1 of 5 | Noa (Owen Teague) is the new hero of "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes." Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios
LOS ANGELES, May 8 (UPI) -- The trilogy of Rise of, Dawn of and War For the Planet of the Apes showed how modern day Earth evolved to the dominance of talking apes. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, in theaters Friday, begins a rousing new adventure on the planet.
Noa (Owen Teague) is part of the Eagle tribe, a peaceful tribe of apes who raise eagles in their village. When a vicious clan of masked apes attacks the Eagle village, Noa escapes and sets out to rescue his captured family.
Outside the Eagle village, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes explores many different environments in a post-apocalyptic simian world. Abandoned cities have become overgrown with nature.
In meadows, Noa sees what other kinds of animals have survived. The Mask clan compound is in a rusted ocean tanker, on which Mask leader Proximus (Kevin Durand) is trying to break into a sealed vault he believes contains human technology.
Since Kingdom is introducing all new apes, it take a good 20 to 30 minutes to distinguish each of the new characters. The film puts in the time to get to know Noa and his family, so it pays off when he ventures out to discover this kingdom.
The recent Apes films utilize performance capture technology that allows human actors to play apes that look like real primates. After four movies, this technology is seamless, but Kingdom adds some new twists.
For example, Kingdom has two sequences with raging waters, one in a river and the other in a flood. Wet apes look convincing and never give away the visual effect.
Proximus' clan hunts humans in a sequence akin to similar human hunts in the 1968 and 2001 Apes. The blend of visual effect apes and human beings running through grass makes a thrilling, visceral action sequence.
The hunt is not the only homage to the original. The apes ride horseback along the beach, and there's a really good joke about where the Apes franchise's frequent character name Nova comes from.
Noa meets the orangutan Raka (Peter Macon) in his journey, and he teaches Noa about the previous trilogy's hero Caesar, who had noble ambitions for ape society. The human Mae (Freya Allan) follows Noa and Raka and tags along with them.
Mae is the first human that Noa has met. Their relationship teaches him both compassion for other species, and unease about humans' capacity for cruelty.
But, Proximus is the most powerful and cruel villain in Kingdom. There is a very relevant theme about how Proximus misappropriates Caesar's legacy for his own gain, much like the way human politicians invoke noble historical figures while contradicting those figures' values.
Where War for the Planet of the Apes could theoretically lead into the 1968 film, Kingdom decidedly takes place long after the society Charlton Heston's character would have visited. It still suggests where else new Apes films could go, and those could be interesting, too, if they remain as thrilling as Kingdom.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
