‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ is a surprising, ambivalent Moses story in the best ape planet tradition

The recently deceased monkey expert Frans de Waal was very pleased with the new crop of monkey planet films. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes he called “impressive” in 2014, the monkey politics and chimpanzee behavior looked lifelike. The chimpanzee is territorial and aggressive, according to De Waal: give him a gun and he will use it.

Monkey Planet films traditionally make no illusions about primate behavior, whether that concerns humans or apes. In 2024 we are ready for a new series. The buzz around Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was mediocre, with the at most competent Wes Ball (Maze Runner) at the helm as director. But the result is pleasantly surprising: an unhurried adventure film with a classic twist hero’s journeydubious characters, clear action and beautiful examples of world building: the cities overgrown by jungle look breathtaking.

More than two centuries after the end of humanity, monkeys live an idyllic existence as primitive farmers. Chimp Noa’s village is dedicated to taming eagles, and although the usefulness remains mysterious, it immediately produces dizzying scenes as three young chimps search for eagle eggs.

Gorillas on horseback

Unfortunately, masked gorillas on horseback burn the village, carry off the clan for slave labor, and leave Noa for dead. The farm boy has to go out into the wide world to free his clan from the clutches of the monkey pharaoh Proximus Ceasar and is given traveling companions: a wise orangutan mentor and a young woman who talks strangely enough.

In this eighth part we are back to the beginning: the film Planet of the Apes from 1968, which is often quoted – see the scene in which monkeys on horseback hunt people with nets. At the time, astronaut Charlton Heston landed on a planet where apes rule and humans rule cattle. In the finale this turns out to be our own future after a nuclear war. The ape world is just as rotten as ours, with conservative old orangutans using brute gorilla force to subdue idealistic young chimpanzees.

The ape world is as rotten as ours, with conservative old orangutans oppressing idealistic young chimpanzees

In the film series that followed in the 1970s, those good chimps time travel to our world, where they are discriminated against and enslaved until the revolutionary chimpanzee Caesar frees them from their chains. Quite melancholy sci-fi; after a 2001 Tim Burton remake that everyone would rather forget Rise of the Planet of the Apes continued that serious tradition successfully in 2011. A design virus against Alzheimer’s wipes out humanity but makes monkeys intelligent. The hero is the intelligent chimp Caesar who grows up with humans and ends up in the zoo: actor Andy Serkis, who previously played Gollum and King Kong, portrayed it very believably thanks to motion capture technology. Two clever sequels followed under director Matt Reeves. In Dawn of… (2014), Caesar, as the new monkey king, wants to live together with the remnants of humanity, but the implacable bonobo Koba unleashes a war. In War of… (2017), a half-insane colonel locks the apes in a concentration camp, but luckily a snow avalanche wipes out the degenerate human armies from the map.

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Monkey politics

In Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes man no longer seems to play a role: the weakened virus made him stupid, there is only monkey politics. Hero Noa ends up at the court of King Proximus Caesar, an ambitious demagogue. Monkeys – including Noa’s clan – submit to his authority, because Proximus has vision. He realizes that the lost human civilization with its radio, cars and airplanes was superior and collects books and intelligent people, because they are still there. His project: opening a safe full of human weaponry.

The story – redemption from slavery – seems like a straightforward Moses story, but does bully Proximus Caesar ultimately not act more in the apes’ interests than noble Noah? And isn’t Noa’s feisty human companion Mae the enemy? Is it monkey versus man again? That ambivalence is in the best monkey planet tradition: a great cornerstone for a new film series.