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Skip to main content Open Navigation Menu Menu Story Saved To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Close Alert Story Saved To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Close Alert Sign In Subscribe Subscribe Subscribe Search Search * Politics * Business * Hollywood * Style * Culture * Royals * Celebrity * Video * Podcasts * Archive * VF Shop * What Is Cinema? * Newsletters * Archive * VF Shop * Magazine Chevron This one's on us.You are reading your first free article. $2.50 $1 per month for 1 year + a free tote.Get Digital Access Already a subscriber? Sign in Limited Time Offer — $2.50 $1 per month for 1 yearGet Digital Access Review A STELLAR FRANCHISE CONTINUES ITS REIGN IN KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES The fourth film in the modern Planet of the Apes series is dark and compelling. By Richard Lawson May 8, 2024 Photo: 20th Century Studios Save this storySave Save this storySave Long have we loved the apes. At least since Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a 2011 reboot of the Planet of the Apes franchise that is thoughtful and chilling, carefully balancing dread and awe. That sweeping sci-fi was improved upon in the marvelous Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, a Shakespearean tragedy housed within a bracing action movie. War for the Planet of the Apes, from 2017, is also terrific, smaller in scope but nonetheless gripping. The apes have done well by us in the last 13 years, standing solid while so much other franchisery has quaked and collapsed. We’re zoomed forward in time—by “many generations,” as a title card explains—for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (in theaters May 10), a somber epic that mulls over prejudice and religion in its sprawling two-and-a-half-hour run. Directed by Wes Ball, Kingdom doesn’t reach the rattling grandeur of Dawn. But it's another worthy installment in a series that is pretty much unparalleled in contemporary times. HOLLYWOOD DAILY Film, TV, and entertainment industry news. Plus, every Friday, a special Awards Insider edition. Enter your e-mail Sign Up By signing up you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. What’s happened over those many generations is that the human world has gone near entirely to seed, bringing things to, essentially, where Charlton Heston found them in the original 1968 film. Skyscrapers are now strange monoliths covered in flora. The notion that homo sapientes, reduced to scavenging herds, were ever a sentient alpha species has become mere legend. And the apes, living in a kind of pre-industrial era, have lost common purpose as they’ve evolved. Kingdom primarily concerns an adolescent chimpanzee named Noa (the remarkable Owen Teague), the son of the leader of a clan of apes who commune with eagles and live, essentially, as an indigenous American tribe might have before Europeans came to annihilate them. This eagle clan is aware of humans, but they view the few they’ve interacted with as pesky and feral nuisances. The apes are barely cognizant of the great struggle depicted in the previous three films, in which an ape named Caesar achieved sentience and led a campaign of independence. Caesar is long dead but has, as Kingdom intriguingly lays out, become a sort of Christ figure, his name revered but also co-opted for wicked purposes. Another sect of apes, led by a formidable bonobo, Proximus (Kevin Durand, giving good classical villainy), invokes Caesar’s name in a quest to find a lost trove of human resources: namely, the technology and weapons he suspects lie hidden in a last-ditch bunker on the California coast. How Noa and Proximus’s existences come to clash is the great adventure of Kingdom, a film that insightfully explores the possibilities set up by the stories that have come before it. The Apes films have always been deft at handling conflicting loyalties; Kingdom advances that ambivalence in startling ways. We root for Noa, so sensitively played by Teague; we also want the best for Nova (Freya Allan), a human who makes an uneasy alliance with the film’s kinder apes. What Kingdom keenly argues is that both heroes are ultimately at cross-purposes. The potential for a future in which apes and humans live in enlightened harmony is not wholly denied, but Kingdom grimly suggests that the autonomy of one group is most likely achieved at the expense of the other. That quandary is perhaps frighteningly relevant to our own reality, in ways both subtle and obvious. This modern Apes franchise has never had anything good to say about the way intelligent creatures organize themselves. We are inexorably drawn toward the violence of asserted dominance; we create awful things. What Kingdom offers, however briefly, is the hope that at least one contingent of apes might eschew the worst of innovation, that they might duck away from the arc of history as it streaks past them. But the film also seems to understand that that is largely a fantasy. Of course these forces will come to bear on that more enlightened faction, whether or not they take up hideous means themselves. This is either cynical or realistic, depending on your worldview. Either way, the film leavens its dark sentiment with a deep and enduring compassion. It’s there in the graceful performances, in the stirring and solemn visuals of a lush environment long free of burnt fuel and endless waste. That Kingdom re-invents the world only to point so damningly to its inevitable destruction is sad—its wonders are terribly fleeting. Yet they are still wonders. If we must be made to face our own worst tendencies, it is a small grace that they are guised in these miraculously realized digital creations, fake apes that fume and worry and grieve so convincingly. They protect us from the full glare of our corrupted nature—for the duration of the film, anyway. MORE GREAT STORIES FROM VANITY FAIR * Cover Star Chris Hemsworth on Fear, Love, and Escaping Hollywood * Everything to Know About the Worm That Allegedly Crawled Inside RFK Jr.’s Brain and Died * See Every Look From the 2024 Met Gala Red Carpet * Meet the Mastermind Behind New York’s Celebrity Playground of Choice * The Vatican’s Secret Role in the Science of IVF * Griffin Dunne on the Tragic Death That Reshaped His Family * Visit the VF Shop and Get Our Brand-New Tote (and Much More) WATCH Watch the 2024 Met Gala Red Carpet Replay - Presented by eBay and Porsche Most Popular * Nikki Glaser Would Be Disappointed in Herself Too, If She Weren’t So Damn Funny By Chris Murphy * Kevin Spacey’s Deep History of Alleged Sexual Assault Is Exposed in New Documentary By Savannah Walsh * Eurovision 2024 Concludes With Controversial Grand Finale By Eve Batey * RICHARD LAWSON CHIEF CRITIC Richard Lawson is the chief critic at Vanity Fair, reviewing film, television, and theater. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. Richard’s novel, All We Can Do Is Wait, was published by Penguin Random House in 2018. You can... Read more See More By Richard Lawson » Read More Television Hacks Sets ’Em Up and Mostly Knocks ’Em Down in Season 3 Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder have become one of TV’s most reliably engaging duos. By Richard Lawson Award Season Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone Run Wild in Poor Things Follow-Up Kinds of Kindness Plemons’s initial reaction to Yorgos Lanthimos’s new movie: “Oh my God. What?” By David Canfield Award Season Inside Mariko’s Jaw-Dropping Shōgun Decision: “It’s What She Wants” Anna Sawai breaks down the pivotal penultimate episode of FX’s epic limited series—both in terms of how difficult it was to film, and how long she’s carried the emotions since. By David Canfield Hollywood The Real Science Behind Dark Matter Will Melt Your Gray Matter A look inside the brain-bending adaptation of Blake Crouch’s best-selling novel, starring Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly. By Anthony Breznican Award Season Shōgun Ends, Baby Reindeer Takes Off, and a Thrilling Emmy Race Begins Will we ever have a limited-series battle this creatively ambitious again? Why this fierce competition is one to savor. By David Canfield Award Season In Shōgun, Cosmo Jarvis Took the Adventure of a Lifetime—But Didn’t Know How to Say Goodbye The actor behind John Blackthorne examines the Shōgun finale’s rich ambiguities, his final moments onscreen, and just how close he felt to the character through to the end. By David Canfield Movies Sex and Tennis Make a Good Match in Challengers Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist form the season’s most seductive triangle. By Richard Lawson Movies Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt Work Movie Star Magic in The Fall Guy A testament to both stunt people and the screen icons they’re pretending to be, The Fall Guy is a true talent showcase. By Richard Lawson Hollywood The Blair Witch Project Original Cast Members Request Retroactive Payment The 1999 blockbuster made nearly $250 million in theaters and launched three sequels, By Eve Batey Hollywood Baby Reindeer: Martha and Donny Are “Almost a Love Story,” Says Jessica Gunning “When you hear that this is a story about a female stalker, I don’t think you would ever imagine it goes the way it does,” says Gunning, who plays said stalker on the Netflix sensation. 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