There\u2019s a sense of new beginnings to the fourth instalment of the rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise. With a new director\/writer team at the helm (The Maze Runner\u2019s Wes Ball and Avatar: The Way of Water\u2019s Josh Friedman), a leap forwards in time a few hundreds years from the previous film and a more family friendly fantasy adventure vibe, Kingdom is clearly the first part of a new volume rather than just the next chapter.<\/p>\n
Not that it reveals exactly what this volume might involve until very late in the running time.<\/p>\n
The first three films now form a self-contained trilogy, detailing how apes \u2013 under the leadership of a chimpanzee called Caesar \u2013 came to inherit the Earth after a human-engineered virus both increased ape intelligence and reduced human\u2019s to a primitive, speechless state. Kingdom opens generations later, but, intriguingly, chooses not to reveal exactly what the new status quo is on the planet.<\/p>\n
Instead, we\u2019re introduced to the new world order through the eyes of an isolated tribe of chimpanzees who specialise in eagle husbandry. They have little knowledge of the world before the apes\u2019 ascendance and their relationship to humans, or \u201cechoes\u201d as they call them \u2013 their elders either don\u2019t know or have been withholding the truth.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an Arcadian idyll until the tribe is discovered by a thuggish party of apes who burn the village down and enslave the villages they don\u2019t kill. They\u2019re from a clan ruled by the power-hungry Proximus Caesar, who has twisted the memory of Caesar into an ugly, new creed.<\/p>
Only Noa (Owen Teague), the son of the eagle-whispering clan\u2019s chief, escapes capture as he\u2019s left for dead. Waking up the day after the attack, he tracks the Proximus apes back to their kingdom, and makes some unlikely allies along the way: an orangutan called Raka (Peter Macon) who worships the \u201ctrue\u201d teachings of Caesar (which he interprets as peaceful co-existence between human and ape) and a young female echo (Freya Allan) who has secrets of her own.<\/p>\n
While providing some decent thrills, spectacular action, engaging characters and an efficient, though ploddingly linear, plot, Kingdom is serviceably entertaining potboiler rather than a must-see cinematic experience.<\/p>\n
![\"Kingdom](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2023\/12\/Dawn-of-the-Planet-of-Apes-d84bbd6.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Kingdom")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>After the bleak, hard-hitting, character drama of the previous two Matt Reeves-directed Apes films, Kingdom is a less intense offering. Gone are the war movie allusions, replaced by fantasy tropes. The eagle-chimps coming across as Hobbit avatars, while the evil apes are not-so-distant cousins of orcs. Even Noa\u2019s quest has a definite \u201cFellowship of the Ring\u201d flavour, with our wide-eyed rustic hero learning about the dark truth of the wider world.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t help that, despite advances in CG effects, the apes actually come across as more cartoony. This may have something to do with the fact they can all talk now, so that the film resembles the live action Jungle Book, with anthropomorphised animals, rather than apes that have learned to speak. Some goofy mugging from Proximus doesn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n
Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n