Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Movie Review

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Rent Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver (characters created by)
Directed by: Wes Ball
Starring: Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, William H. Macy
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer

Plot
Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

Verdict
It's less a sequel and more another entry in the franchise. It's sufficient; providing what you need in an action movie but not much more. It's a movie that's enjoyable enough, and three days later you'll barely remember the plot. As usual the CGI impresses with various environments and a glimpse at a post apocalyptic future.
It depends.

Review
This is the fourth of the Planet of the Apes reboot movies. This is set three hundred years after the last movie as a stand alone. I appreciate that this provides a text introduction because it feels like so many more than just four of these movies. I couldn't recall what happened in the last one. All of that can be summed up in just a few paragraphs.

A trio of apes, including the protagonist Noa (Owen Teague), search for eggs in preparation for a ceremony. This provides a preview of their daily lives and  the ruined world we know from centuries ago. Apes live in various primitive clans in the jungle. An advanced group of apes attacks Noa's village. Noa seems to be the only one that survived the raid, and now he's left with nothing.

Owen Teague, Peter Macon, Freya Allan play Koa, Raka, Mae

This spurs Noa to travel to the forbidden land which is an overgrown city. He teams up with Raka, who is a convenient plot device to bridge the various movies and Mae (Freya Allan). Mae is smarter than the average primitive human, most of them can't even speak.

The visuals are impressive as we see centuries of overgrowth on decrepit cities, beaches with rusted out ships used as fortresses, and that's on top of the CGI apes lit during the day, in the shadows, and by fire light.

The previous three movies portrayed the rise of Caesar and evolution of apes. Here we see an ape civilization far into the future. It's not a bad plot, but it feels like something I've seen before where a dictator seeks more power or secrets from another civilization and enslaves others to that end. In this movie the antagonist is a rather bland villain, existing just to serve the plot instead of having further development. That's combined with Noa disliking humans until he gets to know Mae, having to reconcile his previous distrust. The standout for this franchise is the CGI and settings with the big differentiator being ape protagonists.

Noa and Mae wonder whether apes and humans can live together peacefully. These movies have shown us that clearly they cannot. Individually, maybe it works. I do like the final scene, a bit of intrigue as we discover that Mae never revealed her true intentions, though both she and Koa wanted to protect their own tribes. This also serves as a lead for another movie.