Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

 

Genre: Action/ Sci-Fi

Time: 2h 25mins

Director: Wes Ball

Quick Summary: Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike

*monkey screaming*

That's most of the film

After watching through all 9 other Planet Of The Apes films, I was looking forward to finally seeing one in the cinema. Maybe I had hyped myself up too much for it, or maybe I knew it would be difficult to follow the story after Ceaser's death. But this could have been better. 

Really this should have been split into two films as it feels really messy and wanted to run through as much as they possibly could. There was no time to process something as we'd already moved on to the next scene. It was all set up. Though I don't mind set-up films, it left me disappointed in the middle as the kingdom and proximous were really rushed through. I wanted more time with it and learning how this all happened. But no. We had to spend time with the human.

At first, I thought it was really interesting to have a human that could fully talk. Then I grew tired of her and I found it very distracting it was very obvious she had some sort of lip gloss and mascara on. We don't really understand what is fueling her actions, so half the time I felt a bit confused.

A lot of the action and climatic moments were thrown in at the start of this one after another so it was a big bombardment of cool actions and fights which admittedly I was hooked into. Then, it all calmed down until right at the end. There's nothing wrong with this as it can be used to fuel the build-up or tension until the end, but, this was just so messy it lost it. As for the said action, it was so good. An all-out battle explodes within the first 20 minutes and it's pure destruction and apes screaming. 

I loved how this looked too with the overgrown buildings and architecture, it was dystopian but not desolate. Nature had fully taken over with the depletion of humans and it was so cool to see how the apes built things and their ideas of buildings. Admittedly too there were some really well-shot scenes like a chase/hunt scene in tall grass that's shot overhead; the opening which is an egg hunt at dangerous heights; and a really tense bridge fight. 

Even with its flaws, I like this. I just feel as if they rushed through too many things and personally would have been better if it had been split into two. Also, I really loved that they keep the small jokes coming as they're never distracting or taking away the tone. Like when our probable new main monkey learns the word “shit” was pretty funny to me.

7/10