apes and the freedom of their society, while bringing in the question of being a human while this is going on, and remembering that humans have a tendency to do what it takes to survive and stay on top. This was mostly seen in 'War,' but it still plays a big role here, and unfolds nice and organically as these films tend to do.

As these generations have passed, our former hero Caesar is now a martyr-type character who could probably be closely compared to Jesus, which gives us another thing to enjoy about the film. This isn't another 'Matrix'-like situation that gives us a bunch of Jesus symbolism with its main character so much as show us how ape society has eventually grown around the Jesus figure, complete with the fact that some follow his teachings the way they were meant to be followed, while some twist his teachings into something that suits them, much like any number of religious cults in our own past.

As the apes have evolved, societies and clans have been formed, complete with their own traditions. Meanwhile, humans have become more feral, and it could be said that we've basically changed places. One such clan practices falconry, and introduces us to Noa (Owen Teague) and his friends Anaya (Travis Jeffery) and Soona (Lydia Peckham), all of whom are on a falcon egg hunt as part of their clan's coming-of-age tradition. This is all disrupted, however, by a human scavenger named Mae (Freya Allan) who breaks Noa's egg, sending him out to find a new one before morning.

This is where Noa encounters a group of mask-wearing ape raiders lead by a gorilla named Sylva (Eka Darville) who, while Noa hides, head towards Noa's village with destruction and kidnapping in mind. Noa gets back to his village too late to save his clan, however, and sets out to find them, eventually running into an orangutan named Raka (Peter Macon), who very much represents the "true" Caesar follower, still believing in some things like humans and apes coexisting in peace. They are also eventually joined by Mae, who leads them to where they need to go, but has her own agenda in mind.

Skipping ahead a bit more, they eventually find themselves under the watchful eye of an ape calling himself Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand) who has enslaved several ape clans to work under his power on opening a man-made facility from generations ago. While Proximus is after what could be a massive supply of weaponry, Mae also points out her reasons for trying to get in there - reasons that may be able to establish human communication around the world again, as, much to the apes surprise, not all humans end up being so animalistic.

Although this is still a very solid series, speaking personally, I might prefer the trilogy that came before this just a  touch more. But it is cool to see them try to expand even more on the apes' societies and traditions, and we see things getting closer to the feel of the '68 film as well. And I very much like the idea of Caesar being the figure he becomes, which holds a mirror up to our own society and how a lot of us take religious teachings and bend them to our wills. These Ape movies keep coming up with interesting ideas to keep them going, and if they continue doing more with such quality, I'm all for it!

4/5

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