King­dom of the Plan­et of the Apes review – stop, I want to get off!

There was an amus­ing Tik­Tok trend last year (bear with me) which revealed that men can’t stop think­ing about the Roman Empire. It went like this: a woman would film her­self ask­ing a man in her life how often he thought about ancient Rome, and invari­ably the answer would be at least sev­er­al times a week, some­times even on a dai­ly basis. Well fel­las, turns out we’re not alone.

Sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions have passed since the fall of Cae­sar, and the lega­cy of this great impe­r­i­al fig­ure still looms large over all apekind. Just as before, how­ev­er, not all apes believe they were cre­at­ed equal. The curi­ous­ly Roman-cod­ed domin­ion of the film’s title is ruled over by a tyran­ni­cal Bonobo named Prox­imus Cae­sar (Kevin Durand), who has tak­en the spir­it of ​“Apes Togeth­er Strong” – Caesar’s eman­ci­pa­to­ry mantra – and twist­ed it in order to jus­ti­fy his auto­crat­ic, colonis­ing régime.

Wear­ing a pointy crown and plat­ed upper tor­so armour to sig­nal his suprema­cy (and, for some rea­son, a loin cloth to cov­er his mon­key­hood) Prox­imus Cae­sar is a cru­el, Com­modus-like leader who often appears more human than ape. Indeed, he is obsessed with obtain­ing human knowl­edge and has designs on plun­der­ing the tech­nol­o­gy they left behind with a view to accel­er­at­ing the apes’ intel­lec­tu­al evo­lu­tion. The ques­tion is, how is he going to get his stink­ing paws on it?

In a sort of reverse King Kong sit­u­a­tion, Prox­imus Cae­sar has strate­gi­cal­ly estab­lished his coastal colony right next to a pair of enor­mous met­al doors con­ceal­ing a dooms­day bunker carved into the cliff­side – a mys­te­ri­ous rust­ed ves­tige of human civ­i­liza­tion. Each day he orders the enslaved pri­mates under his com­mand to try and force the doors open using their col­lec­tive might. And each day they come up short. What Prox­imus Cae­sar doesn’t know is that what lies on the oth­er side of those doors has the pow­er to bring him total ruin as well as absolute glory.

Before all that, we are intro­duced to Noa (Owen Teague), a head­strong chimp on the cusp of matu­ri­ty whose quaint eagle-lov­ing tribe (anoth­er bizarre allu­sion to the Romans) is bru­tal­ly destroyed by Prox­imus Cae­sar right before his eyes. This sets Noa off on a long, per­ilous and at times tedious jour­ney in search of any sur­viv­ing mem­bers, over the course of which he encoun­ters a schol­ar­ly orang­utan named Raka (Peter Macon) and a young female human named Mae (Freya Allan) who holds a shock­ing secret.

Although King­dom of the Plan­et of the Apes sets out its stall as an ape-on-ape epic, it is ulti­mate­ly Mae who has the biggest bear­ing on the fates of Noa, Prox­imus Cae­sar and the rest of the apes. Which feels like a shame, not least because the best per­form­ers here are all in motion-cap­ture roles. This is a rare case of a block­buster where nei­ther the direc­tor (Wes Ball) nor the main cast are giv­en top or even sec­ond billing. (The only recog­nis­able face in the film belongs to William H Macy, who pops up late on but is giv­en very lit­tle to do.) The apes – and the daz­zling VFX that bring them to life on screen – are the real stars. And yet because of how the sto­ry plays out, they are rather over­shad­owed in the end.

Anoth­er prob­lem with this film is that it doesn’t have the kind of clear or nuanced nar­ra­tive arc that made Caesar’s ori­gin sto­ry so com­pelling. It is an A‑to‑B retread of famil­iar themes and visu­al motifs which can be traced all the way back to the orig­i­nal 1968 film. One that feels more like a soft reboot of the series than a pro­gres­sion of the huge­ly suc­cess­ful recent pre­quel trilogy.

‘Soft’ being the oper­a­tive word: King­dom cer­tain­ly has its moments, but the rougher, dark­er edges of pre­de­ces­sors Dawn, Rise and War have been smoothed out, leav­ing us with an over-long, rel­a­tive­ly low-stakes instal­ment sore­ly lack­ing in orig­i­nal­i­ty. If this is where the fran­chise is head­ing, then stop, I want to get off!

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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