When the latest reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise kicked off with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) it was the rarest of modern cinema treats: a new take on a classic that respected the original material while also building a bridge to contemporary audiences.
The film provided a compelling, alternative origin story to the 1968 Charlton Heston movie, which finds astronauts crash landing on a planet where apes have assumed the evolutionary apex and humans are feral mutes, domesticated as pets and slaves. Rod Serling wrote the film’s screenplay based on Pierre Boulle’s French science fiction novel, but Serling added his own famous twist ending (spoiler alert): the planet is Earth in the year 2673. In Serling’s script, civilization was destroyed by nuclear war before the apes left the jungles to claim the place for themselves. In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a viral-based Alzheimer’s disease therapy creates a global pandemic. The Simian Flu outbreak kills-off most of humanity while genetically enhancing the apes. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is one of the best science fiction movies of this century, and its sequels — Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) — have won new, loyal audiences to the ‘Apes-verse while collecting strong reviews and awards for their deep characters, sophisticated stories, technical achievements, and actor Andy Serkis’s pioneering motion-capture performances as Caesar the chimpanzee.
The new Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes begins where War’ ends, with Caesar dying after leading the apes to a safe new oasis. The film then fast forwards “many generations later” for a standalone story that takes place 300 years after the events of War. Noa (Owen Teague) is an adolescent chimp living with his ape clan in a village where his family is known for their falconry skills and his father is the “Master of Birds.” The apes live an idyllic life in a natural paradise, and sightings of humans have become so scarce that the simians refer to people as “echoes,” and reports of human encounters sound like Bigfoot stories. Noa and his teen chimp pals, Anaya (Travis Jeffrey) and Soona (Lydia Peckham), spot a human woman while they are collecting wild eagle’s eggs just in time for a coming-of-age ceremony. The woman also catches the eye of a coastal band of violent apes. Noa and the woman (Mae, played by Freya Allan) become unlikely traveling companions, each with their own agendas and loyalties.
Caesar has become a legend, and almost a deity, in the three centuries since his death. He is still revered for his leadership and character, but not every ape is up to the task of philosopher king-ing. People have been reduced to primitive non-verbal bipeds while the apes are still reckoning with the legacies of the old human world. This iteration is another movie that nails the winning tone of the best Apes films, seriously grappling with moral questions and political intrigues so that you forget all about the rubber masks in the original movies and the digital magic in these new ones.
This new film admirably adds a new chapter to the Apes saga without Serkis and his Caesar to do the heavy lifting. The last act of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes has been criticized for paralleling some of the plot points of the showdown in War for the Planet of the Apes. There are similarities, but this new film flips the script with an ape nemesis instead of a human one. It sets up intriguing, morally ambiguous tensions that’ll have viewers questioning their loyalties in ways that they might not expect from a movie about talking monkeys.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is streaming on Hulu
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.