Beneath Disney’s conquest of 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios), Walt’s subsidiary has a bright Summer schedule ahead at the box office. With the impending Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness, and Alien: Romulus set to be checkpoints throughout the season, 20th/Disney should enjoy profitable waves that crash into the auditoriums for a wide variety of audiences. Their most readily accessible and projected hit, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, is the launching pad for their quarterly earnings.
Kingdom, the fourth entry in the rebooted franchise started by Fox with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), is set to make its mark on an audience wowed by the entries in the trilogy. A trilogy where Matt Reeves took over with the stunning Dawn (2014) and War (2017) continuations that skyrocketed Reeves into stardom. Now in the hands of Wes Ball, a studio plug-and-play guy behind the Maze Runner trilogy, Apes wants to continue reaping what Reeves sowed.
For audiences that loved what Reeves accomplished in elevating Rupert Wyatt’s Rise, they may find themselves less than thrilled with the release of Kingdom. A film as long as any epic, without the imagination, wonder, scope, or conflict to justify continuing where War left off. This is an unfortunate circumstance for hiring a filmmaker who has a faint understanding of the franchise’s strengths dating back to 1968. Kingdom teases the audience with anticipated jolts of enthusiasm, but is ultimately left hung out to dry by a VFX showcase that can’t make up for what it clearly lacks: creativity.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is set generations after the events of War. Now, well separated from the allegorical inverse in Caesar, Kingdom has a chance to start anew with its own rules beyond the effects of a predecessor. Here, apes Noa, Anaya, and Soona fall into the pit of Proximus Caesar’s kingdom built off the back of Caesar’s charter. Only this time, “Apes. Together. Strong.” is less about the unification of a species, but rather, Proximus’ manipulation of it to service his dictatorial image. This is an enticing premise for an audience fresh off a spice-induced high from Dune: Part Two. The issue with Wes Ball’s approach is that his efforts notably lack the passion to creatively intertwine the echoes of the past (within the world and context of the overarching franchise) with a present story caught between the past and future.
In 1968, before the dawn of the blockbuster in the 1970s, The Planet of the Apes was a dazzling exercise in costuming, sound, and a premise that teed up home runs regarding theoretical science at odds with religious fanaticism. It is anything but a movie designed for caged animals. There was a specificity to its nature that is widely accessible, but equally provocative through the recycled conflicts that have permeated throughout time. Especially when you consider how the film’s twist contextualizes all of it with an image of liberty buried half-alive. A remnant from a time before things changed is overwatching the same conflicts that continue regardless of power shifting between species.
Reeves and Wyatt’s entries understood that by articulating a near-mythical inversion of a leader’s rise to uniformed power. The original film and even its sequels continuously subvert the identity we’ve associated with the dynamics of a charted course through human evolution. The problem with Wes Ball’s entry is that he neither maintains the sci-fi pulp, classic Greek tragedy storytelling nor subverts the dynamic between the audience and the story. This renders Kingdom caught in a stalemate between the traditional Summer blockbuster tropes and the legacy of cinema’s great apes. As a result, the film is stricken with an identity neither tempted by the uneven landscapes nor all that concerned with capitalizing on this specific moment in the franchise’s timeline.
When Reeves took the apes to their most operatic form, including his iteration of Et tu, Brute? in Dawn, it would make sense for Ball to pull the reins back and decrease the scope before building it back again. The difference here is that Ball is limited to the creativity established by Wyatt and Reeves. It’s one thing to use predecessors to inform the story, but another to continue banking off of the audience’s association with it and refusing to recontextualize it amidst newer, perilous circumstances to stoke conflict. Kingdom certainly includes the relationship to Caesar’s spoken word, and how it has been misconstrued, manipulated, or outright ignored across generations, but the problem is that the film doesn’t go far enough with it. Like many other blockbusters made year in and year out, the film alludes to a concept but ends up failing to capitalize on its potential.
Something is fascinating about the misshapen context amidst a time where the written word is practically obsolete compared to the echoing chambers of speech, but this dichotomy is limited. Think of Rise/Dawn/War in how those films explored the relationship between Caesar and Koba. Whether they were tested in labs or domestically nurtured shaped their philosophy, and the story worked to earn a payoff that satisfied their respective arcs because it was establishing its own narrative terms. It was never working in the interest of honoring legacies or franchises, and that is exactly how Kingdom fails to separate itself from the blockbuster muck around it, as well as the franchise it’s in. Although the events of Kingdom may be separated by a large sum of time, it can’t stop alluding to, nodding, and visualizing images, lines, and cues we are used to seeing. It is a standard practice for movies of this caliber to use previous items when the storytellers can’t find a way to invert, continue, or reinvent the wheel. This is a poor excuse for a film in a franchise that prides itself on an array of thematic approaches ranging from political leaders to police states.
This isn’t to say Kingdom isn’t without merit or chin-scratching curiosity, because its rising action escalates atop the building blocks of a relatively “new” world. Although I’m personally hesitant to say the action is where Ball shines, it is undoubtedly the strength of the film. The benefit here is that no set piece operates on the same wavelength as the last. Whether it’s scaling skyscrapers or foot chases through a forest, Ball makes wonderful use of his setting to elevate the story’s progressions by finding new ways to thrill us. It would be nicer if these moments felt like they meant more to the thematic pinnings of the story, but it’ll suffice when there is a distinct motivation behind each sequence even if they are a bit too distant from the stakes. Which makes the final third of the movie incredibly disappointing.
Kingdom continuously builds toward spectacle by hiding just enough information to feel like the film is eventually going to land a hefty punch. The problem is that it inches and crawls toward the conclusion, and the time spent between characters severely lacks depth and narrative interest. These are moments where the film regurgitates information we’ve already learned from the predecessors, and although it may be rhythmic within the scope of the franchise, the information is distilled. Once again, there are a handful of allusions to broader ideas about waning faucets of communication, but Ball literally vaults a third act reveal that is as much a revelation as the sun coming up the following morning. It’ll make you wonder why the previous 90 minutes waited so long to get there without filling the world with enticing details.
For all the build-up and unique details surrounding Proximus’ kingdom, there is just as little time spent there for the audience to discover a new corner of this world. Including the sandy shores and Roman texts being read to Proximus, the gravity of the exterior details, as well as the intricate character details, never coalesce into a feeling worth remembering. This happens when there is little exposure to the deepest parts of their immediate world (due to how much time the film spends recalling what we already know). As a result, the audience rarely ever learns something new. Unlike the preceding entries, there is a severe lack of community between the characters, and when your protagonist isn’t interesting, the spectacle can only take the audience so far.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes isn’t necessarily a bad movie, but it is remarkably disappointing, and it bottoms out due to all of the time they wasted toward an underwhelming conclusion. Before then, the movie often takes its time as Noa shoulders his way forward, with shots that hold a beat better than most of the other blockbusters you may see this year, and yet, it doesn’t amount to much. Although there are repeated attempts to potentially explore the dark ages of communication, the discovery of ancient technology, and the deification of Caesar, these ideas only exist within the realm of untapped potential.
Unlike the near-mythic groundwork shot by Reeves, it is astonishing how rarely Kingdom feels like its thoughts are swirling with enthusiasm for the material it is working with. In this regard it ultimately feels too much like everything else the Summer slate tends to show us, and for the audience, another wasted opportunity for a hotly anticipated movie. There isn’t much room for thinking, but plenty for anticipation of empty meaning behind locked doors left to be explored in more sequels.
I wouldn’t call Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes totally unsuccessful, but look at how succinct Wyatt and Reeves’ films were without sidestepping its own story in service of what has come before, and what will come after. Kingdom doesn’t really build anticipation for what will come next either because we’re already aware that this world won’t look too different from the one here. Like many of the over-budgeted fluff pieces embroidered every Summer, there are clear limitations in the visions of a director who is inspired by everything else being made around him rather than the franchise he’s working in.
Commentaires