What a wonderful day! The brand new trailer for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is here and there is a lot to unpack…
Based on the setting, which is way more decrepit and teeming with lots of fresh follage, quite a bit of time has passed since Caesar’s passing. This means that the main ape we see in the trailer is not Cornelius, Caesar’s son, as we originally believed. It is actually a new ape called Noa, played by Owen Teague. It’s hard to tell what is going on, but it appears as though this Noa is plagued by visions and dreams that he cannot explain. From there it’s likely that Noa embarks on a journey to solve these puzzling riddles.
In this future, Apes have evolved dramatically, while humans have taken a few steps back. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Well, it seems like this installment is returning to the timeline established in the very first Planet of the Apes movie from 1968. There are a lot of similarities. Even one of the Orangutan characters resembles the iconic Dr. Zaius. Relax, it’s not him. The well-groomed and rather fasionable Orangutan is Raka, played by The Orville‘s Peter Macon. Interestingly, the necklace he wears in the trailer has quite a bit of history… It looks an awful lot like the window symbol that Caesar drew in his cage in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. This could be a sign of Caesar’s overall influence which may be god-like.
Through the trailer, we get to see just how far humanity has fallen. Reverting back to our primal and mute state, humans are forced into hiding and persued by the new dominant species. This is when we meet Freya Allan’s Mae. After crossing paths, it looks like Mae and Noa will be forced to work together.
We are then bombarded with beautiful shots of the new world, intense confrontations between apes, but the most interesting thing to appear… Is an observatory. Now, the most recent trilogy never really dived into the crazier side of The Planet of the Apes narrative, but it actually gets pretty weird. There’s a very small reference in Rise (2011), but it’s never a primary focus, unlike Mark Wahlberg’s 2001 Planet of the Apes. In the original film, Charlton Heston’s character crash lands on a planet two thousand years in the future. The stinger at the end is that he didn’t crash land on an alien planet ran by apes, it was actually Earth. Rise of the Planet of the Apes contained a brief “easter egg” teasing the ship’s disappearance, but never followed up on it. Could we see that iconic storyline come to fruititon? Perhaps this is a subtle tease.
The last Ape character we meet is by far the coolest character introduced in this trailer. Played by Kevin Durand, Proximus Caesar is an Ape leader who has his own kingdom along the shore. With an army at his disposal, we could see this ape take a General Thade approach… Destroy all humans and conquer everything. With a crown placed firmly on his head, this Proximus sees himself as a king. But why does he share Caesar’s name? Now that’s a question we desperately want answering.
Synopsis:
Director Wes Ball breathes new life into the global, epic, franchise set several generations in the future following Caesar’s reign, in which apes are the dominant species living harmoniously and humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is written by Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver. Jaffa and Silver are both veterans of the franchise having written and co-produced 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and produced War for the Planet of the Apes. The film will be produced by Patrick Aison, Joe Hartwick Jr., Jaffa, Silver, and Jason Reed.
Check out the full trailer below:
The film stars Owen Teague, Kevin Durand, Dichen Lachman, William H. Macy, Freya Allen, Peter Macon, Travis Jeffery, Neil Sandilands, Sara Wiseman, Ras-Samuel Welda’abzgi, and Lydia Peckham.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is set to be released in cinemas on May 24th, 2024. Are you excited for the next installment in the Planet of the Apes franchise? Let us know in the comments.
