Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Long time fans of the Planet of the Apes series may be excited to note that, just as the 2010s Rupert Wyatt and Matt Reeves trilogy dissected and embellished 1972's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, director Wes Ball and screenwriter Josh Friedman's Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes performs a similar trick with the much less impressive Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Ball's reimagining takes the warring settlements of J Lee Thompson's film - a hippie commune ran by apes and a sunken, irradiated city packed with mutated humans and their mouldering technology - and blows them up into two larger, computer generated fiefs. Whereas Battle signalled the terminal decline of the 70s Ape films, the series then demoted to television-level adventures, Kingdom comes hot on the heels of three successful blockbusters. Any reduction in scope is therefore unnecessary. The peaceful community this time is, again, one filled with apes but, rather than huddle in bric-a-brac sets, these primates now scale the overgrown frames of rotted skyscrapers and practice falconry. Their aggressors are a different tribe of chimpanzees, an army of slaves who are lead by a wily monarch who has become obsessed with looting the treasures promised by a long sealed, nuclear bunker. 

Although digital technology is used to describe the decomposed expanses of the far-flung future, in the main the computer trickery of Kingdom is more illustrative and actorly than other, similar budgeted blockbusters. The majority of the film's cast are painstakingly animated apes who must share a prolonged amount of screen time with Freya Allan's very real and very live action Mae. Not only do these figures interact physically, they do so emotionally. The prevailing tenor of these encounters isn't always one of camaraderie either. As the film rolls on, it becomes clear that Mae has her own agenda, one not necessarily in keeping with the aims of her friendly ape allies. So it is that the film's many digital effects vendors, including Wētā FX, and the motion captured actors sitting hunched on green screen sets have to simulate a creeping sense of unease or suspicion, one that prickles up in characters who are, fundamentally, naïve but not necessarily childlike. Planet of the Apes then, as a property, continuing to represent something different in the big spend, American filmmaking space. As with its nearest contemporaries, the desire to reproduce something uncanny remains but the execution here is much more subtle. Awe and tomfoolery obviously have their place but Kingdom's appeal is an ability to transmit empathy, or clear interpersonal connections, and accomplishing this in such a way that Ball's film consistently overrides any favouritism that could be informed by the viewer's native species.