kingdom of the planet of the apes REVIEW!!! :D

SPOILERS FOR KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES 

Just got back from Kingdom and I am very pleased to say it was very good! Planet of the Apes is currently 4 for 4 in films and the sequel bait at the end got me excited for the next one. I am also very pleased to say that the main characters were surprisingly engaging. I was skeptical of Noa and the others at first but the found family thing he, Raka, and Mae had was really fun. Raka in general was amazing he's one of the best characters in the film 100%, definitely fills the void Maurice left (upon his death I repeated the phrase, "#@!$ THIS MOVIE" repeatedly in my head for approx. 2 minutes). Speaking of which the cameos from the original characters at the beginning was a very welcome surprise to me, it was very nice seeing Maurice and Rocket one last time (didn't catch Bad Ape though, I might have just missed him). Proximus was also pretty good, not as good as Koba but that's a lot to expect. There's always the chance he comes back though; we never see his body (haha). Anyways, yeah Proximus was good, the dinner scene was good, and his death scene was satisfying. I do have to admit I was kind of surprised at how little screen time the guy had. He ended up being more of the overarching villain while his minions did most of the work I guess. Anyways, visual effects were par for the course, which is to say, amazing. The acting was also pretty good; Noa was a decent lead, Raka brought some comic relief, Proximus was intimidating, etc. The movie was also pretty interesting thematically; it had very prominent themes of religion and culture, and I think they were handled really well. I think the movie makes you ask yourself questions a lot more than the other movies; the feasibility of coexistence being brought up again and questioned by Noa and Mae was really interesting, as was the part where Mae kept the gun behind her back. I think the human-ape relationship is going to be very interesting to see develop in future movies. Anyways, yes it was a very good movie I think. I think it ranks higher than War and Rise, but I still think Dawn is my favorite. 

I feel like Planet of the Apes is something that shouldn't work as well as it does. For a series of movies about talking apes, it's actually pretty thoughtful and takes itself just the right amount of serious. Combine that great writing with stellar visual effects and good direction, and you get a surprisingly high quality series of movies. I just hope that they don't get lazy with the future installments; so far Apes is on a really good streak with their movies and if they can keep it up and have 2 or even 3 trilogies with every entry being decent, that could be something really special I think. 

VERDICT:

pretty good :)