‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ Review: Owen Teague and the VFX work highlight Wes Ball’s Action-Packed Installment

There is something endearing about how the Planet of the Apes franchise has continued to defy expectations throughout its nearly sixty-year existence. From the moment audiences in 1968 saw the Statue of Liberty come on the screen and Charles Heston banging his fists into the ground, this sci-fi action franchise has kept everyone on their toes with what the filmmakers are going to do next. For instance, after the iconic original film premiered, four sequels were made over the next five years, adding to the mythology of the first entry while continuing to explore the franchise’s social, racial, and political overtones conveyed by the idea of intelligent apes being able to one day take over the planet and rendering the human race to a state of uselessness. Once the original films were complete, the franchise did what every other popular intellectual property has gone through: remakes and reboots.

Outside of a couple of fine performances and impeccably detailed make-up work, Tim Burton’s 2001 remake was a disaster of epic proportions, as it is regarded as one of the worst Hollywood blockbusters made in the last twenty-five years (this isn’t a joke, it is absolute garbage). So when the idea of a reboot came in 2011, many were rightfully left skeptical, considering the nasty taste Burton’s film left in the audience’s mouths. But over the course of the last decade, filmmakers Rupert Wyatt and (most notably) Matt Reeves assembled one of the best trilogies of the modern era, forming a perfect story arc for Caesar (Andy Serkis), the leader of the ape army and ruler of the ape colony. Caesar, in an effort to save his tribe and get them to a new salvation, ultimately loses his life at the end of War for the Planet of the Apes, leaving his followers to forge a sustainable way of life without him. Finding a way of moving on from Caesar is very much at the core of the story and purpose in making Wes Ball’s follow-up installment, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Due in large part to the film’s impressive visual effects, detailed production design, and strong performances, Ball and his team are mostly able to succeed in giving this story a proper continuation.

Set three hundred years after the death of Caesar, his safe haven for apes has branched out, with different ape civilizations living in the paradise he fought so hard to secure. The unfortunate thing is time has mostly forgotten the once great leader, as each tribe has formed councils that have weaved their own versions of the truth to satisfy their way of life. Others, like our main villain Proximus Caesar (impressively played by Abigail star Kevin Durand), have twisted the central teaching of Caesar (“Ape shall not kill ape.” “Ape together, strong.”) to fit their sinister agenda, being a self-proclaimed, power-hungry god who is a false prophet that wants to lead the apes to the next stage of their evolution for his own selfish reasons. The compassionate, reasonable leadership of the once great Caesar is gone, but as history always shows us, the next hero is always waiting in the wings, as Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the introduction to the series’ future, Noa (Owen Teague). When we first find him, he is hunting with his friends Soona (Lydia Peckham) and Anaya (Travis Jeffery) for bird eggs as part of their tribe’s initiation. In a fun action sequence between the three young apes fighting to get to the top of a cliff to grab an egg from the highest nest, it also doubles as a great chance early on in the film to witness visual effects supervisor Erik Winquist’s team’s work creating the vast beauty of the world their team built alongside the immaculate character designs of Noa and the rest of the apes we see throughout the film.

On their way back to their tribe, they feel the presence of a human in the woods and quickly chase after her, but they stop at the tunnel that leads to “the valley beyond,” an idea used in the original film for the world outside of the comforts of Noa’s tribe. Scared of going past the point of no return, they head home, and Noa confronts his father, Koro, the leader of their tribe, about getting his egg from the highest point on the cliff and seeing the human. Ignoring his son’s initial news and focusing on the latter bit of information, they send a scout out to find the human. This sets off a chain of events that will forever change our young protagonist’s life, starting with the return of the human to their camp later that night, which startles Noa and causes him to lose his egg when trying to capture the intruder. Because of this interaction, he is forced to go back into the jungle and find another egg in the middle of the night in order to secure his role in the tribe’s ceremony the next day. In going on this solo mission, he discovers their scout has been ambushed by Proximus’s soldiers, and as he tries to return home to warn his tribes, he discovers that he is too late as his home burns it to the ground, his friends and family are captured, and the soldiers kill Koro, all in the name of Caesar. In another exquisite action set piece, Noa frantically tries to save his father as their world is engulfed with fire. Credit has to be given not only again to the VFX team but also director Wes Ball for continuing in the path of the previous directors in this rebooted, modern franchise and creating striking visual action scenes that add the right amount of personal, emotional stakes to the overall story.

Much like Caesar at the beginning of War for the Planet of the Apes, Noa sets off on a mission to find the rest of his tribe. This middle section of the film is the part of the film that struggles to keep the momentum of the first act, as it feels like a video game, checkpointing our way through this visually rich world. Screenwriter Josh Friedman does the best he can to establish his new characters, remind the audience about the past history of this world, and explain it in a way that makes sense for the continuation of the story. However, its overall execution has mixed results, and these issues lie mostly in the form of Raka (Peter Macon), a wise orangutan that Noa meets on his journey, and he becomes a mentor to the kid throughout his time on screen. The idea of his character being the purest of Caesar’s teachings and a gateway for Noa to understand the history of his world being no more than a fairytale told to him throughout his life is very interesting and would add some unique questions the ape characters would have to ask themselves in terms of thinking is a betrayal of this information something that they would do or is this more along the lines of what humans would do. But instead of getting really deep into those clear fundamental questions, Raka is turned essentially into an Obi-Wan Kenobi-esque figure, leaving a lot to be desired in his character development.

As Noa and Raka make their journey, they are trailed by the human that Noa encountered in the woods. She is a young girl named Mae (Freya Allan), and she is lost without anyone else to take care of her as Proximus’s army slaughtered her loved ones. A key component to any successful Planet of the Apes film is a relationship between our main ape and human character, and Teague and Allan shine together throughout the film. If it’s in a chase scene in the middle of the second act or the entire third act once they encounter Proximus at his fortress off the shores of the California coastline, they are constantly delivering layered performances. Teague, who had massive shoes to fill as the lead of this film following the immaculate work done by Andy Serkis in the last three installments, cements himself as an actor to keep your eye on in the future, as he brings so much innocent complexity as Noa is coming into his own as a leader that he never knew he needed to be.

For having a bloated middle section, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes carries one of the best third acts within a Hollywood blockbuster from this decade. As things heat up between Noa, Mae, and Proximus, we gleefully witness the scale of Ball’s popcorn filmmaking come into play, as we find out our villain is not only collecting tribes left and right to build an ape ‘kingdom,’ but he is also trying to acquire access to a vault. One containing what he thinks are the means to – to leave his stamp on the world just way the original Caesar did before him. He’s a smart, cunning villain, being fed knowledge of the past by a human he captured (an underutilized William H. Macy) in order to understand where he can learn from those mistakes to make his version of the future perfect for all apes, and Durand commands your attention every moment he is on screen. Inside the vault also lies humanity’s last chance at survival and potential for the freedom of Noa’s tribe. Everything collides in the best action sequences of the year involving the vault and the best CGI water effects since Avatar: The Way of Water, as every moment and character close-up is so crisp and fully realized, allowing the audience to fully invest in the action as it is happening, for full suspension of belief with slight hesitation that what you are seeing might be real—movie magic at its finest.

Ball and his team pulled off the unimaginable and created a fourth installment that is as entertaining as the previous entries. While it might not dive as deep into the vastly interesting questions it presents about the franchise’s mythology, its dedicated performances and pure cinematic spectacle do enough heavy lifting to satisfy all who take the trip back to the planet of the apes.    

Grade: B

20th Century Studios will release Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes only in theaters on May 10.