Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Review
The apes are back on the big screen with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. My excitement for this movie has grown with the more trailers we’ve gotten. It originally wasn’t on my most anticipated list for 2024. But with the trailers we got, it slowly became one that I was very excited to check out. So how is the movie? Does it live up to the past three movies? Let’s get started!
The Good
The thing about this movie that I appreciated the most was that it feels like a great continuation of the previous three movies. That trilogy of movies was all about Caesar and his journey to leadership. As the trilogy goes along, he’s building this rebellion. He has these great leadership skills that lead the apes to rising up above the humans. This movie takes place 300 years after the events of War for the Planet of the Apes, and because of that Caesar isn’t in this movie. But his legacy is all over this movie, he has a presence in this movie from beginning to end. We see how Caesar’s legacy will affect these characters all these years later. Where our villain is taking what Caesar said, what he stood for and twisting it. We see how our lead character and his tribe were affected by Caesar and so different people are affected by Caesar in different ways. In a whole bunch of different ways, they found a great way to continue this franchise, it all makes sense with what came before.
Along those same lines, the film has fantastic world building. We dive into the deep end of this world. These different nations of apes have been around for a long time, so we can see how these tribes function. Our lead character’s tribe is an Eagle tribe, where Eagles are a big part of their culture. The culture helps define who these characters are, the kinds of beliefs they have. Certain characters know about Caesar while others don’t. Then as the story goes along we meet different tribes and different characters, every character and every tribe just fleshes out this world. You really start to see how much Caesar’s legacy affected this world. The world that we’re in feels big and epic, it feels very lived in. The movie does a great job with the world building that you both want sequels I would almost another prequel to this movie. I know that the last trilogy is that, but even just being able to get a movie set between War and Kingdom, would be interesting because I thought this movie did such a great job with world building.
I touched on this earlier, but one of the things that helps with the world are the characters. Every character is different and has a different worldview, so we understand these characters very differently. The character that we’re following is Noa, he’s our point of view into this world. As he’s discovering this world, us as the audience are as well. We see this world from a very specific and interesting context because of the way the story is told. On Noa’s quest he meets different apes, he forms this bond with the humans. Based off of the trailer, they didn’t give much away as to how the human girl ties into the movie. I thought that was a cool thing, they hold back on revealing certain information in the trailers. We understand her worldview and what her response to a world filled with apes would be. Some of her dynamics with William H. Macy’s character was very interesting. It’s hard to talk about without going into spoilers, because some information they didn’t reveal in the trailers. We have a new villain with Proximus Caesar, I thought he was a very cool villain. He’s the one character that takes everything that Caesar said and flips it on his head. He’s this interesting villain, because us as the audience knows what he’s saying is wrong.
As it is a Planet of the Apes movie you have to talk about the CGI. Once again, the CGI is flawless. There’s not one scene, one shot, one frame of this movie that isn’t believable. It all looks incredible and real, at points you forget that the apes are CGI they’re that believable. Even when it’s not the apes, but shots of this world they look great. It helps with world building by making the world feel big and epic. The budget for this movie is only $160 million. Which on the one hand is a lot, but on the other hand compared to so many modern blockbusters costing $250 million this is significantly smaller. Yet, it has much better CGI than these $250 million blockbusters. Between this movie and Dune: Part II, it’s a great example of what you can do with CGI when the budget isn’t $250 million and it’s more reasonable.
Finally, I appreciate how this movie both closes out the film’s plot while also setting up sequels. With where this movie ends, gets me very excited for potential sequels. Obviously, I don’t wanna spoil anything but there’s a lot that they do with this movie that sets up sequels in some very cool ways. A common trope of the last few years was movies being “part one and two”, sometimes the movie comes to a satisfying ending while setting up a sequel. Other times, part one ends at the worst point. While this movie isn’t a part one, it does function as that. Where you feel satisfied with how it ends, but with how it ends sets up sequels.
The Bad
The first thing that comes to mind, the movie is 2 hours and 25 minutes long and I felt like the movie could have been a bit shorter. At the same time, I wish it was shorter. I don't really know what you cut from the film. I think at points they stretched scenes out, seconds longer then they probably needed to be. It doesn’t need a lot of trimming, but cut it down by 5-10 minutes and make it flow a bit better. One of the things that surprised me, it’s probably over an hour before we get Proximus Caesar is even introduced in the film. I felt like we could have gotten to Proximus much sooner into the film.
Also, I felt like the movie had the wrong amount of humor. I don’t mean that the sense of humor overshadowed the film. The movie isn’t designed to be a comedy, it’s not an MCU style blockbuster with lots of jokes and quips. But I felt like they set up jokes in the film that didn’t really go anywhere. It felt like they were trying to set up jokes for later on, but didn’t. So it felt like they needed to pay those jokes off more or just cut some of those jokes. Perhaps cutting some of the jokes would be able to tighten up the run time a bit.
Final Thoughts: I rewatched the reboot Planet of the Apes trilogy in preparation for this movie. That was part of the reason why I got so excited to check this movie out. I thought they found a great way to continue the franchise. While Ceasar isn’t in the film, they found a way to inject his legacy all throughout it. The characters are great and they help flesh out this world of Apes. I hope you go and see this movie, I want more sequels because this movie got me pumped for more Planet of the Apes!
The Score: 8.9/10 (B+)
Comments