Director Matt Reeves found both critical and commercial success on his two entries into the Planet of the Apes anthology, but he’s moved onto a different mammal to tell his stories with, one that flies and fights crime, so now Director Wes Ball is swinging into action. Ball’s previous works include The Maze Runner films, a franchise based on a series of YA novels, and while there is some of the depth found in the the previous Apes trilogy here, too much of it feels oddly similar to the simple trappings of the source material that Ball cut his teeth on.

‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ opens as many a traditional Hero’s Journey would. Noa (Owen Teague) is the son of the his clan’s leader, and he and his friends Soona (Lydia Peckham) and Anaya (Travis Jeffery) are out collecting eagle eggs to participate in their village’s bonding ceremony. Occasionally when I play a video game especially, a medium that uses the Hero’s Journey often, I roll my eyes when “A very special boy has to climb his villages holy mountain on a very special day, only to have calamity strike and his world upended before he can fully become the man he is supposed to be.” I don’t want to belabor the point, but if you’re familiar with The Hero’s Journey you’ll be able to see where Kingdom is headed.

Actually many of it’s beats reminded me so much of the video game ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ that I wound’t be surprised if much of the inspiration was borrowed from that game. But yes, Noa’s village is attacked by a neighboring tribe and he is left to fend for himself, he stumbles across a wise orangutan (also sorry I have not mentioned all of these characters are chimpanzees but I hope you are familiar enough with the concept that I haven’t totally lost you). The wise orangutan Raka (Peter Macon) explains that the tribe that attacked Noa’s village are an evil one, lead by an ape named Proximus Caeser, that twist the words the original Caeser to do horrible things, and that the actual Caeser was a wonderful giving ape that wanted apes to work together in peace, and to work and live peacefully with humans. Caeser is of course, the protagonist of the previous trilogy for those who have not dipped into the 7th, 8th, and 9th films in the Ape-a-verse.

This thread that the film occasionally pulls on is when it’s operating at it’s best. The heart of the modern Apes franchise is steeped in philosophy and the building of moral codes. Here we have a totalitarian that has twisted the franchise’s figurehead’s words into something they are not. Raka knows that Proximus is a false leader, but religious fervor can cut both ways. Distortion of facts is something we’re all too familiar with in our own worlds, let alone a distortion of the facts in a dystopia that is unable to check the facts themselves.

Unfortunately it’s not long after this discussion that the film returns to it’s unwavering dedication to the form. During Noa’s travels he has been followed by something that has been leeching off his packs, a human that Raka names Nova (Freya Allen). Humans by this point have become mute, existing largely as pack animals, barely above boars in terms of intelligence. But Nova seems smarter than average and Raka, a firm believer in Caeser, insists that they care for her. The three set out together to rescue Noa’s tribe from the clutches of Proximus Caeser.

The world that was once there has been largely forgotten. The apes have taken over and so far only Raka has been the only literate one of them. So when it’s later revealed that there are some characters that remember things like Fort Wayne, Indiana or Kurt Vonnegut it does feel incredibly out of place. Even if these new characters lived in a completely different world shouldn’t their culture be totally shifted as well? The film doesn’t take a hard stance on when or where it takes place only that it happens “Many generations” after the original Caeser died. I know it seems like a weird nit to pick in a movie about talking apes taking over the world, but it did make it seem very disparate in terms of the rules being set.

One factor the film gets right though is the tension between Nova and Noa. The human and the ape never really come to fully trust one another. It’s tense and nervous and largely through facial cues you can tell that they don’t know where they stand. This is another thing borrowed from the franchise, while Caeser wanted to believe in peace, he was discerning enough to know not to believe everything the humans would have of him. And Nova treats the new apex species very similarly. APEx! Get it????

While I wouldn’t want to blow up the spot of every step the journey takes, it’s safe to say it ends exactly as author Joseph Campbell would’ve wanted it to. After rescuing his tribe, Noa and his friends and family return to rebuild, to reshape, and not only has Noa learned more about the world and himself, he is a little changed, a little improved. And he’ll be ready for the next journey, seeing as how after earning 337 billion dollar worldwide as of today, there will be more to come.

3/5