With this muscular instalment of the consistently impressive rebooted Apes franchise, director Wes Ball, previously best known for the propulsive but somewhat generic YA dystopian Maze Runner series, graduates, with honours, to the big league of Hollywood helmers. This is a top-quality summer blockbuster, bringing fresh blood and new ideas into the series while staying recognisably within the worlds so meticulously created in the previous three movies.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is set many generations in the future, long after the events of War for the Planet of the Apes and the conclusion of the story of Caesar, who is now regarded as a Moses-like legendary figure. But the thing about legends is that they get appropriated and twisted to fit the current narrative. Wise old orangutan scholar Raka (Peter Macon) follows the word of Caesar to the letter; Proximus (Kevin Durand) cherrypicks the primate unity theme but disregards the bit about ape not killing ape. And youngster Noa (Owen Teague), son of the leader of a chimp clan that trains and hunts with eagles, hasn’t even heard of Caesar.
