Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review: A lacklustre sequel

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a direct sequel to its 2017 predecessor, War for the Planet of the Apes, but set three centuries afterwards. It’s a disappointing instalment in a franchise I’ve been a fan of from the beginning.

This is a disappointing instalment in a franchise I’ve been a fan of from the beginning.

Do a brief stocktake of how much humanity has achieved in the past 300 years and you will understand the problem faced by the titular characters in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, the fourth instalment in the reboot of the film franchise that started with Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall and the Statue of Liberty back in 1968.

This movie is a direct sequel to its 2017 predecessor, War for the Planet of the Apes, but set three centuries afterwards. The apes have been running the world for that long but are nowhere near what humans achieved before they lost the plot.

They can speak English, but a bit like a poorly-educated Yoda. They can’t fly, don’t have guns, which may be a positive, and have yet to invent the flush toilet. It takes about 300 years of film time, but eventually this technological deficiency becomes central to the plot.

A gorilla known as Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand) lords it over a coastal kingdom of apes. He, and all apes, consider humans to be a stupid, mute species, but there’s an awareness this was not the case in the past.

He’s determined to open a vault that he believes holds the technological know-how that took homo sapiens to supremacy. In ape hands, such power would mean “we won’t live in cages again”.

The job is taking a while because there’s no Bonobo Nobel around to invent dynamite. Part of his slave workforce is a clan of kidnapped chimpanzees.

One who escaped, Noa (Owen Teague), is on a mission to free his comrades, accompanied by Mae (Freya Allen), a human he meets on the way.

That’s the set up. A hazardous journey away from home. Ape versus ape. Can the human be trusted?

In that sense there are similarities with the Maze Runner trilogy the director, Wes Ball, made between 2014 and 2018. This is his first feature outside of that series. The screenwriter, Josh Friedman, created the television series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and there’s a bit of that character in Mae.

The strengths of this film are the action scenes, some of which nod to the 1968 original, such as humans being hunted through tall grasslands, and its occasional humour, including the simian response when Mae first speaks.

But overall this is a disappointing instalment in a franchise I’ve been a fan of from the beginning. It monkeys around at the start, is far too long and lacks both the headline ingredient of its predecessors – apes versus humans – and the related fundamental sci-fi question: will we survive?

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (M) **

145 minutes

In cinemas

★★