KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES Review

In what is essentially the fourth new beginning in the Planet of the Apes franchise and the tenth film overall, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes has the difficult task of not only following-up the critically acclaimed and well-liked Caesar trilogy but establishing a new cast of characters for audiences to care about and maybe more critically - to root for. The fascinating thing about this franchise in particular is that it has no one anchor, no single selling point, but more it relies on each films ideas and themes to be the main attraction. These are blockbusters built on allegory, delivering spectacle to fulfill the experiential aspect of movie-going, but largely crafted for the purposes of the conversations that will take place afterward. In director Wes Ball's (the Maze Runner trilogy) re-boot each of these factors are in place to meet the aforementioned requirements of both entertainment value and parable-like storytelling, but much like with the previous two Matt Reeves films (my hot take regarding the Caesar trilogy is that Rupert Wyatt's film is actually the best of them) these frameworks for what these films intend to do and be end up mostly being only that: a structure. In Kingdom specifically, the themes themselves are such repeats of ideas and concepts this franchise has touched upon before that it almost feels the series is becoming that of which it is analyzing a la the cyclical nature of society - the triumphs and failures destined to collide with the systems put in place to try and form some type of order no matter the dominant species.