Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes Slyly Teases The Weirdest Movie In The Series
The following contains spoilers for "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes."
It's been 7 years since "War of the Planet of the Apes" brought to an end the story of Caesar the first ape capable of speech, who led a revolution and forever changed the world. Now, we're entering a new chapter in the "Planet of the Apes" saga with "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes," set generations after the events of the previous film.
The movie follows Noa (Owen Teague), a member of the Eagle Clan who witnesses that entire clan being conquered and taken captive by a tyrannical king named Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand). When Noa sets out to free his people, he joins forces with Raka (Peter Macon), an orangutan from the Order of Caesar, and a human named Mae (Freya Allan) who is also on the run from Proximus' apes.
Proximus needs Mae because she is a rare human who still has the ability to speak at a time when most humans are feral, and he thinks she knows how to enter a secret underground silo with advanced technology left by humans. Proximus' dream is to find technology that will allow him to evolve beyond either apes or humans. Though the film doesn't go all the way with this idea, the fact remains that "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" toys with the best part of the weirdest movie in the entire franchise — "Beneath the Planet of the Apes."
Teasing Beneath the Planet of the Apes
"Beneath the Planet of the Apes," of course, is the first sequel in the "Planet of the Apes" franchise, which trades protagonists and follows a different astronauts who crash-lands on futuristic Earth. Brent, the astronaut, ends up discovering a population of telepathic mutated humans who worship a nuclear bomb and live in the underground ruins of New York City.
It is an inherently silly and bizarre concept, even for a franchise about a futuristic world populated by talking apes. No wonder, then, that the reboot trilogy grounded things and mostly avoided any mention of telepathic mutants. Still, that doesn't mean Matt Reeves (or now Wes Ball) shied away from lightly hinting at the movie itself. "War for the Planet of the Apes" introduced a ruthless military cult with an alpha and omega as their symbols — the same as the one on the bomb worshipped by the mutants. Now we have "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes," which doesn't explicitly show humans living underground, or communicating telepathically. However, Proximus does talk about evolving beyond humans or apes via technology, the same technology that (if it were real and shown in a future film) could make humans evolve to have telepathic abilities.
As weird as the telepathic bomb-worshipping humans are, they are an important aspect of the "Planet of the Apes" franchise. After all, they bring with them the absolute bleakest ending in a motion picture ever — the moment Charlton Heston's Taylor gets mortally wounded (as per Heston's request) and accidentally activates the doomsday bomb that literally explodes the planet. Like the previous trilogy, Wes Ball's new film is a prequel, meaning we could see the lead-up to everything, including telepathic mutants.