Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

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I've never missed an opportunity to watch a Planet of the Apes movie at the cinema since I was a kid in the 70s. And I've enjoyed the current series of Apes movies so far, so I wasn't going to miss the chance to see the latest one. I hate crowds though, so I always leave it for a few days after a film first opens, then go to the pictures when I expect it to be quiet. So it was that I dragged myself out of bed early on a Bank Holiday Monday so I could get to the cinema for the 9.10am showing of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. The current series is being made as a series of trilogies. The first trilogy concerned the life and times of a chimpanzee called Caesar in the near future. He was the first ape to achieve both human-level intelligence and acquire the ability to speak, and became the leader of a tribe of apes as an artificial virus spread round the world, killing most of the human population, robbing most of the survivors of the ability to speak and reason, and granting intelligence to apes. The new trilogy is set generations later - it's not specified exactly how long in the future, but I'd guess at about a hundred years. Intelligent apes are living in scattered clans with stone age technology among the ruins of the old civilisation, and roaming trimes of animalistic humans are known about but rarely seen. Caesar is remembered as a legendary leader to some of the ape communities, but others have never heard of him. The hero is an ape called Noa, who is a member of the Eagle Clan - their lifestyle is based around training eagles to hunt fish for them. They live isolated from outsiders, but one night the clan is attacked by a more powerful group of apes, who take the survivors into slavery. Noa survives and is left at large, so he sets off on a quest to track the aggressors back to their own community and liberate his people. Along the way he meets a very articulate orangutan who is the last surviving member of a group that has tried to preserve some of the knowledge from human civilisation in the form of books that they've preserved, as well as knowledge of Caesar's true character and peaceful beliefs. Noa's tribe have been kidnapped by the followers of an ape called Proximus, who has made himself a king of the local area and now styles himself "Proximus Caesar" - promoting a twisted version of Caesar's philosophy to legitimise his brutal rule and lust for power. Proximus is looking for a mysterious human woman who he believes can help him gain accesss to a vault that contains lost knowledge from before the fall of human civilisation. Knowledge which he intends to use to build his own power. I really enjoyed this film. Although the main character is a computer-generated chimpanzee, the film-makers did a good job of making him relatable. He's young, impetuous, ignorant of the world around him, but also honourable and cabable of learning. The mystery of the human woman is built up nicely, and even at the end of the film I had the feeling that there was more to learn about her. Although the film is set in a fairly limited geographical area, enough hints are given to gain some idea of what the general state of this future world might be. The action moves along with enough time given to exposition, and although the filmls over two hours long, I never got bored. I hope the next one in the series is just as good.