Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)
The recent Planet of the Apes Trilogy is absolutely fantastic and in my opinion up there with the best Sci-Fi trilogies I’ve seen: read my review of it here. Therefore a fourth film sat in between those mostly amazing three episodes but before the 1968, Charlton Heston starring original is an odd choice. Is this a film which even fans didn’t need? Yes. Is it a film which fans wanted? Well I can’t speak for them all but I went to see Dawn of the Rise of the War for the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes with my little heart filled of hope- and that’s all.
It’s on at the cinema, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, and my girlfriend and I have two favourites; the uber hip, recently redeveloped Catford Mews with its awesome pizza and lovely trendy crowd and my personal favourite, the mahoosive, mostly empty, screens of Surrey Quays Odeon. The latter has the benefit of being fucking easy to get to, ginormous and as I said, usually devoid of other, annoying humans.
We went to Quays for Kingdom and as per usual, we were one fifth of the paying population in attendance. Which unlike PeckhamPlex means the actual attendance. Peckham makes Surrey Quays seem austere. Still, it did worry me given my proclivity for having no cunt near me ruining my films by daring to exist at that my gravy train of quiet cinema might come crashing to an end by Odeon’s lack of one.
Last time there, drunk (but not drunk enough to enjoy Godzilla fucks Kong), I asked one of the managers how the hell a giant, nine screen cinema keeps going when over the last five years I think I’ve seen more films there than other people. “Jesus”, is the answer. Praise be, local “churches” rent the space on their relevant mornings to waffle more shit than Godzilla spin offs and presumably pay through the nose to subsidise my silent cinema. THANKS JESUS.
I did ask, and yes they sell less popcorn on a Sunday morning.
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Cinema etiquette has a prerequisite, a priori, acknowledgement of other people and the setting you’re in. There is an innate understanding which humans should have which dictates a level of consideration that doesn’t need teaching. Nobody ever told me “don’t masturbate in public”, for example. Never have, never will, didn’t need it explained in advance of any focus group. We’re all human, we should know these things.
Oddly on that subject, a mild finger blasting in the back row between horny teenagers is acceptable provided they’re quiet, but eating, farting, talking are all things you can control. Unlike teenage effervescence. Obviously Kevin Spacey isn't an ideal cinematic companion given his proclivity for masturbating during war films (and I thought IITALICS loved Saving Private RyanLINK) but he’s a wrongun and an outlier.
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At Surrey Quays Odeon, on Friday night, we encountered a couple of such bombastic idiocy it ruined the film. I’ll get to the film but spoiler alert, it’s roughly what you’d imagine a filler film might be. Not only did they talk incessantly and not respond to visual and audio cues to shut the fuck up, just when it got to the point that I was praying for the next loud action sequence so as to drown them out, the idiot couple took the increased volume as a challenge to their moronic commentary so they TALKED LOUDER.
After all my ruminating on onanism, I know people talking seems a bit anticlimactic, but these twats were oh so fucking special and ruinous. Kingdom has some nice visuals, genuinely exciting action scenes and so many CGI shots it may as well be classified as animation. The rusted ruins of humanity’s heyday all grown over with plants was easy on the eye and I realised while watching that they’ve underused apes swinging through trees in the series- it’s fun to watch.
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Many generations after War for the Planet of the Apes, Caesar has become Ape Jesus and just like Homo-sapien Hey-Zeus someone invented Protestants. There’s good Apes, bad Apes and humans are as humans do. It's not complicated or that imaginative.
Just as you can never stand in the same water in a river, you’ll never be in the same cinema with those cunts watching Kingdom (again). Do you need to have seen any of the other films? Are you really going to the cinema for this if you haven't?! I was entertained and there are some downright exciting scenes but beneath the surface there's not a lot going on. 6/10
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