Let the record show that I’ve never once doubted Wes Ball pulling off a Planet of the Apes movie, as much as he’s received flak from detractors who believe he didn’t have “the juice” to follow up Rupert Wyatt and Matt Reeves’ Rise of the Planet of the Apes trilogy, which reinvigorated a decades-old franchise through a decidedly modern and grandiose fashion.
While I wasn’t as big on War for the Planet of the Apes as others were, I always believed there would be room for more series installments if done correctly. When Disney fast-tracked the development of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and approved a trilogy after being impressed by Ball’s pitch and Josh Friedman’s screenplay, many were skeptical of Ball’s ability to follow up what Wyatt and Reeves did in Rise, Dawn, and War, because the Maze Runner movies were apparently bad.
Perhaps Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials might not be the best movie in the world, but if you look at how Ball directs action and heavy visual-effects-driven sequences, he’s got the chops to do something as big as Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. While I enjoyed both the first two Maze Runner movies, barring some screenwriting inconsistencies, Ball fully won me over with Maze Runner: The Death Cure — an ambitious and visually striking dystopian sci-fi epic with some of the best action a mainstream blockbuster put out in the last decade (if you don’t believe me, I recently interviewed Kaya Scodelario and briefly gushed over how incredible the film is). After this, I was an immediate fan, eagerly anticipating what he would do next, either in the world of sci-fi filmmaking or through genre cinema as a whole.
Pulling off a Planet of the Apes film like this seems like an incredible feat because the modern iteration of the franchise has never once handheld the audience through endless fan service and obvious winks at the legacy of the series, which started through Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1968 classic. Rather, it celebrates the legacy of those movies by asking potent questions about humanity’s relation with a world that no longer belongs to them as the Apes grow smarter by the day while also showcasing the incredible advancement in motion capture technology.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes starts strong from the get-go, as it follows Noa (Owen Teague) and his clan many generations after Ceasar’s (Andy Serkis) death in War for the Planet of the Apes. Noa’s village gets attacked by a group of rogue apes who say they follow Caesar’s teachings but twist his views of the world to their benefit (“Ape shall not kill ape”) so they can regroup all apes in one settlement to kill the remaining humans left on Earth.
The clan is led by Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand, who should’ve dropped another Québécois curse word after doing so in Abigail), who has been attempting to break into a silo full of human technology. Proximus tells Noa that the technology found in the silo will help him on his quest to rid the planet of humanity and make it so that only apes survive. With the help of a human named Nova/Mae (Freya Allan, in a remarkable display of emotional complexity), Noa devises a plan to rid the apes of Proximus’ reign and ensure he will never have access to what is inside the silo.
The story is far simpler than Dawn or War, but it allows Ball to craft some richly layered character drama, delving deep into how Noa’s relationship with humans is shaped by the conversations he has with Raka (Peter Macon), the remaining ape who stays true to the words of Caesar, the bond he begins to have with Mae, and the images he sees from the books humans wrote on animals. This gives Noa a thrilling moral conflict, as he has to grapple with the knowledge Raka and Mae pass on to him and how humans have perceived apes as the “inferior species” for centuries before the events of Rise.
His moral conflict is challenged by the arrival of Proximus, who gives him a lesson on the concept of “e-volution,” and slowly begins to corrupt his mind with his version of human history (whom he learned through the warped teachings of opportunistic human Trevathan, played by William H. Macy). With this, Ball slowly shows Noa’s transformation from a doe-eyed, curious teenager to a man who has finally learned his true purpose in the clan and, in turn, gives Owen Teague his chance to truly shine for the first time on the big screen.
Teague’s turn as Noa is magisterial, as equally impressive as how Roddy McDowall transformed himself as Caesar in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (his monologue at the end of the film remains the greatest moment in Planet of the Apes history, after seeing what the humans continuously did to their kind). The seamless blend of impeccably crafted visual effects/motion capture work from WETA and Teague’s facial performance makes his character feel more anthropomorphized than Serkis’ Caesar in the Rise trilogy, and scenes with him, Raka, and Mae, from a purely visual standpoint, will make your jaw drop in awe.
It’s hard to make visual effects like these stand out, but they wouldn’t be as good as they are if each actor weren’t on top of their game. Teague knows what shapes Noa and how he will be able to shift his arc as he learns more about human/ape history, but Durand is equally as menacing as Proximus, a better villain than Toby Kebbell’s Koba in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. It’s interesting to see how Caesar’s teachings have evolved and how apes can twist his beliefs for their personal gain, and Proximus knows exactly how to control not only humans but apes, as he’s learned to create a cult through the ideals he believes Caesar wanted to attain. Of course, that’s not the case, but with many apes indoctrinated and never seeing a way out, Proximus has gained the upper hand for what looks like decades.
Ball is also known for making stars out of their actors (Dylan O’Brien, Will Poulter, Kaya Scodelario, and Thomas Brodie-Sangster became bigger worldwide stars than they were after starring in The Maze Runner, and you can’t change my mind), and it’s no different with how he directs Allan in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. She already was on many people’s radar with her turns in The Witcher, but her complete knockout of a portrayal here will make her a far bigger worldwide star than she already was.
What she accomplishes with simply her eyes is something that even some of the bigger veteran actors can’t even pull off, which usually only a select few can (Shah Rukh Khan, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, James Gandolfini are the bigger examples of what she does here). The emotional baggage these micro-expressions bring is enough to completely wind you emotionally, especially in how she reacts to Trevathan’s perception of Ape history, as the scales have rebalanced in Proximus’ favor.
It also helps that Ball is a skillful visual filmmaker, creating action sequences that, while brief, are far more kinetic and visually dynamic than in the Matt Reeves pictures. The village raid near its beginning shows his dexterity in working with elaborate visual effects alongside cinematographer Gyula Pados, always keeping the camera moving through Noa’s subjective point of view. The two have collaborated since Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, giving his previous two films a painterly and astonishing visual palette.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ visual look is more in line with the Reeves films, but Ball is still able to give his own personality through its action scenes, with one involving horseback riding that’s the closest callback to J. Lee Thompson’s Apes films (with composer John Paesano subtly paying tribute to Jerry Goldsmith’s motifs). I’d normally fall head over heels and recommend IMAX for a movie like this, but yesterday’s screening was plagued with projection issues in the first half (they were able to fix it before the village raid, but I had to look at a blurry screen for 30 minutes, which was not great). Still, that never detracted from the meticulously crafted visual work at play here (a testament to how good the movie looks), and how it always feeds into the characters Teague, Durand, and the rest of the motion capture cast play, imbuing life and humanity to characters who don’t exist beyond the screen.
The last few minutes of the film aren’t as satisfying as the rest, though, as it quickly shifts into “sequel set-up” mode, introducing characters that were never a part of the story and come out of nowhere just for the movie to go “Ah, stay tuned for part two!” The overall sequence left a bad taste in my mouth and felt like the most unfulfilling sequence Ball crafted through his career (at least the plot twist in The Maze Runner, as silly as it was, took a bold narrative swing that ultimately paid off in the third installment). But it didn’t overshadow what came before, which showcases some of the most exciting images and character work produced in a modern Disney blockbuster in oh-so-long.
Perhaps the cliffhanger may not be great, but we all know that, if done in the same way as Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, subsequent films will be as special as this one. As far as critics who doubted Wes Ball from the get-go, thinking he didn’t have it in him to craft an ambitious, visually striking blockbuster that immediately focuses on its characters instead of the action and obvious winks to the legacy of the franchise, I expect to receive their apology letters by the end of this week. Never doubt this dude again, and let him cook!
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes releases in theatres on May 10.
