'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' Suffers from The Same Old Ideas
Have you ever walked into a movie feeling like you've seen the same film before? That's what Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes feels like. It's a valiant attempt to expand the world of the Planet of the Apes lore but it just feels too much like a been there, done that type of story. Kingdom is almost a carbon copy of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. We have our protagonist. This time, not Caesar, since the film takes place way after Caesar's passing. Our main character is Noa (Owen Teague), A young ape who doesn't have the same intrigue or development that Caesar had. To be fair, Caesar had three films to develop his character. Yet all three of the recent Planet of the Apes films were more resonant than this one. Kingdom does a decent job trying to invest us in new characters but it's not enough to keep me enticed.
The themes of Apes getting along with humans have been studied. They've been examined from the 1968 original film to the countless sequels and reboots. The outline of this film is overly familiar. Our protagonist meets a human and tries to defend the human from apes who want to kill them. A small civil war between apes starts, there's a big climactic fight in the end, and the film ends with a smooth falling point.
In Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the world is dominated by monkeys. In this film, we're in the same setting, except it's a long time later. In Dawn, Caesar meets Malcolm (Jason Clarke) and Ellie (Keri Russell). In Kingdom, Noa meets Mae (Freya Allan). Ceasar and Noa both protect the humans they get to know, which opens the doors for a monkey civil war. By the end of Dawn, Ceasar has a nail-biting one-on-one fight with the antagonist. In the climax of this film, Noa gets into a match with the film's bad guy. If there's something that's missing with this film, it's the originality of the Apes trilogy preceding Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
Each Planet of the Apes from the Caesar trilogy was different. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was all about how humanity failed in its treatment of apes. Also, in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Caesar goes from having a loving owner, Will Rodman (James Franco), to being a neglected specimen for a semi-zoo. This mistreatment doesn't go unpunished, as Caesar sparks a rebellion that changes the world. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a dystopian future where Caesar has shifted the species' dominance in the world but lives with a great amount of pain for doing it. He remembers, through Will Rodman, that humans can be good but it's too late to fix things now. In War of the Planet of the Apes, we're given a prison break film that ends with the apes winning the final remnant of the war waged on humanity.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes feels like a student cheating on their friend's homework. There's not much that outwardly seems bad about the film. If I haven't seen any other Planet of the Apes film, I may have liked this film more. The story is interesting, and the action is exciting. The CGI is not just good; it's stunning. The chimpanzees in these Apes films emote with the level of expression you'd see in a human. How they got the monkeys to talk with each other without it appearing laughable is incredible.
Kingdom has all the elements that made the recent POTA films work and yet it still feels like it's missing something. That something might be a more original script. Also, Director Matt Reeves is replaced by Wes Ball (the director of The Maze Runner films). What could possibly go wrong? Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is bloated. At close to two and a half hours, the movie gets lost in some of its unnecessary exposition. Toward the end of the film, I felt a great sense of exhaustion, a testament to the film's length and lack of originality. Tired of the mediocrity of just copying another film's script that does little to build the movie up and tired of seeing another sequel that doesn't need to be made. Caesar was where the story did and should have ended.
We don't need a part four that expands on nothing. Kingdom has an episodic feel where nothing happens that will change the face of how things are run. It's just another monkey who's the villain of the week that Noa has to take down. Redundant and unnecessary The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a greatest hits of the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes tracks.
The film contains the same lesson as all the other Apes movies: Humans are worth trusting. Despite our self-destructive nature, humans have good in them that outweighs their evils. It's a species worth preserving. Seeing how we mistreat animals with zoos and scientific experiments, it's no wonder the monkeys went ape s*** on them. How many times can a movie tell the same story until we get tired of hearing it again? Although impressive as a film on its own, as a Planet of the Apes sequel, Kingdom is in need of some new ideas.
