The fourth installment of the Planet of the Apes series has finally been released and similar to other the previous versions it felt a bit flat, it was interesting but its probably the concept that might be too simple and needs someone who could really spark things up, its a planet rule by apes, always the same topic and it was not different this time other than the characters. This new film starts three centuries after the events of the previous three movies and here we see that the apes are the new masters of the world and humans are now the savages. Honestly, I had a lot of expectations for this one this movie, not saying that its the worst from the franchise although less than I expected. The previous films of Apes series were quite good, so I was expecting the same or higher, potentially to blow my mind away. Did it meet the expectations? Well, I cant give it more than a 7 at best.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11389872/
- Platform: AppleTV+
The Good Stuff
Visual Feast for the Eyes
Let start with the positive part not that there are many but this movie looks very good in terms of CGI, I think they did a good job at making the fictional characters as realistic as possible. The apes do look life like that one could easily be mistaken for real monkeys in front of a camera making it easier to transmit their feelings to the audience. It is quite something that we have come from people in rubber suits to what we have today with the advance of tech like AI now days. Its not anymore just the hair and looks its about the facial expression themself, nothing is left out and everything has been brought to life so well. It has to be said the whole world they have created is rather believable my only concert were the hawks although we don't see them that much close up so I guess its fine. The movie environment is sort of like National Geographic channel mixed with post apocalyptic science fiction and it is good, there have been others that look better but I really can't complain.Some Standout Performances
Although not all of the characters are memorable, there are a few that are quite memorable indeed for example Kevin Durand is quite entertaining as Proximus Caesar. It is quite funny because he appears to be this evil ape king and he looks like he is having so much fun being the villain. There is also Peter Macon as Raka, the wise orangutan who has all the knowledge about ape history, he does a rather good job of playing a calming and somewhat wise character.
The Not So Good Stuff
Plot Fall Flat So Did Pacing and Characters
This is where things begin to get a little bit tricky because it is some what hard to enjoy a movie where you basically know its exact direction and becomes highly predictable. The plot of the story seems quite cliche at times and too repetitive. You have your young hero, who at some point loses everything and must go on a quest to save his people. He also gets some valuable lessons and finds his companions in the most unexpected places, sound familiar? Yeah close to every other Planet of The Apes movie, that why I like so much the 2001 iteration where other aspects like space travel gets involve. Although this is not necessarily a negative aspect, it would have been interesting to see something fresh especially when the previous Apes movies were quite innovative but its like production decided to kill the proven good ongoing thing and reboot everything at once, no bueno.Another problem is related to the pacing been close to 2.5 hours, it feels even longer because Noa does take a while to get to the beach where all his family members are hostages. Suddenly after the first hour you finally get to the beach and face this massive door so your first though is open the damn thing so we can get some action going on but even so it took some time, my point is that the entire travel Noa takes latter on made me feel a bit desperate to get action back into the movie.
The main hero, Noa is rather uninteresting, he depends too much from others, may be too naive to be the Hero, at this point in time after Caesar apes are very well develop and active but Noa and his family are very tame and passive. He is supposed to be this noble, heroic and kind hearted ape who is the successor of Caesar but he is not as none of Caesar aggressiveness when needed or charisma. The protagonist Nova, the human girl character also seems to be somewhat underutilized at first when she was not talking but latter on became more active, at first she is present but she is not very useful to the plot of the story, latter one when she starts to pick up I was expecting the same thing from Noa but it was not until the end when we saw those Caesar genes kick in and probably was too late.
The Big Picture
Connecting to the Past, Setting Up for the Future
The movie attempts to discuss such important issues as the possibility of people forgetting history and the pattern of oppression, all because of a virus that made humans start to degrade. This is rather peculiar because the apes who were once subjugated by people are now subjugating other apes and what is left of the human population. It has a theme of how power can make people evil and how one can easily become what he or she hates. It’s not very sophisticated but can easily spark the imagination to start thinking of what could happen if something similar came to life, how power changes from humans to apes so fast when humans are suppose to be advance race.Definitely, one of the strong points of the movie is the link to the first two films, if there was not such reference and this would the very first movie of the franchise I think there would not be a second part, this is not a bad movie although not one that I would watch more than twice. There are many small details that will be easily noticed by fans of the series with the most important been the legend of Caesar who is been forgotten and twisted by apes themself, the irony. With this last concept you can tell apes are becoming the very same thing as humans, self destructive as they advance.
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