'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' briefing

3 (out of 4)

            I am about as wary as one can be regarding those few valuable Fox franchises Disney has to quietly reignite under the 20th Century Studios moniker — Alien: Romulus, sans Ridley Scott, will be another test for them, as will their incorporation of the X-Men and Fantastic Four into the fold of the waning MCU, beginning with Deadpool & Wolverine. Planet of the Apes, however, has an enduring legacy that almost outstretches every other film franchise apart from Bond or Godzilla. Until recently the original Apes sequels were foreign to me and frankly I can’t tell you how off-putting everything about Tim Burton’s quasi-remake was and remains, otherwise I maintained a relative fondness, short of admiration, for the reboot trilogy after seeing them each once in theaters.

Like Mad Max’s pre-to-post-apocalyptic, continuity-unconscious set-up, Planet of the Apes always succeeded in some even hand of spectacle and speculation, often functioning best, to my mind, when the ideas you could strip from the premise (be it evolutionary, science vs. religion, Cold War parallels, Civil Rights parallels, animal rights OBVIOUSLY) were presented more conspicuously. The reason the 2010s Rise and Dawn so neatly update the Caesar revolution (directing us from the present to the early days of ape domination) is because unlike Burton there isn’t just a world of difference in visual effects, but character nudges its way front and center every time. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the ideal sequel for finding the moral balance between good and bad primates and humans — the subtlety is most agreeable, as is Matt Reeves suitably Nolan-esque trimmings. Unfortunately Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes doesn’t have as many scripted nuances, nor anyone behind the camera to impose a noticeable stylistic shift; from Rises’ bright San Franciscan setting to Dawn’s industrial feel and War’s wintry Great Escape, at least Kingdom’s forests and beaches are visually memorable.

The best Kingdom can say is it dutifully fits into a distinct legacy with infinitely more room to grow and breathe than just about any other film-universe. While the original and its sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes take place about 2000 years in the future, the time-traveled line of continuity in Escape, Conquest and Battle encompassed 1970s modernity up to the concrete future of the 90s and beyond, with Rise and Dawn shaking the etch-i-sketch and War’s end inciting the biggest forward timeskip yet, a few hundred years after the death of Caesar. All to say, we’re FINALLY chronologically navigating the most interesting epoch in the Planet of the Apes storyline — the mysterious, mythic time when apes have eclipsed mankind’s own humanity and sapiens have regressed to voiceless, feral, flailing things. As opposed to early sequels positing the premise of a virus wiping out cats and dogs, with apes becoming the obvious pet-substitute (quickly skipping to subservient slaves all in about 20 years), the reboots used an alternate mutated virus (James Franco's cure for Alzheimer's) advancing apes and wiping out most of humanity. By War, they left Woody Harrelson (as our most prominent villain since the suit from Escape or perhaps the gorilla general in Battle) speechless as is LORE, and its funny how Kingdom already has to exclusively deal in the savage humans who can still talk while featuring almost fully talking apes, and to its discredit this 10th Apes adventure doesn't inherit the impressive, almost silent film qualities of Andy Serkis’ history-making trio of mo-cap turns.

The original film has a twist that seems completely apparent on rewatch, but what makes that film great boils down to Cornelius (Roddy McDowell, the only fellow to play parts in all five original films, three as Cornelius and two then as the son Milo/Caesar) and Zera, played by Kim Hunter, the key to Escape’s funny, satirically serrated edge. We get a sympathetic ape here with a new Orangutan (Raka, though its hard to replace the mute bro Maurice from the trilogy) but his time is too short and leaves us with less interesting individuals. The brand new NOVA (“um it’s Mae actually”) becomes a proper sanitizing Disney decision, updating the all too sexualized 1968/70 turn by Linda Harrison and later the pure bimbo/Barbarella look of Estella Warren in 2001’s Planet of the Apes to cast, of course, someone far too attractive — at least Freya Allen's draped in more than ridiculously skimpy rags and the make-up team had her properly dirty even after a shower, oh her having lines and actual acting ability helps. But my cynical mind sees them place the fairer sex in a prominent second bill role front and center (contrary to more sidelined roles for women in last decade's installments from Frieda Pinto to Keri Russell to little Amiah Miller) for the sake of steering female viewership to a storied, male-dominated series, just like they've done with Star Wars media, oh and that last Indiana Jones too. And I’m sorry but this new guy Noa ain’t just no Caesar, the young Owen Teague just isn’t Serkis, and that makes quite the difference, that and the fact that this mo-cap technology looked just as good 10 years ago, which is to say the string of visual splendor does still extend.

The longest Apes ever tries to make narrative moves with a long-dead Caesar but Disney only takes so many chances — this newer series has yet to get insane with time travel, even without cutaway footage to missing spaceships in Rise there's plenty enough room to pull a rabbit out your ass at some point: "break in case of Apes emergency." But there’s like 1700 Goddamn years of history before the events of the original, so possibilities are pretty endless, especially when we’re all just aping from the Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel (known in the UK as Monkey Planet) and nothing else but more incrementally low-budget and shiftily edited 70s sequels. For the nearly 30 year gap between the fifth installment Battle and Burton’s redo, many scripts and directors were thrown about, all culminating in an ironic rush job after decades of waiting. The new films have been more respectable on whole than even the most promising reboots of the late 2000s and early 2010s — if The Dark Knight Rises wasn’t so dumb Nolan’s trilogy would be very close, to a lesser extent so would Star Trek despite the fan-fellating of Into Darkness, but Craig’s Bond and X-Men would eventually shit the bed, and despite my problems with Kingdom, the Apes still have not. The fact that Mickey Mouse retained the ‘blockbuster with less action, more character conflict’ mantra of the earlier counterparts and added to the visual future-historical variety in any way (a high-altitude falconry tribe is enough for me), all while letting go of the past as these entries almost always do in their mostly standalone, loosely sequential from-scratch feel, is more than I could’ve hoped for from Disney in disguise.

We could use more marimba-heavy throwback scores skillfully served by Michael Giacchino as in Dawn, frankly more of everything interesting in that movie would be nice — more distinct drama, themes, philosophies, ironies and relationships, though Kingdom has the muted spectacle down pat. So yeah if this movie felt like it was getting deep as it turned to full adventure movie by its most exciting 2nd act, I wouldn't call this easily the weakest of the reboots and yet, while I could lament that Disney will stretch this out like a taffy I say let them. Despite the guy behind the fleetingly favorable Maze Runner trilogy (Wes Ball's entire resume, though he will be adding The Legend of Zelda) at the helm, Kingdom's scope and temperament is proof enough of artistic integrity. As it stands the Planet of the Apes series could stand to take another 10 installments after this one. The fact that it put up real box office numbers over the star power of The Fall Guy, and both the star power and recognition right there in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, just shows you how fertile this IP still is.