Popcorn & A Movie: "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes"

I’ve been watching new movies and robbing Regal blind.

Hey, hi, how are ya. It’s your pal back at the keyboard. Been a bit. I used to write a one of these bad boys every week, then it was every two weeks. Lately, a little longer.

Here’s what happened. It turns out you can’t write like that forever.

Or I can’t, anyway. And no one asked me to. Always wrote for me, thinking maybe what comes out could pay the rent on somebody else’s eyeballs too. I write because I love movies. And because I love stories, like the one behind each motion picture. And, shoot, I write so I’m still good at writing when it matters. Which worked, by the way—I’m a better writer now than ninety-some-odd movies ago. Better be, right?

But at now o’clock, I’m on a lil’ summer break. My digits don’t dance on the keys as much. But they hold a socket wrench, thumb through Pokémon cards with my kids, make the best damn pizza pies in town, fidget during therapy (been going for years—everyone should), and hold out my grubby phone so the Regal kid can scan my Regal Unlimited Card.

Because it’s summer, and summer’s for the movies.

I’m gonna level with you. This Regal pass is a smokin’ deal. At twenty bucks a month and with just one matinee in my small town setting you back a dozen, I can’t resist. Don’t want to either. I’m playing against Regal and, pal, I came for the crown. Two movies cover the cost. Sure. But three smother it. And four drown it. How many movies can I manage to mash into a month? That’s the game.

I swear, I get no cut from Regal. Just one pal to another here.

Lemme let you in on a secret. There’s no Pizza & A Movie rulebook. Wouldn’t need one—a Post-It note would do. Two guidelines only:

1. No bummers.

2. Nothing from this year.

But what this post presupposes is … what if we broke one?

It’s an ape world and we’re just living in it. Image Credit: 20th Century Studios

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

A while back on a Sunday afternoon and with my Regal Unlimited Card burning a hole in my pocket, I went to see the new Apes movie. Sunday matinees are the platonic ideal of of movie-going experiences. What was I gonna do with that time anyway? It’s the 4:30pm of the weekend.

I scanned my pass, padded down the deserted hallway. Extensive testing last summer taught me that Regal screens twenty-two to twenty-four minutes of commercials before the real show starts. I aim to get my seat in a seat twenty minutes after the listed showtime. Works like a charm. I sat down, got back up, sat down, got up, and sat down again. Tried three chairs before finding one that wasn’t back-breakingly broken. When the only person in the screening is a guy who only paid twenty for a month o’ movies, chairs don’t get replaced until they’ve disintegrated into a literal actual pile of steel bits and polyester shreds on the floor.

The final trailer ended and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes began. Tough title. Does the planet run the kingdom? And apes just run the planet? Maybe they thought folks wouldn’t catch on to it being a Planet of the Apes entry if they named it Kingdom of the Apes? But the title tells you this won’t be a four-stars-out-of-four kind of movie.

It’s directed by that guy, the The Maze Runner guy, Wes Ball. He made three big screen versions of those maze-based novels for teens. Weird to hand the Apes reigns to Mr. YA. After all, the previous trilogy—Rise, Dawn, War—put the new Apes movies on the map as the thinking person’s action movies. They tossed around themes like what makes us human and what happens when we lose it to stay on top or what if our predecessors got better at being human than we were? Big brain stuff. Not YA stuff.

What you get with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is an ape main character having a YA novel crisis. One of the only two humans in the movie is of indeterminate age but definitely still has a squishy prefrontal cortex too. Between their respective moments is a lot of mostly great-looking CGI. That’s been the modern Apes movies’ thing. The computer fur realism refuses to let up. But it’s a little take-a-nap-y, pacing-wise.

Good apes and bad apes. Image Credit: 20th Century Studios

Tribes & Time

I walked out thinking Kingdom was good. But not great.

A day later, it gained an extra star for me. Two ideas changed my mind.

First: Tribes.

You got your apes tribe. And then lots of apes tribes. And a mega-tribe, aka “kingdom”. But there’s a human tribe runnin’ around somewhere too, though we only meet one of them before the very end.

They each work on tribe identity with a major in history. Which apes remember where they came from? What about where all the smart apes came from? What did humans used to be like? Can apes learn from the rise and fall of human empires? History matters. And your history matters. Learn from the collective past and won’t forget where you came from. Like they say, if you don’t learn from history you’re doomed to repeat it.

The tribal difference is the apes want to do something new. Humans want to go back to how things were.

Brings us to thing two: Time.

The first thing we learn? That a lot of time passed since our last Apes entry. Here we are, many generations on.

The big ape, what’s his name? Proximus? Proximus wants what he calls “instant evolution”. Wants to leapfrog Father Time. But the human gains he wants to crib from the past are exactly the kinda thing that led to human downfall. We humans embraced technology that leaped generations faster and faster. Until we couldn’t give leaps enough R&D. They became leaps off a cliff to our death.

There’s no such thing as instant evolution. It takes time for a reason.

The young ape wants time. Time for his own tribe to iterate forward. Time for apes to figure out what connects their tribes beyond the monkey version of Julius Caesar. And they get that time by the time credits roll. But are humans out of time? And what happens if they get time back? Will apes be out of time?

Interesting. But you gotta think about these themes on your own, the movie doesn’t put much of them on-screen. If you’re willing to go to Lit class yourself, it’s rewarding, I think. But if you want to sit back and take in a nature-heavy summer movie, it’s a good time too.

Will they make a sequel to Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes? Yeah, they will. We got Kingdom because Disney bought the Apes rights a few years back. They wouldn’t have made Kingdom if they didn’t think they could squeeze out a whole trilogy. It’ll be fun to see what this three-pack shapes up to be about. It’s got things on its mind, but it may take more than the Maze Runner guy to coax them out.

As I write this, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is still playing in theaters. Grab a seat and see it. Treat it like a buffet—just pick up the parts you like. It’s fun to see on a big screen and, hey, the AC on a hot day isn’t bad either.

We’ll get back to Double Bogie someday, promise. Not today, and probably not tomorrow. But someday.

Thanks for hanging on for something different this time! Maybe next time I’ll tell you about the time I saw Furiosa.