I recently complete a podcast covering the rebooted series of  three “Planet of the Apes” movies, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes“, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes“, and “War for the Planet of the Apes”. These movies took a concept from the original film series and brought it up to speed with the world that we now live in. The most clever element in the series was the explanation of why humans declined and apes rose. It had less to do with apocalyptic war and everything to do with cataclysmic viral pandemics. Pretty prescient if you ask me. This new film tries to bridge the gap a little by tying in a human underground effort to restore humanity to it’s place on the planet, while also confronting the ambitions of a striving ape king who has corrupted the beliefs of the hero of the preceding films. So this movie has set up a pretty tough task for itself. I would say it succeeds for the most part, but not with the clarity of those three films.

Hundreds of years have passed since the events of the three reboots. Ape society is largely at a bronze age stage when it comes to technology, and a tribal stage when it comes to culture. Noa, the protagonist of this story, is a young ape on the brink of adulthood, who is carrying on the traditions of his clan. This group of chimpanzees has created a symbiotic relationship with eagles. They assist in expanding the population of eagles by nurturing excess eggs from eagles nests. It is an interesting culture. Many audience members may chafe at the detail that goes in to setting up the clan and it’s traditions, but the world building here is essential to contrast the society we are introduced to with the one that invades it as the story goes on. 

Eventually, Noa must engage in a quest to restore the clan to it’s home, and simultaneously navigate a dangerous path between aggressive gorilla traditions and unique human contacts. On his travels he encounters an orangutang named Raka, who knows history better than anything else going on in the world. This is a character that I think most of us will have the greatest sympathy for. Raka becomes a mentor on social groups and political issue, almost by accident. It is his tutelage that allows Noa, to make key choices late in the story. Some of those choices pay off, others seem to be setting up a new trilogy of films to tell about what happens in the middle ages of the ape saga. 

The technology in making the films gets better every time out. The characters look more realistic and their behaviors seem more natural by the fourth time we are encountering this story device. The film seems a little long, but I am not sure that there is any element of story that needs trimming, mostly I think brief cuts to many scenes would have tightened thing up a bit.  Kevin Durand, who was in “Abigail” the last film I saw before this, plays the CGI King Proximus Caesar. His outsized motion capture performance is one of the strong points of the movie. All of the actors deserve credit for making us believe that these animals are real characters. 

This is positioned as a Summer film, and it should fulfill those expectations, although I don’t know that it will be able to stand out from many of the other movies that are coming in the next few week. The ethical questions raised by some moments of the film, in particular those from William H. Macy, are important, but I don’t think the storytelling is quite as strong as it was on those sorts of points in the earlier movies. I think you will be more entertained than enlightened, but there is promise in this type of branching out of the story. I hope future episodes pay off a little more deeply.