Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – Review, enormous potential, wasted

The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Kingdom of The Planet of the Apes) is a 2024 film directed by Wes Balldirector of the trilogy of Maze Runner and soon also the Live-Action of the video game Zelda. This is the sequel to The War – Planet of the Apes of 2017, as well as the fourth chapter of the reboot saga (and the beginning of a trilogy?). In total, this is the tenth film in the franchise related to the Planet of the Apesstarted in 1968 and based on the novel written by Pierre Boulle.

A leap of generations

The new film is blatantly set a few generations later the reign of Caesar. The new world has sentient apes as its dominant species, while humans remain in the shadows. Many things have changed compared to the past, e.g the human race has shrunk due to a laboratory virus that had developed in Caesar’s time, also arriving in the meantime to amplify the intelligence of the monkeys, so much so that they became a real tribe.

There new generation lives in one community where peace reigns, and which has the culture of training eagles, whose eggs they steal to raise them so that they respond to their call. But the peace will be abruptly interrupted by Proximus Caesar, an ape dictator who has built a military society with human technologies, and wants to establish an empire based on totalitarian rule. The young monkey Noa will have to question everything she knew about her ancestors and understand what will be the right path to take for a better future both for her species and for that of humans

A hidden message?

This franchise has given a significant turning point in the history of cinemaalso inspiring several science fiction stories that imagine a future that is still unknown, and which could scare people in the present.

Is it a prophetic film? Well, more than anything you can play a bit with your imagination and imagine a future that may not be pleasant for humans. So, thinking about the world today, isn’t this new film trying to send a message between the lines? If you look at the current world and the choices of today’s powerful people, even ignoring the past, you might think that perhaps there is a risk that the world will undergo an involution, despite the apparent progress to which it is subjected.

Is there still something to tell?

Leaving aside what is possible social message which subtly recalls both contemporaneity and the future (especially in the ideological sphere), we return to the cinematographic sphere.

The franchise that began in 1967, as has been said before, gave a turning point to the history of cinema, for better or for worse. There were initially five films released between 1968 and 1973 which were inspired by the novel by Pierre Boulle, and then moved on to an unconvincing remake directed by Tim Burton which differs from its literary counterpart.

In recent years, a new trilogy has been relaunched which narrates the exploits of the ape Caesar, played by Andy Serkis (Gollum de “The Lord of the Rings“), and the origins of the super-intelligent ape species. The new film functions as both a sequel and a reboot and, after viewing, one expects it to go more and more in that narrative direction, which should consolidate that species altogether. So the answer is yes, he still has something to say, but the point is the modus operandi adopted: if the franchise is not exploited properly, there is a risk of waste a good opportunity.

Does the new movie work?

The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes it presents itself both as a direct sequel to the trilogy starring Caesar and as a reboot of the saga which should start a new trilogy. In theory, you could see the new film directly and recover the old ones even after viewing, but you would not be able to grasp the references to previous films. Cesare was a pillar of this species and his presence is still felt in the new protagonists, dividing between those who truly honor him and those who tarnish his name (doesn’t he remember something, if he looks around carefully?)

In fact, the film is also about inheritance, passing of the baton and trying to better understand oneself and what is the right thing to do, for one’s own good and that of one’s fellow men. The various races can they coexist? And the dilemma of the film

Too bad the film has an enormous potential that has clearly been wasted. From a visual point of view, it is pure cinema, accompanied by a CGI convincing, one photography bright and one soundtrack well composed. But the plot is not well developed and the characters are not fully characterized.

It starts from a good base, but gets lost along the way, with an oscillating rhythm that goes from a contextualized slowness in the first part – to present the protagonists and the story – and then takes its time in the second and arrives at a narrative twist which turns out to be great hair pulling. There are far too many clichés, and it seems that the film is more intent on showing these than engaging the audience, because at a certain point theexcessive duration you can perceive it quite a bit.

There is also a slight qualitative decline also from a directorial point of view: Matt Reeves’ direction was dark, calm and presented the species that was slowly consolidating, while Wes Ball’s is not so sublime, and walks arm in arm with a dull writing which does not show an evolution of monkeys, which did not happen here at all and this is quite jarring.

We expect clarification on certain questions left unanswered and particular attention to detail. Beyond the genre, some aspects cannot be overlooked, and we must give them meaning, not leaving them to chance.