‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ Review: The Franchise Essentially Reboots with a Tale of Survival Set — At Last — in the Ape-Ruled Future
08.05.2024 - 15:15
/ variety.com
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” opens with Caesar lying in state, surrounding by a horde of mourning chimps, as his dead body is covered in flowers and ritually set on fire. The movie then cuts to the jungle, where a title informs us that it’s “many generations later.” In other words, the tale we’ve been watching in the last three “Apes” films — “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011), “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” (2014), and “War for the Planet of the Apes” (2017) — is now ancient franchise history.
I’m in the minority of viewers who would greet that news by saying, “Thank God.” When classic IP gets remade, there is always a double agenda: tapping a new audience, but also serving the audience that has fond memories of the original. In “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” the center of dramatic action passes from Caesar over to Noa (Owen Teague), a serious young chimpanzee who has many Caesar-like qualities.
Noa has grown up in the Eagle Clan, a thriving village of highly evolved apes whose tribal elders commune, in a mutually beneficial and holistic way, with predatory birds. The opening sequence has Noa and his two friends swinging at vertigo-inducing heights to pluck eggs out of eagle nests poised on clifftops.
Noa proves himself to be a daredevil trapeze artist, but it’s not long before he runs into a pack of lethal apes led by an armored gorilla on horseback who resembles the 1933 teeth-gnashing King Kong. These apes destroy the village, leaving Noa on his own.
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