LIKES:
Spectacular Animation
Great Sound Editing
Fantastic Writing/Dialog
Wonderful world-building Story
Acting Is Beautiful
Very Deep And Sets Up Lots Of Plots
Summary: The start of the likes involves the production quality that Ball's team brought to the screen. Kingdom's animation is beautiful, motion capture at its finest with a blend of reality and CGI coming together in ways that may not completely erase the line between worlds, but make it miniscule. The characters hold many astounding details, movements captured in surprising accuracy, textures that change as they are affected by the environment, and emotions that somehow blend humans and apes into one. Accompanying the visuals are sound effects and editing, and come together to bring out that primal fury that comes with every grunt, groan, and roar of the dominating forces. The sounds are not distracting, but rather accessories that help convey each person's emotions, which supports the strong writing packed into this film.
Past the production quality, the story is impressive for a first installment into the next trilogy of this movie franchise. Kingdom is a world-building movie bridging the audience to the next arc of this franchise as they shape the direction of this franchise. They present elements of the old to remind us of the previous trilogy but never get lost in the past to distract the movie from Noa's quest to explore the world. The writers made Kingdom its own film, building from the foundation to make something that can be an exciting trilogy depending on the sequels to come. A deep narrative that explores so much and integrates these pieces into a movie that flowed and came off natural as the next wave of evolution occurred, bringing with it several plots to pursue in the next installment. The dialog carries a lot of the film in the philosophical debates of existence, humanity, and character, yet seldom got caught up in corny monologues or soap opera temper tantrums. And the actors and actresses who spoke those words were true testaments to their trades. I won't call out individual names, but human and ape actors had such chemistry and conveyed the tension between the two species and their beliefs. Assuming they were the ones acting in the motion capture suits, the actors certainly showed off their physical and verbal performances to match the magnitude of the animation effects.
DISLIKES:
Long
Slow AT Times
Needs Some Action Like The Prequels
William H Macy Needed More Involvement
A Tad Predictable.
Where The Plot Will Match
SUMMARY The movie is long and at times it did feel like it was two-and-half hours with where it dragged (especially during the transitions between acts). That slow aspect was tough at times as we meandered through the dialog that we had heard several times by that point was annoying, but tolerable and fortunately not as frequent as I've seen in other movies. A bit of action could have helped mitigate some of these time-dilation moments and spice things up as Rise of the Planet of the Apes did for me. Sure, some moments are exciting, but the centuries have dampened the action a bit and require another movie to potentially get to the action that had me smiling in delight. Outside of that, the movie's plot has a lot of predictability in the foreshadowing dialogue and focused scenes. Nothing that destroys my enjoyment of the character development, but again could have used just a tad more surprise to bring that wow factor. William H. Macy could have had a more engaging character arc as well, given the potential they were building with him, but alas his character had more of a metaphorical use than I would have liked. Finally, the plot is exciting with the vast directions they can take with the story, but at the same time, I'm not quite sure where or how it will connect to the first movie that started it all. Is that a bad thing? I guess it depends on the type of fan, but the fact there are still plenty of years between them offers some leniency. Still, very interesting with the vague direction where we can go.
The VERDICT: The latest movie of Planet Of the Apes is a wonderful promise of an engaging, character-driven story that will be worth the investment in the future. A solid focus on storytelling and worldbuilding, Kingdom establishes a fracture point to take the series into a new direction that may never cross the original, and does so with a deeper lore than I had anticipated from the trailers. With great dialogue, writing, and acting to sell it, this movie really shines in the quality of a believable relationship between man and ape that is intriguing to watch. As for the production quality, it is a prime specimen of Hollywood evolution that I hardly encourage to be seen in theaters, preferably Imax, for the fantastic visuals and high-definition sound. Sure I myself wanted more action to help speed up and handle the longer run-time of the movie, and perhaps some better use of some actors. Yet, that's about all I can point at for this film and feel this is a solid film to see:
My scores are:
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi: 7.5-8.0 Movie Overall: 7.0.
Spectacular Animation
Great Sound Editing
Fantastic Writing/Dialog
Wonderful world-building Story
Acting Is Beautiful
Very Deep And Sets Up Lots Of Plots
Summary: The start of the likes involves the production quality that Ball's team brought to the screen. Kingdom's animation is beautiful, motion capture at its finest with a blend of reality and CGI coming together in ways that may not completely erase the line between worlds, but make it miniscule. The characters hold many astounding details, movements captured in surprising accuracy, textures that change as they are affected by the environment, and emotions that somehow blend humans and apes into one. Accompanying the visuals are sound effects and editing, and come together to bring out that primal fury that comes with every grunt, groan, and roar of the dominating forces. The sounds are not distracting, but rather accessories that help convey each person's emotions, which supports the strong writing packed into this film.
Past the production quality, the story is impressive for a first installment into the next trilogy of this movie franchise. Kingdom is a world-building movie bridging the audience to the next arc of this franchise as they shape the direction of this franchise. They present elements of the old to remind us of the previous trilogy but never get lost in the past to distract the movie from Noa's quest to explore the world. The writers made Kingdom its own film, building from the foundation to make something that can be an exciting trilogy depending on the sequels to come. A deep narrative that explores so much and integrates these pieces into a movie that flowed and came off natural as the next wave of evolution occurred, bringing with it several plots to pursue in the next installment. The dialog carries a lot of the film in the philosophical debates of existence, humanity, and character, yet seldom got caught up in corny monologues or soap opera temper tantrums. And the actors and actresses who spoke those words were true testaments to their trades. I won't call out individual names, but human and ape actors had such chemistry and conveyed the tension between the two species and their beliefs. Assuming they were the ones acting in the motion capture suits, the actors certainly showed off their physical and verbal performances to match the magnitude of the animation effects.
DISLIKES:
Long
Slow AT Times
Needs Some Action Like The Prequels
William H Macy Needed More Involvement
A Tad Predictable.
Where The Plot Will Match
SUMMARY The movie is long and at times it did feel like it was two-and-half hours with where it dragged (especially during the transitions between acts). That slow aspect was tough at times as we meandered through the dialog that we had heard several times by that point was annoying, but tolerable and fortunately not as frequent as I've seen in other movies. A bit of action could have helped mitigate some of these time-dilation moments and spice things up as Rise of the Planet of the Apes did for me. Sure, some moments are exciting, but the centuries have dampened the action a bit and require another movie to potentially get to the action that had me smiling in delight. Outside of that, the movie's plot has a lot of predictability in the foreshadowing dialogue and focused scenes. Nothing that destroys my enjoyment of the character development, but again could have used just a tad more surprise to bring that wow factor. William H. Macy could have had a more engaging character arc as well, given the potential they were building with him, but alas his character had more of a metaphorical use than I would have liked. Finally, the plot is exciting with the vast directions they can take with the story, but at the same time, I'm not quite sure where or how it will connect to the first movie that started it all. Is that a bad thing? I guess it depends on the type of fan, but the fact there are still plenty of years between them offers some leniency. Still, very interesting with the vague direction where we can go.
The VERDICT: The latest movie of Planet Of the Apes is a wonderful promise of an engaging, character-driven story that will be worth the investment in the future. A solid focus on storytelling and worldbuilding, Kingdom establishes a fracture point to take the series into a new direction that may never cross the original, and does so with a deeper lore than I had anticipated from the trailers. With great dialogue, writing, and acting to sell it, this movie really shines in the quality of a believable relationship between man and ape that is intriguing to watch. As for the production quality, it is a prime specimen of Hollywood evolution that I hardly encourage to be seen in theaters, preferably Imax, for the fantastic visuals and high-definition sound. Sure I myself wanted more action to help speed up and handle the longer run-time of the movie, and perhaps some better use of some actors. Yet, that's about all I can point at for this film and feel this is a solid film to see:
My scores are:
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi: 7.5-8.0 Movie Overall: 7.0.