“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is the fourth movie in the newest “Planet of the Apes” saga. Taking place 300 years after “War for the Planet of the Apes” the movie is able to tell a new story without being tied down to previous characters. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” does not competely distance itself from orginal trilogy with the centeral theme of the plot hinging on Caesar‘s leagacy. The movie overall is good, but it does not hold up to the others that came before it.
To start on a positive note, the acting and motion capture is still phenominal. Each actor really helps bring these CGI apes to life, and without such strong preformances you lose a lot of the potental story. Kevin Durand and Peter Macon are two standouts for me. Durand, who plays Proximus Caesar is an amazing and powerful villian who’s amazing speaches keeps you craving more of him. On the other hand Macon plays Raka a reserved, yet cunning orangutan who really drives Noa (the main character) to go down the path he does.
The sound design, and cinematography also land on the postive side. The cinematography in particular is stunning. The way that the movie is able to frame all these different moments, big and small is increadable. Going back to Proximus, the way that the camera is always able to frame him as bigger than himself, and as just such a powerful being is beautiful. Then near the end of the movie the way that the movie changes up on him to frame him as little as he is deafeted is evan better. Moving to the sound design, the way that each little sound is used to help tell the story makes you so much more engaged. When Mae is hiding in tall grass and you can hear each blade moving as the apes close in on her is great.
Unfortunatly the weaker element of the film is the characters. It feels as if there is only two, maybe three actual three dimentonal characters. The characters that are actually fleshed out are Noa, Raka, and to a lesser extent Mae. The rest of the characters are just stock characters each there to fill a neccassary component of the story. For example Proximus is set up to be this complex character with deep motavation for his actions, but he ends up just being a typical big bad guy. This issue also stems from Noa just not being that good of a main character. Noa just kind of does good guy things for no reason. He really only ever listens to what the good guys have to say, even after seeing that Mae is not on his side. This issue becomes what it is because of the simplistic story.
The story really boils down to Noa finds a macguffin, or has a macguffin-like event happen to him, and he follows that path until a new macguffin shows up and repeat. For example the whole reason Noa goes on this quest is because his tribe is kidnapped, obviously a good reason for his quest. The problem comes from the fact that stuff like this is never explained. We never get good reasons for things happening and I think that is this movies biggest flaw.
“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is a really fun and exciting movie, unfortunatly with not a lot of thought behind it. The movie is a begining of a new era for this franchise and hopefully this movie sets up something better long term. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” gets a 3.5/5
