When Rupert Wyatt’s 2011 prequel “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” revived a five-decade-old franchise\u2014one that spanned books, films, TV series, and comics since the ’60s\u2014it did so with a refreshing\u00a0commitment to a powerful, timeless story: simple but not simple-minded, deeply emotional but far from corny.<\/p>\n
Portrayed via groundbreaking performance capture technology by Andy Serkis (delivering the kind of actorly nuance that shouldn\u2019t have been overlooked by The Academy), the film\u2019s Ape protagonist Caesar has led that story through the two sequels, both of them elegantly directed by Matt Reeves\u20142014\u2019s \u201cDawn of the Planet of the Apes\u201d and 2017\u2019s \u201cWar for the Planet of the Apes.\u201d Raised by James Franco\u2019s caring human hands in the first film, Caesar quickly broke through the classist and discriminatory human world\u2019s self-destructive greed in the trilogy and claimed his deserving place as the leader of his kind, while a manmade virus made Apes smarter, and robbed humans of their intelligence and speech abilities, nearly eradicating mankind.<\/p>\n
As a whole, the trilogy became perhaps the finest franchise of this century, standing tall against the loud, bloated mega-verses and unexpectedly reminding us what we want from big-budget, sequel-minded Hollywood: something thoughtful, entertaining and insightful about who we are and aspire to be. The new film, \u201cThe Maze Runner\u201d director Wes Ball\u2019s brilliant \u201cKingdom of the Planet of the Apes,\u201d walks securely in the footsteps of this recent legacy, wearing the Caesar-centric films\u2019 values like fairness, loyalty and communal solidarity on its sleeve with pride.<\/p>\n
Like its predecessors, Ball\u2019s sequel knows these principles don\u2019t belong to humans exclusively\u2014not in his highly imaginative sci-fi adventure, not in the real world where the animal kingdom lives by its own set of rules and ethics. And along with his screenwriter Josh Friedman (of the wonderful \u201cAvatar: The Way of Water,\u201d with which you will notice plenty of visual and thematic parallels here), Ball confidently puts forth a film that is exciting and visually articulate in its action setpieces as it is thoughtfully coherent in its plotting. In \u201cKingdom,\u201d there is not a single wasted idea or scene that feels randomly introduced without a soundly rewarding payoff that deepens and completes story. In other words, here\u2019s a film\u2014well, a franchise\u2014where you see smart writers and filmmakers at work towards bringing things full circle, not meeting rooms dedicated to soulless fan-servicing.<\/p>\n
The tale of \u201cKingdom\u201d is set generations after the events of the \u201cWar,\u201d after the time of Caesar. Young chimpanzees Noa (Owen Teague), Anaya (Travis Jeffery), and Soona (Lydia Peckham) of the Eagle Clan\u2014all also portrayed via performance capture\u2014climb massive heights at the start of the film so that Noa can find an eagle egg of his own per his clan\u2019s rituals and bond with the majestic bird over the years like the elderly of his world. After a beautifully shot, eventful escapade nearly costing him his life, the fearless Noa manages to claim his egg from a nest.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Rupert Wyatt’s 2011 prequel “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” revived a five-decade-old franchise\u2014one that spanned books, films, TV series, and comics since the ’60s\u2014it did so with a refreshing\u00a0commitment to a powerful, timeless story: simple but not simple-minded, deeply emotional but far from corny. Portrayed via groundbreaking performance capture technology by Andy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[36,35,51],"class_list":["post-1197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-movies","tag-action","tag-adventure","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}