Planet of the Apes: Reign: Read the review of the new film

Sometimes a film uses images in such a powerful way to shape a worldview that these images become unavoidable beyond themselves. In the case of Monkey’s Planet in Matt Reevesthere are two films, particularly the War that closed the trilogy: images that emulate the founding myths of the western, from the script choices (the search for a safe settlement is a western theme par excellence) to the visual language (the fusion in Caesar’s death when his body merges with the mountain and makes the founding myth a literal image).

These images are unavoidable; today Monkey’s Planet it is defined by them, in the same way that the ruined Statue of Liberty delimited the original film series around dystopia scifi.

This becomes clear now in the premiere of Planet of the Apes – Reignreleased seven years after War. This is not only the first continuation without the chimpanzee Caesar from the recent trilogy, but mainly a continuation that exchanges Reeves’ brand for an uncertainty, with the aroma of commissioned work: the role of director who Wes Ball takes over after having signed the trilogy Maze Runner. What Ball does is follow, to the best of his ability, themes and tones that were defined by Reeves.

To a large extent this is beyond Ball’s control, if we accept that these images, themes and tones have become ingrained components of the franchise. The idea then is to debug them. The plot reinterprets a revisionist western classic, Traces of Hate (1956), to place the chimpanzee Noa (Owen Teague) in an alliance with a human savage, Mae (Freya Allan), to avenge the destruction of his primate clan, attacked and enslaved by the new candidate for Caesar, the bonobo Proximus (Kevin Durand).

The fact that the plot takes place “many generations” after the trilogy – now primates communicate normally, and it is humans who seem definitively devolved – does not prevent the western from Monkey’s Planet remain foundational. In other words, the big question remains the battle for civilization or what’s left of it, and what kind of society will be born from the new choices for conciliation or violence. When Noa returns to her village and finds it burned down, it evokes the 1956 film, but the bridge with Traces of Hate is consumed even in this constant (and changeable) tension between who is savage and who is civilized.

Hence the development of this The Reigneven when focusing on characters presented in an ephemeral and functional way, such as the trained intellectual played by William H. Macy, manages to imbue actions and consequences with a moral dimension that justifies and supports these presences. Could Macy be better utilized? Probably. But when he imposes twists on the script and the film doesn’t dwell on them, the narrative moves forward with purpose. Moral decisions accumulate in a crescendo, as happened in the trilogy with each trial Caesar faced with violence.

What The Reign Maintaining this consistency in relation to what came before ends up having another advantageous effect, which is to facilitate post-production work. The film doesn’t look like the typical American blockbuster rushed by the overtime of its contracted computer graphics companies. Both the previous logistics process is maintained (shooting in real locations with motion capture makes everything more tactile and the bridge over the river scene is a high point in physicality) and the database seems reused and improved to remake the physiognomies of the characters. primates. The result is that this The Reign It does not seem like a repetition or a derivation of its predecessors, but a step forward in a construction of a universe that has always been guided by the foundational. This is what the reboot and the original film series (consisting of five features) have most in common and, again, there would be no reason to be different.