Several generations in the future following Caesar's reign, apes are now the dominant species and live harmoniously while humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape...
“Kingdom Of The Planet of the Apes” already had an uphill battle against its predecessors without Matt Reeves or Andy Serkis and given how much I loved the trilogy and Disney’s declining quality, my expectations were not high. But given that my uncle Charlie is a big fan of the series, I couldn’t turn it down.
Can’t say it’s a wonderful day….but it ain’t half bad.
Dependability is mostly a given for Wes Ball films but what he often struggled with in directing, at least to me, was confidence; for once, he doesn’t have that problem here. His vision is measured with the same ambition that grounded The Maze Runner series but with more stoutness and durability.
As par of the course for most dystopian post-apocalyptic settings, the Planet of the Apes films have always had wide-spanning production designs that enlarge their scope and scale, and once more, that trend continues here with foliage overload, taking in the true dichotomy between one societies reverence for nature in stark contrast to the other's militaristic regime. Some locations are even taken almost blatantly taken from the 1968 original but It sucks I’ve become rapidly desensitized to these lush Mother Nature-reclaims-the-Earth visual aesthetics because once you’ve seen it done one time, it doesn’t quite hit the same when it’s done again. Still, it’s still beautifully rendered, muted color palette, all the same.
That very presentation doesn’t completely avoid the flat artificiality that has plagued so many recent live action properties from bubbling over but its agile cinematography and compact editing prevents us from getting swept away by that. Plus, they manage to avoid getting bogged down in exposition most of the time, letting its bitter but bracing atmosphere speak volumes under a tightly compressed pacing. John Paesano’s robust, full-bodied orchestral score is also a huge help although not in every instance and it goes without saying, but the CGI-motion capture hybrid combination never ceases to amaze me; seamlessly adding to the weight the performers have to carry for each scene. Owen Teague, Freya Allan and Kevin Durand offer varying degrees of range as do the rest of the cast and while none of them are Andy Serkis, they didn’t have to be to qualify as solid.
Wish the dialogue could’ve been just a tad bit tighter.
One constant throughout the Apes films over the decades is how it tries to dabble in the moral grey area and not paint everything as either black or white. So I’m glad they continued that mentality in what is essentially another set-up movie: sticking to its tried and true formula thick and thin even when the story aches for something beyond its derivative template at times, borrowing heavily from classic post-apocalyptic tropes. The "chosen one" narrative treads familiar ground, and some character motivations could have been fleshed out more beyond the central duo but I can be convinced to overlook those as some threads of the narrative were less predictable than others and carried over the foundation of ideas and framework from the previous trilogy.
Thankfully, the film's exploration of ethics, morality and the essence of humanity is shown well, not only taking its time to explore the complexities of Caesar's legacy left behind but portraying those complications in an alarming light that has it mirror how the victors often rewrite history to their liking across our recorded history. Even the portrayal of the antagonists resemble those of Christian crusaders using a historic figure's image to justify war and violence, addressing that theme in a way destined to make somebody ponder how those teachings can continue to be misconstrued. On top of that, it’s more emotionally complex and mature upon closer inspection as the internal conflict between our two main leads take from both the best and worst of humanity’s vices: where pain begets pain on one end while trust and follow-through heals it on the other.
Only downside to all that is, again, it’s not that different than what the other films managed to achieve. Even with its best foot forward, the superficiality seeping through its palms makes a lot of what we see look rather familiar as, just like Kung Fu Panda 4, it feels more akin to a greatest hits album of the previous three films then a continuation that ventures for wild uncharted waters. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using broader, simpler strokes to play it safe (they technically did that with ROTPOTA) but Rise had the benefit of starting with a fresh coat of paint as a full reboot. This is a direct continuation to that series and despite being metaphor-laden with so much potential that it could make for more compelling content down the road, the writing here lacks the confidence of the direction it’s been paired with.
I really started to get that impression by the time the pacing started to creep along upon Proximus’s arrival. Despite an acceptable two and a half hour runtime, the runtime bloats itself for the sake of exposition and contemplation while being nowhere near as emotionally investing. And when that happens, that’s when you begin to pick apart some of the story’s puzzling illogicalities.
While this doesn’t take the series on a drastic evolutionary step backwards, not much of what we get here ventures into uncharted territory…..and yet, that’s fine? An inferior fourth chapter in comparison to the trilogy but one that barely succeeds in being a strangely captivating continuation in and of itself.
