I am a human, but I love those apes and that planet they got. I really have enjoyed the entire PLANET OF THE APES series except for the Tim Burton one. Even that has amazing Rick Baker makeup and a beautifully goofy ending (that everyone else hates). But the original and all its ‘70s sequels are fun in different ways, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES reinvented it surprisingly well, then DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES and WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES pushed this incarnation into full on greatness.

This new one KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES builds off of the previous trilogy, but somebody could start here if they wanted to. I was surprised by the prologue, showing the funeral for central character Caesar (with a cameo by Maurice!). But it tells you all you need to know: that a virus made apes smarter, killed most of the humans, and Caesar was the first leader of the apes, but now he’s dead. This story takes place “many generations later,” when apes have established different settlements with their own cultures and Caesar is revered as “the first elder.”

The brilliant director of the last two installments, Matt Reeves, up and moved to Gotham City, so this one comes from a new team, other than producers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, who wrote RISE. This time the director is Wes Ball, who did the MAZE RUNNER trilogy (which it turns out I need to see) and the writer is Josh Friedman (WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE BLACK DAHLIA, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, TERMINATOR: DARK FATE). Friedman worked on the AVATAR sequels, and this seems like a movie that might not exist without them – a shamelessly sincere fantasy adventure that’s mostly performance capture/animation but feels like live action and involves a conflict between nature and technology.

Like the Na’vi, the apes have different tribes. Here we meet a trio of young chimpanzee friends, Noa (Owen Teague, IT, THE EMPTY MAN), Soona (Lydia Peckham, Cowboy Bebop) and Anaya (Travis Jeffery, UNBROKEN), of the Eagle Clan. They’re climbing high trees and cliffs that it took me a bit to realize were buildings grown over with plants, searching for eagle’s nests. As an important rite of passage they each must bring home an egg for tomorrow’s bonding ceremony, because their people are falconers, they train birds to, among other things, bring them fish.

When the kids return to their horses (man, it’s still cool to see apes ride horses) they find that one of their blankets has been stolen by an unseen creature that they nervously chase after. It drops the blanket while escaping into a tunnel that they’re forbidden to enter, but leaves the blanket behind, and they can tell by its putrid smell that it was an “echo” – their name for humans, which most of these apes tell legends about, but don’t seem to have ever seen before.

Their clan values good climbers, and Noa is a particularly good one, but he still thinks he disappoints his father Koro (Neil Sandilands, “Harbour pilot [uncredited],” BLACKHAT), who he will some day replace as “Master of Birds.” One little moment I love is when Noa nervously goes up to his father’s bird tower to tell him he got an egg from the “top nest” and there’s a guy there that seems like security or something. His name is Oda, he wears blue face paint, he looks intimidating. After Koro has left Oda asks Noa, “You climbed top nest?,” surprised. When Noa nods, Oda says, “Hard climb” and gives him a fist bump. You just get the sense that that means everything to Noa, for a tough guy like that to offer him respect.

Then everything goes to shit. First, Noa discovers that the echo followed him home to steal more stuff. Then he breaks his egg in a scuffle. Then, while out at night looking for another egg, he sees Oda get killed by an army of vicious, scary-masked raiders armed with cattle prods and commanded by a gorilla named Sylva (Eka Darville, Power Rangers RPM). And worst of all Noa’s horse gets spooked and runs, the invaders follow him to the village, burn it down, start taking apes prisoner.

One thing I really appreciate is that when Noa climbs up to his father and tries to tell him it’s his fault, Koro immediately shuts that shit down, treats him as a peer, they free the birds and try to fight off Sylva together, but fail. The next morning Noa climbs out from the wreckage, the only one left except for the birds. And he sets out to go through that forbidden tunnel, find where these apes came from and rescue his friends and his his mother Dar (Sara Wiseman) from enslavement.

So you see, this really is a straight up fantasy movie. A young man from a peaceful village is preparing to enter adulthood, the expectations of living up to his important father weigh heavy on him, then barbarians tear through, burn down the village, kill his father and kidnap his loved ones. So he goes on a daring journey where he meets new allies, has his eyes opened about the larger world, and proves to himself and his people that he’s worth of the mantle of Master of Birds. And by the way, it must be noted that the whole idea of a movie about apes training birds is impossibly fucking cool.

The first and most influential new friend Noa makes is the orangutan Raka (Peter Macon, TUROK: SON OF STONE), who at first takes him for one of the barbarians and taunts him for looking young and not scary without his mask. Raka is unlike anyone Noa has ever met. He wears a medallion of Caesar’s symbol (based on the window in James Franco’s attic) and says he’s the last of the Order of Caesar. He can’t read, but he collects books to continue “the work” of Caesar’s teachings and search for knowledge. Most unusually for his time, he believes that humans and apes can co-exist peacefully. So when the echo (Freya Allen, GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE, BAGHEAD) shows up and tries to steal food from their camp he shocks Noa by giving it to her and trying to talk to her. He also names her “Nova” and says that’s what they name all humans. (A reference to WAR’s reference to the first film.)

They travel together, find a herd of zebras, then a herd of humans, and they try to leave her with them. Run along, little human. Be free. But then those fucking raiders show up and they recognize Nova as a human they’re specifically looking for. And they would’ve gotten her if she hadn’t (middle spoiler) yelled out Noa’s name. So he rescues her.

Yes, although most of this era’s humans are mute (and unintelligent?) there are still colonies hidden away that descended from those who were immune to the virus. They can speak, but know better than to do it around apes, who will see them as a threat. Her name is actually Mae, and she can lead them to where Noa’s friends were taken, a settlement on the coast led by a mad king bonobo who calls himself Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand, K-9: P.I., 3:10 TO YUMA, ABIGAIL).

Here’s one of the those interesting ideas the PLANET OF THE APES series always tries to mix in. Caesar is this influential historical figure now, but everyone interprets him differently, there’s some misinformation and co-option going on. To the Eagle Clan I think he’s kinda like Ben Franklin or someone like that. They know the basic legend of him but don’t think too deeply about it. To Raka he’s more of a religious leader or philosopher. Raka has a pretty accurate (but a little idealized) concept of what Caesar’s ideas were, and really believes in them (although even he says “Caesar will forgive you” pretty casually when they violate the “ape shall never kill ape” law for self defense).

Meanwhile there is this coastal clan that also uses Caesar’s symbol, they yell “FOR CAESAR!” as a war cry while committing atrocities, their leader names himself after him, maybe considers himself a reincarnation? Proximus actually has a human toadie played by a famous actor I didn’t know was gonna be in it and part of his job is to read Proximus books about Roman history. He’s really into that shit. One of those guys.

I knew Kevin Durand was voicing/mo-capping one of these characters, I assumed it was the gorilla, had no idea he was Proximus. But this is one of the great performances in this technology. He’s scary and weird, he stands up on a stage and makes these authoritarian type speeches, but when he invites Noa into his quarters to try to recruit him you see a disarming side to his charisma. His goal is to open a gigantic vault left behind by humans – I believe the slaves are being forced to dig it out? – and to me he seems sincere in his belief that the technology inside can be used for the betterment of apekind. I mean he’s obviously doing it immorally, and for the sake of his own power, but there are persuasive parts of his argument, and that makes him more interesting.

Of course, Mae has been up to something this whole time. She knows how to get into the vault, wants to get at something that’s inside, and also convinces Noa that they have to destroy it so Proximus can’t have it. Kind of cold, if you think about it, that the only way to protect the future is to destroy everything humanity felt was important to save. But when they go in there we don’t see the Mona Lisa or Songs in the Key of Life. It’s not the library of Alexandria, from what we see. It’s mostly tanks and guns.

There’s a great moment when our heroes are confronted by Proximus and his thugs on the way out, Noa’s mom held hostage at knife-point, and Mae turns the tables by shooting one of them. The apes are awed – they had tanks and machine guns in WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES, but that was like 300 years ago, these guys have never seen such a thing. The trouble is, Proximus seems more excited than scared. He tells Mae she’s free to go if she tells him where to get more of those things, and then you see her realizing her mistake. By resorting to using one gun one time in front of them she might’ve sparked a whole future of bloodshed.

Mae is mysterious because she’s torn between two worlds, but how much does she really know of either? She gets angry about how the things in the vault belong to humans not apes, and seems desperate to rebuild the world as it was, but she never lived in a world like that, she never knew anyone who lived in a world like that, or whose great great grandparents lived in a world like that. To be fair (SPOILER) we learn that she either comes from or is in contact with a subterranean military base, where they seem to have fully maintained uniforms and equipment and everything – we don’t really know what goes on down there, how much civilization they’ve re-created, or how thoroughly they’ve indoctrinated her. And there’s a part where, from what I can tell, she disobeys one of their orders. So I hope future installments have her growing and learning. We gotta have at least one human we can be proud of.

On a more superficial note I’m fascinated by Mae’s clothes. She’s kinda got rags like the feral humans, except hers are shaped like a tank top. Feral Sarah Connor. And her pants are stitched together with patches and everything but they’re perfectly form fitting. She looks good in those rags. I’m not complaining, I like it. I always notice this on The Walking Dead, too – they always manage to scavenge clothes that seem tailored to them. An important post-apocalyptic skill.

One of the few complaints I have about this whole modern APES series is that they barely bother with the female ape characters. Caesar had a wife who didn’t get to do much, and Soona is kind of in that tradition. Also it’s weird that they make the fur on the top of her head resemble a human hairstyle so that we know she’s a lady. Anyway, I hope they find more for her to do in the next one. We need a new Zira.

The best thing about KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is that it’s much more about the apes than the humans. So my one misgiving is that as it brings humanity back into the picture it becomes a little less exciting. I had no problem accepting the ape world as it unfolded but now I’m suddenly questioning everything. I buy that these apes are 300 years later in the timeline, but these humans act like they’re the survivors of the original pandemic. Maybe it’ll click when they explain it more in a sequel, but for now it doesn’t seem to make much sense.

There’s some ambiguity at the end that we’re left to ponder and decode, and it kinda seems like it’s pointing toward a crazy direction. On the other hand, the reveal of more humans with more military equipment feels like it’s meant to tease the conflict in the next one, but it just seems like the same conflict from the previous two movies, that we were happy to have moved on from. So that feels a little limp. But I do trust them to do something interesting with it. They certainly earned that trust here.

One thing I love about these modern APES movies is that the lines are a little blurry. There are some very bad bad guys, but Caesar was a complicated leader, more enlightened than his enemies but still a pretty scary guy from a human perspective. (Justifiably so. He had plenty of reasons to hate humans.) That tradition continues here, as we seem to be getting the story of Noa and Mae learning from each other, but in the end it’s a shaky truce at best. They don’t trust each other and don’t pretend to. There was a part I loved in a trailer where Noa said, with Mae on his back, “together strong,” seemingly adjusting Caesar’s “apes together strong” slogan to mean apes and humans. But that’s not in the movie and it’s not a lesson he learns this time around. Next time, baby.

KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is a really good movie, a big summer blockbuster entertainment with a soul. I recommend seeing it this week and getting swept away by it before FURIOSA comes out and you only want to watch that for the rest of the summer.