With the powerful War for the Planet of the Apes, Matt Reeves closed seven years ago the trilogy with which 20th Century Fox had resurrected the long confrontation between apes and humans, and between apes and apes, which began back in 1968 with that Charlton Heston who finally discovered the remains of the Statue of Liberty on a beach. In War for the Planet of the Apes the leader of the primates, Caesar, led his people like Moses to a new paradise. And, at his doors, he died badly wounded. Now, with the legendary studios already purchased by Disney in 2019 and converted into 20th Century Studios, a new installment arrives that must reinvent the saga again and that does so very much in keeping with the current times: with a dictator included.
It’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, directed by Wes Ball (The Maze Runner), and the move to restart the game is twofold. The action takes place centuries after Caesar’s death, with different ape clans developing their small societies in the remains of human civilization, with the ancient skyscrapers filled with vegetation up to their last floors. And there again the tension that arises for the apes of a small group that establish links with the eagles is complex.
On the one hand, a curious and strange human appears, an echo, as they call her, who have almost forgotten the history that precedes them, barely converted into old legends, and who are unaware that in a not so distant world they were prisoners of the men. Of men who had developed prodigious technologies that gave them immense power. And perhaps they have not completely disappeared despite the fact that most of them have regressed to a primitive state.
On the other hand, the small ape clan faces the tyrannical power of Proximus Caesar, an evolved bonobo turned ape emperor and who, that’s nothing, has the texts of the great Roman leaders read by a human. An ambiguous and complex character who claims to be the successor of the original ape Caesar without needing to respect his codes.
In the middle, the young chimpanzee Noa, who will live an initiatory journey, which is sometimes a bit slow, and sometimes as exciting as the previous trilogy, to try to save his clan from the eagles, having to learn quickly to be able to weigh which of the dangers they face is truly the worst.