Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

The latest installment in the series of rebooted Planet of the Apes pictures is this disposable story that covers a lot of the same thematic and narrative ground as the prior entry, War for the Planet of the Apes. This time, rather than fighting a ruthless, charismatic human Colonel and his human army, this movie centers on an evil tribe of gorillas ruled by a frightening charismatic Ape leader who destroys the peaceful village of a falconry-focused chimpanzee clan and forces them into slave labor in a work camp. The film takes place many generations after the death of the ape leader Caesar, who was the center of the three prior Ape pictures. One of the movie's themes is how the words and teachings of a long-dead leader, prophet, or teacher get misinterpreted and perverted over the decades—a timeless and timely subject for our current era. But the ideas at the center of this lumbering picture are as woefully underdeveloped as the plot when you consider the 145-minute running time. In the space of two and a half hours, you'd think we'd get a richer narrative than the spoon-fed exposition and take-it-all-for-granted "realities" of each stage of this story.

The second film of this rebooted series, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, was the film that made me take franchise blockbusters seriously again. Much as I wanted to dismiss all contemporary CGI popcorn pictures as interchangeable products rather than cinematic storytelling, Dawn proved that CGI characters endlessly fighting each other could actually be compelling and that it really did matter who directed these movies. Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In), who took over the project at a fairly late stage and oversaw extensive rewrites to the script, crafted a film that was visually arresting, narratively compelling, and thematically provocative. Far more than in any Marvel movie, Star Wars picture, or Tolkien adaptation, the CGI, mo-cap world Reeves and his crew created felt lived in. It was far more credible and incredible than the silly digital world created by James Cameron in Avatar. I was floored, and that one film has kept me going to see contemporary blockbusters because I know that occasionally, one will come along that I will not want to miss.

But Reeves' follow-up, War, didn't do all that much for me. It felt like it missed the opportunity to provide the rebooted trilogy with a satisfying finale in favor of making just another chapter in an open-ended series. Now, a full seven years after the War, we get this trivial episode about a young chimp named Noa (Owen Teague), who is the heir and sole survivor of an imprisoned ape clan that was headed by his father. Just compare the opening sequence in this picture, when Noa and his two indistinguishable young friends prepare for their coming-of-age ceremony by collecting eagle eggs high above the forest, to the quasi-silent-film opening of Dawn. The characters in this new film, helmed by The Maze Runner trilogy Wes Ball, don't move through the forest with the same kind of verisimilitude and individualized destination of the apes in Reevse's pictures. And, rather than communicate mostly via subtitled sign language, this opening sequence has the Apes spouting the generically vague expository dialogue nearly every modern blockbuster from The Phantom Menace to Furioa relays on in. Such an unnecessary bummer.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is certainly a watchable movie. There's nothing to get very worked up about, either positively or negatively, in this picture. But almost nothing in the movie strikes even the slightest chord of interest the way any of the three prior Apes pictures did. The human characters, played by Freya Allan and William H. Macy, are given some very on-the-nose dialogue, which they deliver as best they can, but neither they nor this film's ape protagonists are the type of characters we give two shits about. I liked that this movie is ostensibly about collective action rather than the typical heroic journey of a young "chosen one" that most blockbusters rely on, but in order for that idea to feel legit and earned, the supporting characters would need to be a hell of a lot more developed than they are here. Watching this dreary chapter in the long-running series only made me appreciate Dawn even more. When the apocalypse does come, and most of our culture is wiped out, I hope that Dawn of the Planet of the Apes will survive along with the original 1968 classic to demonstrate to the surviving generations that the last great commercial artform was still thriving and innovating well into the last millennium.