Casually, it’s been 7 years since the last Planet of the Apes film, subtitled Supremacy, was released. It was in 2017 and yet I remember it like it was yesterday. No doubt because the work of Matt Reeves was memorable, he who understood how to contrast the two races: apes and humans. A confrontation which ended in favor of the ape people, despite the death of Caesar, the original ape. This is also the starting premise of this new Planet of the Apes – The New Kingdom which is almost starting from scratch. New characters, new issues, new director, younger obviously, and perhaps the start of a new trilogy, the idea being to continue to dig into the lore of the work written by Pierre Boulle, while imagining new things. Well, not only is it rather well done, but technically, it’s even more accomplished.
Planet of the Apes at the cinema is a franchise that is doing quite well. Nine films and two TV series in half a century, which have generated more than $2 billion at the box office; we can say it, Pierre Boulle’s original novel has become a real object of pop culture and a certain form of science fiction. Did you know that our own Pierre Boulle got the idea for his novel in 1962 during a visit to a zoo while observing gorillas in their cages. He was not only impressed by their almost human expressions, but he immediately imagined reversing the roles. What if it was these great apes who were the zookeepers, while the human beings were kept in cages? That’s how he got this idea for this mysterious planet where apes rule the world, while Humans have returned to the state of wild animals. Until now, the films had dealt with the consequences and origins of this role reversal, but not the transition. This is exactly what Planet of the Apes The New Kingdom will try to do, that is to say better explain to us how the Apes continued to evolve while humans continued to regress.
To bring all this to life, Hollywood hired a certain Wes Ball who you probably know, so perhaps not for his name, but at least for his work, since it is to him that we owe the Labyrinth trilogy . He was born in 1980, so he is part of this generation of filmmaker who grew up with the codes of pop culture, but also video games and there are quite a few moments in his film which echo certain titles, like The Last of Us or Horizon, which obviously share the same theme of the post-apocalyptic where Humanity has returned to an almost primary state and nature has regained its rights. Besides, I don’t know if you know, but Wes Ball’s next film is none other than the adaptation of Zelda to the cinema. It was he who was chosen by Nintendo and Sony Pictures to bring Link and Hyrule to life. Looking forward to seeing the result, especially after what he managed to do in this Planet of the Apes The New Kingdom.
DON’T WANNA BE A MONKEY WRENCH
Besides, a little reminder, but the story of this 10th film is indeed the continuation of the trilogy initiated in 2011 by Rupert Wyatt, since it takes place 300 years after the events of the episode Supremacy and therefore of the era Caesar. The latter is no more, but given that he is the original monkey, the one who began to speak, he is set up as a reference, a prophet, even a God somewhere. His actions and his words had an impact on the legacy he left with all the apes, who now dominate a ravaged world where nature has reclaimed its rights. But where Wes Ball’s film is interesting in more than one way is that it will explore the consequences of this evolution in monkeys. They all know how to speak perfectly, regardless of clans, races or origins, but above all, they have realized that knowledge is an extremely powerful power. “Knowledge is power” said Francis Bacon in 1597 and it is one of the great principles of Caesar’s teachings, in addition to having tirelessly repeated “Apes Together Strong”. This is precisely what will drive the common thread of the film, which will quickly make us understand that evolution has not only had positive effects. Because the more apes get closer to man in their state of mind, the more they go astray. With intelligence and conscience comes wickedness, betrayal and above all perfidy, everything that makes up the human spirit and its emotions.
And this is precisely where the character of Noa is perfectly chosen. On screen, he is played by the young actor Owen Teague, who the general public does not yet know, but who could well explode in the years to come. I had seen a lot of messages saying that it was going to be difficult to move on from the character of Cesar, especially since he was played by Andy Serkis, who is none other than Mr Performance Capture. The specialist in this technology which is constantly used in video games, it is he who democratized it. Gollum, Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Snoke in Star Wars Episode VIII, or even Baloo in the live-action Jungle Book, it’s him. In the JV, he also worked quite well. In short, the guy is a crack and obviously, when your name is Owen Teague, you’re 25 years old and it’s the first time you’re doing performance capture, you ask yourself questions. But it is clear that the result is quite simply successful, especially since this novelty for the young actor goes hand in hand with the character of Noah, who is like a blank page when he embarks on a journey to save his clan. He is young, he doubts and he will learn and be influenced by many people whose paths he will cross. These meetings will nevertheless allow him to forge his identity and become the new leader that we are all waiting for. And precisely because he is smooth at the start that the concept of influence on him works wonderfully. In his journey, he will learn to know the real world, everything that surrounds him, with its moments of joy, of sadness and all of this will shape him, for the better and for the worse.
HUMAN VICE
Like the other films in the franchise, this New Kingdom deals with strong themes such as humanity, ecology, but also racism, in all its forms, especially as we go further, since it is about two races who cannot live together. Each claims ownership and ownership of this world and neither is truly right or wrong. It is in the way things are done that things are interesting to analyze. I would have liked us to go further into the fall of the human being in the film, but this theme is unfortunately overlooked. There are many sequences which explain how the ape took over man and it is always very interesting, but there is an imbalance between the treatment of the two species. This is undoubtedly intentional, especially with what happens at the very end of the film, which can be interpreted as a twist in fact, but if you are looking for human beings, they are just reduced in the character of Mae, played as the screen by the young Freya Allan who we had already seen at work in the series The Witcher on Netflix, where she played Ciri. Frankly, she does well, she even ensures, especially that there is real progression in her character, with all the mysteries that surround her. In truth, what’s clever about this film is that Humans are almost absent from the film, of course, physically I mean, but Humanity is present everywhere. The humanity towards which these evolved apes are heading, or that which Mae represents, almost under a prism of survival. But I won’t say more, because it’s worth finding out for yourselves.
BOSSA NOVA
Concerning the staging, know that Wes Ball defends himself. It’s far from being the new Spielberg, mind you, but he knows how to take care of certain shots, notably wide shots, especially those which seem to have been designed for IMAX. There is a certain grandeur in some of his images, and it allows us to gauge the world in which apes and humans now live. On the other hand, what is very appreciable is that Wes Ball is a man of the field and that he loves shooting in natural settings. In a recent interview, he explained that shooting in a studio slows things down quite a bit, especially because there is air conditioning, whereas shooting in real conditions brings a crazy and unique energy. There is more spontaneity. And it shows directly on the screen, and it’s all the more impressive since the film is full of special effects and CGI everywhere, all the time.
So much so that in the end, we can no longer really separate the true from the false. Is this shot full CGI, or is it a mix of live action and digital effects? There is a fighting scene at the end, which takes place half in the water, with a place being flooded and quite honestly, I had a hard time guessing if it was full CGI or if the actors were plunged into the fleet with their performance capture suits a la Avatar 2. Either way, it proves that Weta are the CGI bosses and the proof is handed out on a silver platter once again, so much so that they don’t hesitate to take close-ups on the monkeys’ faces. This is where we realize that all CGI is not necessarily a problem, especially when it is well used and directed. The problem with this rejection of CGI is that we eat too much of it and with a quality that has deteriorated considerably in recent years. Blame it on reduced working times and which botches the final result, I’m not telling you anything.
To conclude, know that Planet of the Apes The New Kingdom is a real success and even a nice surprise too, because going after the episode Supremacy (and the Caesar / Andy Serkis era) which had concluded the last trilogy, this was no small feat. The film was able to find a new lease of life, dig into the lore where necessary, and above all continue to question us about the almost impossible cohabitation between two species that want to be dominant.
OUR RATING: 8/10
