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| Credit: Walt Disney Studios |
"Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" is the latest film (2024) about a post-apocalyptic world in which apes have become the dominant life forms, spouting human-like speech and intelligence. Meanwhile, humans have regressed to a beast-like existence. Or have they? Unknown to the apes, some intelligent humans have managed to survive in underground bunkers and are plotting a comeback as a species, which would threaten the dominant status of chimps, gorillas and orangs.
The main character, the smart chimpanzee Noa, is taken prisoner (alongside his entire clan) by the gorilla dictator Proximus and is faced with a tough moral dilemma. Either co-operate with the still-intelligent humans to save his clan, while risking a new war between apes and unforgiving Homo sapiens in the future. Or support Proximus, whose projected authoritarian kingdom could save apekind by capturing human high tech weapons, but at the expense of everybody´s freedom. Noa choses the first option, presumably setting the stage for a sequel.
There are obvious references to the original "Planet of the Apes" movie (1968) throughout this production, and I believe some scenes were actually taped at the same location. A funny difference is that the orangutans are the good guys. Noa meets the orang Raka, who belongs to the "Order of Caesar" working to restore peace between Pongidae and Homo. Caesar was the effective founder of the ape civilization, but generations after his death, few remember his message of tolerance or his laws. Raka can read and write, and comes across as a kind of monk-intellectual, trying to salvage as much knowledge as possible during the Dark Age. The catch is that the orang doesn´t know that some humans can still speak and have no intention of co-existing with their former circus animals. Thus, Raka is the archetypical "naive intellectual".
Even worse is Trevathan, a dissaffected and weak human who collaborates with Proximus against his own kind. Trevathan also looks like a parody of an intellectual, presumably a fatalistic and demoralized hippie resigned to the fact that his utopian dreams have been dashed. The man spends his time entertaining the gorilla-king with stories about the ancient glories of Rome, until his grizzly end.
While somewhat interesting (*are* there LOTR-like elements in the plot? What about "MonsterVerse"?), "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" strikes me as an extended "Planet of the Apes" fan fic story. I´m not sure if the average viewer remembers all the details from the 1968 film! Still, a sequel might be worth doing. Is there some reason why the main character has a name resembling the Biblical character Noah, for instance? Do the still-talking humans have a doomsday weapon? Et cetera.
With that, I close this review!
