By Michael Marano

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” — Think “I, Claudius” with monkeys, by way of “Lord of the Rings” and “The Searchers.”

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, directed by Wes Ball. Screening at AMC Assembly Row 12, Somerville, Apple Cinemas Cambridge.

A scene from Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Photo: Fox/Disney

I read Arthur C. Clarke obsessively as a kid.

But I didn’t want to know where the monoliths from 2001 came from, and didn’t read any of his 2001 sequels after 2010. One of Clarke’s most famous novels is Rendezvous with Rama, the titular Rama of which is a huge, mysterious, city-like object floating in space.

I didn’t want to know where Rama came from. “Mysterious” was the most potent modifier describing Rama, so I didn’t read Clarke’s sequels explaining that.

I didn’t want to know where the Xenomorph of Alien came from, which is why the Alien prequels have been like watching the magician David Copperfield explain his illusions for two hours rather than performing them. I didn’t want to know what happened on the Norwegian base before the events of John Carpenter’s The Thing, but we got that shitty 2011 prequel, anyway.

I didn’t want to know how Han Solo made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, so Solo left a dry cardboard taste in my mouth.

And while I didn’t want to know how the Rebels got the Death Star plans in Star Wars (don’t you dare call it “A New Hope” in my presence), Rogue One is tied with Empire Strikes Back as my favorite Star Wars movie. I sure as hell didn’t want to know where the antique pistol with the plate that read “Raphael Adolini 1715” in Predator 2 came from, but when that was explained in 2022’s excellent Prey, I jumped off my couch and punched the air.

There have been four Planet of the Apes prequel films since 2011 explaining just how, in the words of Chuck Heston, “A planet where apes evolved from men?!” came to be. Like the previous three, the most recent, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, is shockingly good. Not great. But the Apes prequels have been solidly well told… so solidly well told that for a combined running time of eight hours, I’ve been eagerly finding out something I didn’t think I’d want to know: the means by which those “damned dirty apes” took control of the Earth.

Like Rogue One and Prey, these Apes prequels have been made by storytellers, real directors and writers. They are not just products commissioned by studio MBAs to defibrillate decades-old intellectual properties and franchises. Like Dr. Zaius, the Ape archaeologist digging up the ruins of a dead and long-gone human culture, the makers of these recent shitty prequels have no understanding of cultural legacies in their care. This year we’ve had two — count ’em, two — prequels to iconic movies from the ’70s, written by David Seltzer: Wonka and The First Omen, neither of which have the slightest inkling of what made Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory or The Omen iconic. (Though First Omen director Arkasha Stevenson is a hell of a filmmaker; I hope she moves on to better projects.)

A scene from Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Photo: Fox/Disney

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (hereafter shortened to Kingdom) is a densely plotted quest epic with actual thematic weight that addresses the rise and fall of empires and nation states. Think I, Claudius with monkeys, by way of Lord of the Rings and The Searchers. There’s a Shire-like enclave of nature-loving chimps who train eagles to hunt with them and a Mordor-like, proto-and-post-industrial hellscape overseen with Colonel Kurtz-style brutality by Ape King Proximus Caesar. When Proximus abducts most of the eagle-hunting clan, youthful hero-chimp Noa must strike out across an overgrown and ruined landscape to save his people.

Along the way, Noa meets Raka, an orangutan hermit and scholar who gives Noa lessons in history, and a human female named, of course, Nova, who seems intent on following Noa on his quest… for unknown reasons.

Kingdom plunges into heady territory, commenting — I’m not kidding — about the influence of the Roman Empire on the foundation of the nation states and empires that followed. There’s also discussion about the nature of history, how it can be warped for political ends. It’s pretty goddamn telling that bad guy Proximus wants to literally weaponize history and its artifacts to expand his empire. History itself becomes the object of an arms race, centered around a Dr. Strangelove-like bunker. There are even hints that the Apes feel they have a “White Man’s Burden” sort of obligation to uplift the dirty humans running around the planet in packs. There’s even a warning that one can take up the tools of human oppressors to become oppressors oneself. Proximus is a realpolitik iteration of King Louie from the Jungle Book; he’s built his Ape empire on the ruins of a human empire. He wants to become more like humans by seizing their technology, only the “red flower” he wants to pick isn’t fire, it’s guns, and maybe nukes.

Kingdom deftly engages with the history of the almost 60-year-old Apes franchise. These aren’t lazy, fan-service quotes. These are knowing moments that are dialogues with the franchise’s legacy, sort of like in Casino Royale, in which we see where Bond got his Aston Martin by winning it in a poker game in a scene that was ass-kicking, not a tired retread. In Kingdom, there are nudge-to-the-ribs callbacks — not only to scenes from the first 1968 Apes films, but also to Jerry Goldsmith’s iconic and terminally creepy score for that movie.

The makers of Kingdom and the other post-2011 Apes prequels engage with their own history and they respect it. They’re archaeologists, not grave robbers, and that’s why these new prequels don’t feel like cheats. Think of what should have been the emotional payoff of the utterly turgid Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: it was just a pilfering of a great scene from the franchise’s past, a pissing on the series’ own legacy.

Because of the inventiveness of these Ape prequel storytellers, not only do I want to know where the Planet of the Apes came from, I want to see where the franchise will go next.

And for a guy with serious franchise fatigue like me, that says a lot.

Like tens of millions of kids, novelist, writing coach, and personal trainer Michael Marano had his mind utterly blown, bug-eyed, with his jaw hanging open, when he saw the ending of 1968’s Planet of the Apes on TV. www.GetOffMyLawn.Biz