Starring Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, William H. Macy, Lydia Peckham, Travis Jeffrey, Sarah Wiseman, Neil Sandilands, Eka Darville, Ras-Samuel Weld A’abzgi and Dichen Lachman

Directed by Wes Ball

20th Century Films

Generations after Caesar’s war, apes are the dominant species and clans live peacefully across the known world. Noa, Soona and Anaya are young members of Eagle Clan, a group of chimps who hunt using eagles. Their quiet life is interrupted first by the discovery of an ‘Echo’ or human making their way into their valley and second by the brutal invasion of Sylva, the head of King Proximus Caesar’s army. The King has need of every ape, whether they want to be taken or not. Aided by Nova, the mysterious young Echo, Noa sets out to save his friends.

Josh Friedman is one of the best writers working today and his measured, precise storytelling here does nothing but pay off for the final hour of the movie. It’s an intensely tidy story, but also one that blows up the premise of the previous trilogy in a very specific, and very exciting way. Ever since the references to the space mission disappearing in the first reboot movie, there’s been an expectation that that thread will be picked up. Here, it’s implied very heavily, it is and the result is a very clever piece of storytelling that ties this to the reboot trilogy, the classic originals and even the pretty disappointing Tim Burton movie.

It’s all centred around Freya Allan, whose Nova (later Mae) is a deliberately obtuse figure hiding in plain sight. Allan’s screen presence is undeniable and here she’s given some really nuanced, complex stuff to do. Reading between the lines, Mae is a character who’s going to blow up everything we think we know about this world and her actions are always obtuse and always compelling. The final act in particular ties her choices to the fact the world now has two sentient species in it and does so in a moment that’s both a colossal action beat and a quiet character note. The ending here is the quietest, most hopeful, and most tense this series has produced and it does the near impossible in giving the movie a satisfying ending and setting up a much larger story too.

A lot of that success comes from Friedman’s script and the willingness it has to embrace albeit cautious hope. The original reboot trilogy films are fantastic but frequently vastly sad and this is, as a friend described it ‘new testament’ to their ‘old testament’. That quiet hope is embodied in arguably the strongest cast these movies have had. In addition to Allan, Peter Macon is fantastic as the spiritual successor to the original trilogy’s Mauriece, an Orang-Utan monk with a wry wit and a deep compassion thanks to Caesar’s teachings. Those teachings echo up and down the movie in a myriad ways and Durand’s monstrously charming monarch is the embodiment of what happens when they curdle. Witty, charming, murderous, Shakespearean and everything Caesar wasn’t. His shadow, and his fetishization of human culture, is the seed of conflict here and he and Eka Darville as his terrifying general are viscerally threatening.

But the movie’s soul is in Clan Eagle. Owen Teague is superb as the principled, troubled Noa and gets some welcome comedy out of his ongoing partnership with his father’s very judgy eagle. Sara Wiseman is great as Dar, his patient and determined mother and Lydia Packham and Travis Jeffrey are great as Soon and Anaya, his best friends. They’re all well-rounded, interesting individual characters and the special effects vanish completely within seconds. You know so much of what you’re seeing is CGI but through a combination of Gyula Pados’ cinematography, the stunning effects and the performances everything melds to create a very different and compelling world.

Verdict: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the best possible return to this world. Wes Ball’s direction is sweeping but never loses its characters and while the movie takes its time laying out its stall every choice matters and every choice pays off. Intensely complex, morally deep, character-driven action science fiction that delivers much and promises even more. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart