the empire movie review

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘the empire’ review: bruno dumont’s artsy space spoof is beautifully crafted and certifiably insane.

The director of 'Humanity' and 'Li'l Quinquin' returns to Berlin's main competition with a sci-fi satire starring Fabrice Luchini and Camille Cottin.

By Jordan Mintzer

Jordan Mintzer

• Share this article on Facebook
• Share this article on Twitter
• Share this article on Flipboard
• Share this article on Email
• Show additional share options
• Share this article on Linkedin
• Share this article on Pinit
• Share this article on Reddit
• Share this article on Tumblr
• Share this article on Whatsapp
• Share this article on Print
• Share this article on Comment

Out of the many movies you could imagine emerging from the mind of French auteur Bruno Dumont, a Star Wars parody was probably somewhere at the bottom of the list.

Related Stories

Tanja meissner named head of berlin's european film market, berlin fest advisory board takes swipe at outgoing directors over award ceremony "antisemitism".

In the press notes, the director claims The Empire is supposed to be a prequel to The Life of Jesus . That seems like a major stretch, although it does feature some of the same stunning landscapes and impressive widescreen photography, this time courtesy of DP David Chambille (who shot Dumont’s last few features). The difference here is that those landscapes are occasionally interrupted by the arrival of a giant floating ship that looks exactly like the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris and houses a powerful interstellar Queen, appearing in the form of a hologram, played by Call My Agent ’s Camille Cottin.

Are you a little thrown off? Well good, because Dumont isn’t trying to make anything real or believable. That’s pretty much been his modus operandi for a decade now, with his recent output consisting of two nutso Joan of Arc biopics , a goofy belle époque murder mystery called Slack Bay and the modern media satire France , which was the tamest of the bunch.

As for the plot, just like in Star Wars it involves forces of good and evil. Good is represented by the church (there’s always been a mystical side to Dumont’s work) and evil by the monarchy, with veteran Fabrice Luchini playing a Darth Vader-like figure called Belzébuth. The latter is dressed in a court jester’s costume that looks like a cast-off from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland . In one scene, Luchini sits on the throne in his floating castle and watches what looks like a giant, gyrating butt dance around to a three-piece jazz band.

Back on Earth in the seaside city of Boulogne-sur-Mer, the epic battle centers around a child named Freddy, whom both good and evil believe is a future king called the Margat. His father, Jony (Brandon Vlieghe), has been raising him to service Belzébuth, and he’s aided by the very extraterrestrial-like newcomer Line (Lina Khoudri). But their plans are thwarted by Jane (Anamaria Vartolomei from Happening ), a Princess Lea dressed in a bikini and accompanied by a rebel (Julien Manier) who goes around town decapitating people with his light sword.

The Empire is light years away from the works of Lucasfilm, and yet when you take a step back and look past all the weird northern Frenchiness, it can feel pretty close at times. It’s too bad, then, that Dumont couldn’t make something more entertaining so that the satire would go down smoothly.

Like his other recent films, this one isn’t easy to sit through, though it’s definitely original and, per custom, impeccably made. You can accuse Dumont of many things, including testing the viewer’s patience, but at least he hasn’t sold out yet and gone over to the dark side.

Full credits

Thr newsletters.

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Box office: ‘kingdom of the planet of the apes’ hitting target with $52m-$56m u.s. opening, ‘the mummy’ at 25: director on the enduring hit, brendan fraser’s mishap and the tom cruise reboot, ‘star wars’: sigourney weaver in talks to join ‘the mandalorian & grogu’, ’28 years later’ set for 2025 release date from sony, ‘the fall guy’ writer drew pearce talks that a-list cameo and the ‘mission: impossible’ death he considered, ‘godzilla x kong’ follow-up enlists ‘shang chi’ scribe dave callaham to write  (exclusive).

‘The Empire’ Review: Bruno Dumont’s Self-Consciously Daft Sci-Fi Bauble Isn’t Quite as Amusing as It Thinks

The forces of good and evil plot an alien Armageddon by occupying and controlling the residents of a humdrum fishing village in the latest and most lumpen of the French director's absurdist comedies.

By Jessica Kiang

Jessica Kiang

• ‘All the Long Nights’ Review: Two Chipped Souls Fall in Like with Each Other in a Tender Story of Redemptive Connection 2 months ago
• ‘Through the Graves the Wind is Blowing’ Review: Travis Wilkerson’s Playful, Political Essay Set in Split, Croatia 2 months ago
• ‘All Shall Be Well’ Review: A Found Family is Lost in a Tender But Tentative, Queer-Themed Grief Drama 3 months ago

Popular on Variety

Thankfully, our beleaguered species also has a protector alien race supervising us, essentially the angelic counterparts to the 0s’ demonic posse. The 1s are led on Earth by the comely, light-saber-wielding Jane (Anamaria Vartolomei) and her padawan Rudy (Julien Manier, also in Dumont’s “Joan of Arc”). And from their spaceship, which is shaped like the Gothic Saint-Chapelle in Paris, their Queen (Camille Cottin of “Call My Agent”) issues far more benevolent diktats. Except, of course, as they pertain to the 0s who are guarding The Wain, whom Rudy and Jane are encouraged to summarily execute by vvwom-vvwomming laser-sword decapitation. 

When Rudy thus dispatches The Wain’s birth mother, two things result. Jony gets a new mate in the (again, comely) form of new arrival Line (Lyna Khoudri) — all the female leads in Dumont’s films are gorgeous while many of the men seem cast for their deviation from classically accepted male beauty standards — which causes friction when Jony can’t suppress his attraction to his opposite number, Jane. And secondly, in the course of the investigation into the mysterious death, the stars of “Quinquin” and “Coincoin,” Captain Van der Weyden (Bernard Pruvost) and his loyal sidekick Carpentier (Philippe Jore) show up. 

To fans of the Van der Weyden character, who for the uninitiated is what would happen if you put Tati, Chaplin, Clouseau and Columbo into a tumble dryer on high spin, it’s a little like burying the lede, and then giving the lede far too little to do. Van der Weyden and Carpentier are cruelly underused here muscled out by a lot of mythmaking mumbo-jumbo that doesn’t do anything substantial with all the opposing forces that Dumont’s scrappy screenplay references. Despite fun trappings — the crosswired sexual encounters, the talking blobs of CG goop, the horseback knights who are a chorus of aging local yokels delivering maguffin speeches in deliciously deadpan style — the actual conflict in the film boils down to a series of very simplistic binaries: good and evil, sacred and secular, female and male, one and zero, being and nothingness. Given all that, it cannot but disappoint when all that really happens is they kind of cancel each other out, in a way that may be supposed to evoke a Sartrean existentialism, or a early-Dumont-ian nihilism but really just feels a little glib. Maybe the cosmic joke that is our place in the universe just ain’t that funny anymore.

Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (Competition). Feb. 17, 2024. Running time: 110 MIN. (Original title: "L'empire")

• Production: (France-Germany-Italy-Portugal)  A Tessalit Productions production in co-production with Red Balloon Film, Ascent Film, Novak Prod,Rosa Filmes, Furyo Films. (World sales: Memento International, Paris.) Producers: Jean Bréhat, Bertrand Faivre.  Executive Producers: Jean Bréhat, Bertrand Faivre. Co-producers: Dorothe Beinemeier, Fabrizio Mosca, Andrea Paris, Matteo Rovere, Ines Vasiljevic, Olivier Dubois, Joaquim Sapinho, Marta Alves, Emma Binet.
• Crew: Director, writer: Bruno Dumont. Camera: David Chambille. Editors: Bruno Dumont, Desideria Rayner.
• With: Lyna Khoudri, Anamaria Vartolomei, Camille Cottin, Fabrice Luchini, Brandon Vlieghe Julien Manier, Bernard Pruvost, Philippe Jore. (French dialogue)

More From Our Brands

Zombie sequel ’28 years later’ sets june 2025 release, a manhattan mansion by architect robert d. kohn hits the market for $13 million, purdue to turn final four court panels into collectibles, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, the other black girl cancelled at hulu, verify it's you, please log in.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for a... Read all Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike. Many years after the reign of Caesar, a young ape goes on a journey that will lead him to question everything he's been taught about the past and make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

• Josh Friedman
• Amanda Silver
• Freya Allan
• Kevin Durand
• Dichen Lachman
• 113 User reviews
• 137 Critic reviews
• 65 Metascore

• Proximus Caesar

• Youngster #1

• Feral Human #4

• Feral Human #5
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

The Big List of Summer Movies

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia Director Wes Ball 's pitch for the film was " Apocalypto (2006) with apes."
• Goofs Despite being a bonobo, Proximus Caesar's design is clearly that of a regular chimpanzee.

Proximus Caesar : What a wonderful day!

• Connections Featured in H-Cast: Insiders Expose Marvel! Blade Reboot, The Marvels & MORE! The H-Cast EP 78 (2023)

User reviews 113

• druss44121-1
• May 10, 2024

New and Upcoming Sci-fi & Fantasy

• When will Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes be released? Powered by Alexa
• May 10, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• 20thcenturystudios
• Planet of the Apes Ride
• Helensburgh, New South Wales, Australia
• Disney Studios Australia
• Jason T. Reed Productions
• Oddball Entertainment
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 25 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• 12-Track Digital Sound
• Dolby Atmos
• IMAX 6-Track

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed

• Daily BO Update
• Daily Breakdown
• Hits & Flops
• All Time Grossers
• Highest Grossers
• Highest Openers
• Highest Weekend
• Best of Overseas
• Hollywood Highest
• Fact-o-meter
• Entertainment News
• Bollywood News
• Television & Web
• Fashion & Lifestyle
• Bigg Boss 17
• Hollywood News
• What To Watch
• Bollywood Movie Reviews
• Hollywood Movie Reviews
• All South Movie Reviews
• Tamil Movie Reviews
• Telugu Movie Reviews
• Kannada Movie Reviews
• Malayalam Movie Reviews
• Marathi Movie Reviews
• Web Series Reviews
• Music Reviews
• Box Office Reviews
• Trailer Reviews
• BO Filmometer
• Stars’ Power Index
• Directors’ Power Index
• 100 Crore Club
• Worldwide 200 Crores+
• Profitable Films
• Recommended Movies
• Upcoming Movies
• Released Movies
• Web Stories
• About Koimoi

Home » Reviews » Web Series Reviews

The Empire Review: A Visually Scintillating Tale With Moving Performances That Breathes Under Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Shadow

The empire is a huge step in creating extravagant shows for the india ott..

Star Cast: Kunal Kapoor, Dino Morea, Shabana Azmi, Drashti Dhami, Aditya Seal, Rahul Dev, Imaad Shah, Sahher Bambba & ensemble.

Creator: Nikkhil Advani

Director: Mitakshara Kumar

Streaming On: Disney Plus Hotstar

Language: Hindi

The Empire Review: What’s It About:

Adapted from the book Empire Of The Moghul: Raiders From The North by Alex Rutherford, The Empire scales the journey of Mughal emperor, Babur, from the age of 14 to 47 when he died (dare you to call it a spoiler, this is literally 7th-grade history chapter). The show talks about the highs and lows of Babur’s life in this part fiction, partly inspired by a real-life tale. We meet him in the war where swords are blood bathed and one inside the palace where the mind is the weapon. The ‘Game Of Thrones’ in between all of this takes the center stage and relationships are put to test.

The Empire Review: What Works:

If you are a History enthusiast, you must know that Babur’s life is an open book. The Mughal Emperor was known for a lot of things, literally reflected his life in Baburnama (his autobiography). Even the fact that he was bis*xual and was attracted to a boy he saw in the market at the age of 17. The Empire, which takes creative liberties for cinematic enhancing stands on the basis of this very tale and decides to take you inside the palace more than the wars he fought.

In the supremely able hands of writer Bhavani Iyer, who adapts Alex Rutherford’s fictionalized account of Babur’s life, The Empire becomes more than a costume drama. This is not the first time someone is trying to replicate Mughal history on screen and investing hoards of cash. But the majority of them except the Sanjay Leela Bhansali universe, end up becoming just costume dramas. Also, add to that the new age obsession of demonizing Mughals to show how peace was never a word taught to them.

This is where Bhavani Iyer’s talent contributes the most. These are people who have led normal lives and have had humane sides to them. Neither one of them is barbaric & nor all of them continuously talk in high-pitched voices. Enmity is never the fodder Iyer gives priority to. The writing that introduces multiple characters makes sure it gives everyone layers to justify their presence on screen.

Not to reveal much, a lot of The Empire is the inner catharsis that Babur went through. Of course, he was great at war, but a war lurked in his family and that was the toughest he ever fought. The writing looks at his life through the perspective of his sister Khanzada (Drashti Dhami). Of course, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s shadow can be seen throughout (in a good way). The fact that Mitakshara Kumar seems to be inspired by his work is evident in her frames. I am living for the wide-angle shots envisioned by her and captured by Nigam Bomzan and Yiannis Manolopoulos.

Also, this is a sort of the Avengers assembling from the Bhansali universe. Mitakshara has been an AD on Padmaavat and Bajirao Mastani. Bhavani Iyer has penned Black and Guzaarish with the filmmaker, AM Turaz credited for dialogues and lyrics in The Empire, has closely worked with SLB. And composer-singer Shail Hada is a long-time confidant of the maverick filmmaker. So you see why the vibe feels too familiar.

I can’t stop without crediting the art department that does a pristinely beautiful job at creating this universe to create a separate piece of art. The set pieces don’t look like they were made for a day. Some are even built in and out completely. Clothes don’t make the actors look like they are having an out-of-body experience. Everything is era-appropriate and made sure to fit the cinematic language that every frame is busy speaking.

The Empire Review: Star Performance

Of course, there is Shabana Azmi, Kunal Kapoor, Dino Morea, who have all done fabulous jobs, but I would want to talk about the one that surprised me the most. Drashti Dhami, an actor who can speak with her wide eyes, is a rare trait only found in some. She becomes Khanzada, the clever girl, who has to face the hardship life puts her through. She isn’t a damsel but a saviour and also gives Babur his purpose and motivation.

Shabana Azmi becomes Esan Da Walat, who technically is the reason why all of it happens. My experience is not enough to judge an actor of Azmi’s stature and she only leaves me asking for more in every frame. Her attitude, and the command over every frame remains the same as I saw in Mandi (a film that made me fall in love with her craft)

Kunal Kapoor as Babur is a safe choice. His demeanour does half the job and the actor manages to fill the rest half with his performance. He manages to bring the pain on his face gradually, but in the opening, it seems like he is still warming up. Dino Morea gets one of his best characters so far. Of course, there are imprints of Ranveer Singh ’s Allaudin Khilji throughout. The way he conducts himself, his walk, to him clapping like a maniac. But Morea manages to somehow not make it look caricatured to an extent cringe kicks in.

Imaad Shah is Imaad Shah and he somehow plays his characters with the same ease but makes them look different. Aditya Seal in his brief role gets a part where he finally gets to show he knows something about the business he is in. The finale seems to be hinting at a season 2 and Seal becoming the lead. Well, a huge responsibility is on its way.

The Empire Review: What Doesn’t Work:

The pacing definitely. What begins like a slowly boiling broth, suddenly sees a concentration in flames and the broth begins to spill. Years pass by so fast that at a point I had to rewind to check that we are now 18 years ahead. Also, while we are on that, why is Dino Morea not aging? He was the same when Babur was 14, and even edgier and hotter when Babur was around 30.

In a brief period, Babur is taken away from his purpose and he finds solace in alcohol. The period is his real downfall, but the show acknowledges it abruptly. Not enough to absorb how much he was affected thus resulting in diluting the effect of his rise.

While the Bhansali vibe has come alive outside his universe for the first time, the poetry stays intact with him. There is everything in the frame in The Empire but not enough poetry all the time. The only scene that turned out to be the most poetic was when Khanzada makes a shocking revelation to Shaibani Khan in his last moments, chills! You will see.

There is even a scene similar to Padmaavat ’s Raghav Chaitanya and Padmaavati’s first meeting. That becomes a bit too much.

The Empire Review: The Last Word

The Empire is a huge step in creating extravagant shows for the Indian OTT. There is everything a period drama lover (it’s me) craves for. Go in and get to witness the saga that talks about love, war and betrayal. But as I always say about shows/films with creative liberties taken, watch it with the word ‘fiction’ in your mind. It doesn’t intend to educate you.

Must Read: Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return To Hogwarts Review: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson & Rupert Grint Are Casting The Spell Again, Hold Back Your Tears If You Can

Follow Us: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Youtube

sanjay leela bansali ,were u high while writting this ???? bro it’s a lame shitty show

Moreover, the violence that Babur came to India, the attacks on Hindus, the desecration of temples, the attempt to corrupt Hindu culture, the disgrace of women are not even mentioned in this series.

On the contrary, in this series, Babur has shown a lot of remorse for attacking Hindustan. In this series, Babar is constantly plagued with guilt. And that’s why it’s hard to digest somewhere, that’s why this series can’t affect you as it should.

Very very stupid series, trying to glorify mughles but in real they where stupid assholes this movie is trying to glorify them who killed so many people too many hindus fucking stupid series.

LEAVE A REPLY Cancel reply

Related articles.

Dino Morea Reacts To Rivalry With John Abraham After His Break-Up With Bipasha Basu, “People Thought He Took My Girlfriend…”

Khel Khel Mein Release Date: Akshay Kumar & Fardeen Khan Reunite After 17 Years, Comedy Ensemble To Release On Khiladi Kumar’s Birthday?

Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa: Not Gauahar Khan With 1.65 Crore But This Actor With 92% Higher Fee Is The Highest-Paid Host In The History Of...

Check this out.

Baahubaali-Crown Of Blood: Prabhas Returns As Baahubaali For SS RajaMouli’s Prequel...

Hailey & Justin Bieber Announce Pregnancy; To Welcome First Child Soon

Prime Video’s The Goat Cast: Where Have We Seen These Reality...

Did Rihanna Skip Met Gala 2024? Why The Singer Was...

The Great Indian Kapil Show Episode 7 Promo Ft Heeramandi Cast:...

The Kardashians Season 5: Here’s What To Expect From Hulu Originals...

Don't miss.

Arijit Singh Gets Slammed Online For Cutting Nails In The Middle...

Indian 2 Delay Impact At The Box Office: Kamal Haasan Eyeing...

Billionaire Heiress Ananya Birla Ditches Music Career For Jaw-Dropping 507 Crore...

Kingdom Of The Planet Of the Apes Movie Review: Wes Ball Does Caesar’s Legacy Justice By Taking The Apes Franchise To Next Step

A Quiet Place- Day One Trailer Review: Chaos Unleashes In Lupita Starrer Apocalyptic Prequel, But It Lacks The Thrill Of The Original

The Boy And The Heron Movie Review: Hayao Miyazaki’s Last Epic Fantasy Film Goes Into Depths Of Life Itself

Thalaimai Seyalagam Trailer Review: Politically Charged Game Of Thrones That Just Promises To Peak To An Intriguing Level!

• Privacy Policy

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024 Movie) Reviews, Characters, Storyline and Box-Office Collection.

“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” is a 2024 American monster movie directed by Adam Wingard. It’s the sequel to “Godzilla vs. Kong” from 2021 and the fifth instalment in the MonsterVerse series. Produced by Legendary Pictures and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, it stars Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Dan Stevens, Kaylee Hottle, Alex Ferns, and Fala Chen. The story-line follows Kong as he discovers more of his kind in the Hollow Earth and teams up with Godzilla to thwart their leader and his formidable, frost-breathing Titan from wreaking havoc on the surface.

After the success of “Godzilla vs. Kong” despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, a sequel was announced by Legendary in March 2022. Filming, which began in July 2022 in Gold Coast, Australia, concluded in November of the same year. The movie premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on March 25, 2024, and hit theaters in the United States on March 29. While critics had mixed opinions, it achieved notable box office success, grossing $546 million globally against a budget of $135−150 million, making it one of the top-grossing films of 2024.

• Rebecca Hall portrays Dr. Ilene Andrews
• Brian Tyree Henry plays Bernie Hayes
• Dan Stevens takes on the role of Trapper
• Kaylee Hottle appears as Jia
• Alex Ferns is Mikael, Fala Chen is the Iwi Queen
• Rachel House portrays Hampton
• Ron Smyck appears as Harris
• Chantelle Jamieson plays Jayne
• Greg Hatton is Lewis
• Kevin Copeland appears as the Submarine Commander
• Tess Dobré plays the Submarine Officer
• Tim Carroll appears as Wilcox
• Anthony Brandon Wong is the Talk Show Announcer.

Three years following the defeat of Mechagodzilla, Kong has established his domain in the Hollow Earth and embarks on a quest to find more of his kind. Meanwhile, Godzilla remains on the Earth’s surface, maintaining a delicate balance between humanity and other colossal creatures known as “Titans.” His actions include eliminating Scylla in Rome before seeking respite in the Colosseum.

In the depths of the Hollow Earth, a Monarch observation post detects an unfamiliar signal. This signal triggers unsettling hallucinations and visions in Jia, the lone survivor of the Iwi tribe from Skull Island, causing concern for her adoptive mother, Dr. Ilene Andrews. Sensing the disturbance, Godzilla departs Rome and attacks a nuclear facility in France to absorb radiation before heading to confront the Titan Tiamat in the Arctic. Monarch interprets these actions as Godzilla preparing for an imminent threat.

Meanwhile, a sinkhole near Kong’s habitat reveals an uncharted territory inhabited by a tribe of his species, including a young individual named Suko. Despite an initial confrontation, Kong convinces Suko to guide him to the tribe’s sanctuary, fostering a bond between them. The tribe’s oppressive ruler, Skar King, enlists an ancient ice-powered Titan named Shimo to battle Kong, inflicting damage on Kong’s arm with Shimo’s ice breath. With Suko’s aid, Kong narrowly escapes, albeit losing his formidable axe in the process.

Andrews, Jia, Titan veterinarian Trapper, and conspiracy theorist Bernie Hayes journey into the Hollow Earth to trace the source of the mysterious signal. They find the Monarch outpost destroyed but eventually stumble upon a temple leading to a subterranean section housing a surviving Iwi tribe communicating telepathically. Exploring ancient ruins, they deduce that the signal was a telepathic plea for help from the Iwi.

Concerned about Jia’s attachment to her people, Andrews confides in Trapper about her fears of Jia choosing to remain with the Iwi. Inside the temple, Andrews uncovers hieroglyphics depicting the past and future: a history where Skar King attempted to conquer the surface world, waging war against Godzilla’s kind until being defeated and sealed within the Hollow Earth. The prophecy also hints at Jia’s pivotal role in awakening Mothra. Sensing Jia’s presence, Kong arrives at the temple, where Trapper equips him with an experimental exoskeletal glove to heal his injured arm. Unbeknownst to them, a loyalist of Skar King follows them, informing him as he prepares his invasion force for Earth. Jia successfully resurrects Mothra.

Godzilla defeats Tiamat and absorbs cosmic radiation, causing his dorsal plates to glow magenta. Kong, hoping to enlist Godzilla’s helps, surfaces in Cairo and challenges him. Despite Kong’s attempts at communication, Godzilla interprets it as a rematch and attacks, leading to a skirmish until Mothra intervenes. Together, Godzilla, Kong, and Mothra confront Skar King and his forces in the Hollow Earth. The battle escalates to Rio de Janeiro, where Shimo triggers an ice age under Skar King’s command. The tide turns when Suko arrives with Kong’s axe, shattering the crystal controlling Shimo and enabling Kong to defeat Skar King.

After using his atomic breath to reverse Shimo’s ice age, Godzilla returns to rest in the Colosseum. Jia chooses to stay with Andrews, easing her fears, while Mothra restores the protective barrier of the Iwi’s home. Kong, accompanied by Shimo and Suko, returns to the Hollow Earth, assuming leadership of the ape tribe.

BOX-OFFICE COLLECTION

As of May 5, 2024, “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” has amassed $188.1 million in the United States and Canada, with an additional $358.8 million from other territories, resulting in a worldwide gross of $546.9 million.

Initially, in the United States and Canada, the movie was forecaster to earn between $50–55 million from 3,850 theaters during its opening weekend, alongside an extra $80–90 million from 63 international markets. However, after raking in $37 million on its first day, including $10 million from Thursday previews—marking the best-ever total for a Monster Verse film—projections were adjusted to $75 million for the domestic weekend. Ultimately, it premiered with $80 million, dominating the box office and securing the second-best opening weekend within the series and the fifth-best Easter weekend ever, trailing behind “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” (2016), “Furious 7” (2015), “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” (2023), and “The Fate of the Furious” (2017). In its subsequent weekend, the film sustained its lead with $31.2 million, though experiencing a 61% decline. By its third weekend, it earned $15.5 million, securing the second position behind the debut of “Civil War.” Concurrently, it entered the Japanese market at number two, trailing “Detective Conan: The Million-dollar Pentagram.”

What to watch with your kids: ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ and more

Common Sense Media reviews of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” “Star Wars: Tales of the Empire,” “Unfrosted” and “Prom Dates.”

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (PG-13)

Stand-alone sequel has violence and sympathetic characters.

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is a stand-alone sequel to “War for the Planet of the Apes” and set many generations after the death of the ape leader Caesar, whose teachings have begun to unravel. Violence is the biggest issue: Expect deaths (and mourning, with funeral pyres), bloody wounds, spitting blood, characters being stabbed with knives and zapped with electric prods, falls from high places, a cabinet full of guns, a gunshot, pounding, throwing, bashing, trampling, a lethal chokehold, an explosion and more. Ape characters also struggle with rising floodwaters, and human characters are captured in nets and via ropes around the ankles. “S---” is used three times, but there’s not much other language, and there’s no notable sexual content, product placement or substance use. The movie looks great and has sympathetic characters (albeit not a very diverse cast), though it seems less ambitious than its predecessors. (145 minutes)

Available in theaters.

Star Wars: Tales of the Empire (TV-PG)

Solid Star Wars miniseries has lots of sci-fi violence.

“Star Wars: Tales of the Empire” is an animated action miniseries set in the Star Wars universe. It explains how two characters — Barriss Offee (voiced by Meredith Salenger) and Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) — converted to the dark side. There’s a lot of fighting with sci-fi weapons like lightsabers, some of which results in (non-gory) deaths. The main characters show some remorse for their actions, but their violence is rewarded with positions of power. Characters are in constant peril, and there’s an ominous tone throughout, but there aren’t any jump scares. Besides the near-constant action scenes, there’s not much other iffy content. (Six episodes)

Available on Disney Plus.

Unfrosted (PG-13)

All-star comedy has innuendo, language and stereotypes.

The Jerry Seinfeld-directed Pop-Tarts sendup “Unfrosted” is a silly 1960s-set comedy with some swearing, suggestive language, drinking and violence. Men also behave in sexist ways. Violence and intimidating behavior or threats are played for comedy, but people do get blown up, beaten, electrocuted, drugged and kidnapped — and “tortured” with cow flatulence. There are jokes about a man’s privates showing in his pants and references to “eating you,” a wife “coming back for more,” whether “a man’s pleasure is also hers,” the possibility of having sex to close a business deal, a “lewd” dance, sexy advertisements and a U.S. president having affairs. People drink and smoke. Swearing includes “damn,” “goddamn,” “hell,” “a--” and some potty humor and insults. Stereotypes are played for laughs. The all-star cast includes Amy Schumer, Melissa McCarthy and Hugh Grant. (93 minutes)

Available on Netflix.

Prom Dates (Unrated)

Boozy, crass teen comedy has lots of sex, language, drugs.

“Prom Dates” is a rowdy teen buddy comedy about best friends (played by Antonia Gentry and Julia Lester) on the hunt for escorts to the big dance. Teens drink a lot , smoke joints and cigarettes, snort lines of cocaine, get offered Molly, and pass out. There’s discussion of going “all the way,” using condoms, oral sex and more, and characters engage in various sexual acts. A stripper dances at a frat party. Language includes “f---,” “s---,” “a--hole,” “hell” and “b----,” as well as anatomical slang and insults. Violence — played for comedy — includes cuts, falls, concussions and an attempted human sacrifice. Characters also vomit on one another. Although the film aims for positive representation, the script also plays into stereotypes. (86 minutes)

Available on Hulu.

Common Sense Media helps families make smart media choices. Go to commonsense.org for age-based and educational ratings and reviews for movies, games, apps, TV shows, websites and books.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Trivia & Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

Movies / TV

No results found.

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Netflix streaming
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Link to Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
• The Fall Guy Link to The Fall Guy
• The Last Stop in Yuma County Link to The Last Stop in Yuma County

New TV Tonight

• Doctor Who: Season 1
• Blood of Zeus: Season 2
• Pretty Little Liars: Summer School: Season 2
• Black Twitter: A People's History: Season 1
• Dark Matter: Season 1
• Bodkin: Season 1
• Hollywood Con Queen: Season 1
• The Chi: Season 6
• Reginald the Vampire: Season 2
• Love Undercover: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• Baby Reindeer: Season 1
• A Man in Full: Season 1
• Fallout: Season 1
• Hacks: Season 3
• The Sympathizer: Season 1
• Them: Season 2
• Dead Boy Detectives: Season 1
• X-Men '97: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• Doctor Who: Season 1 Link to Doctor Who: Season 1
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

100 Best Movies on Tubi (May 2024)

The Best Shows on Amazon Prime Video to Watch Right Now (May 2024)

Asian-American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Rotten Tomatoes Predicts the 2024 Emmy Nominations

8 Things To Know About The New Season Of Doctor Who

• Trending on RT
• Furiosa First Reactions
• Streaming in May
• New Doctor Who
• Planet of the Apes Reviews

Empire of the Sun

Where to watch.

Rent Empire of the Sun on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

One of Steven Spielberg's most ambitious efforts of the 1980s, Empire of the Sun remains an underrated gem in the director's distinguished filmography.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Steven Spielberg

Christian Bale

Jim "Jamie" Graham

John Malkovich

Miranda Richardson

Mrs. Victor

Nigel Havers

Dr. Rawlins

Joe Pantoliano

Frank Demarest

More Like This

Movie news & guides, this movie is featured in the following articles..

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Double fault: Challengers is as bad in the bedroom as it is on the tennis court

Critics might have fallen for Luca Guadagnino’s erotic tennis romp but it’s a vapid string of disappointing choices

I have spent the week and a half since seeing Challengers on the brink of throwing a racquet-trashing, expletive-scattering, McEnroe-style tantrum. Is Hawkeye working? Did they not see it? How, for an exhausting Mahut-Isner length of huffing and puffing, practically every single one of the wild swings taken by Luca Guadagnino’s film missed its target and landed out by a country mile? Four-star reviews? Five-star reviews? C’mon, fellow critics. You cannot be serious.

Some points I will concede as inarguable. The film is a box-office champion. And it’s pure fire on the internet, a movie more memeable than even the sainted Saltburn. There are clear generational issues in play: I can see why excitable younger viewers, raised on a largely sexless cinema, have fallen so hard for the film’s sprayed-on sweat and forceful faux sophistication. It’s my senior-tour colleagues I’m staring at with hands on hips, wearing an expression of disbelief. The film they’ve been politely applauding looks to me less a modern classic than another marker of American cinema’s ongoing infantilisation: a Muppet Babies redo of Jules and Jim. Possibly some spectators were swayed by the spirit of indulgence fostered by the film’s on-screen umpire, handing out code violations as if they were candy. (In actual tennis, those breaches of court decorum have consequences: loss of whole games and matches. Not so in Luca-land.) Swallow those, and maybe you’ll also overlook how neither of the film’s male leads persuade as the whey-bulked jocks observed swaggering around America’s secondary tennis circuits. Even at their most drained, Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) resemble the gauche nerds of a thousand other teen comedies, sniggering at their own witless masturbation stories.

And then there is the Zendaya issue. Zendaya has been convincing in many guises in her young lifetime – brand ambassador, best dressed, a moving MJ amid the noisy mechanics of the Spider-Man movies – and remains one of our better qualified It girls. The upside of being an It girl is getting first dibs on every script doing the Hollywood rounds; the downside is landing roles for which you haven’t the comparable qualification – working mother, for example. The film admits as much, guiltily sneaking Tashi’s daughter Lily (AJ Lister) out of sight with a Bluey-loaded iPad. Make way for Uncle Luca’s Polysexual Fun Times, no strings attached. Lily is where Challengers comprehensively lost everything for me: game, set and match. Yes, it’s going for zippy escapism, but even as recently as the late 20th century – the moment of 1988’s Bull Durham and 1996’s Tin Cup – one could imagine the studios backing a sports comedy about the very real struggles involved in balancing top-level competition, fame and parenting. (A film that better represented the challenges that, say, Serena Williams faced in the later years of her illustrious court career.) But Challengers isn’t interested in Lily, and seems barely more interested in her mother, save as a means to bring the boys together, and a horny crowd indoors. Which brings us to the much-vaunted sex. Or Challengers’ limited idea of it, performative and cutesy as it looked to me: carefully choreographed and intimately coordinated, to the exclusion of genuine passion. I kiss you; you kiss me; now you two kiss each other. These are less sex scenes than exaggerated makeout sessions: kids playing spin-the-racquet. The fresh-faced fumbling of Challengers is that typically used to push khakis and cola in primetime promotional spots; much of the film, indeed, resembles a tennis-themed campaign for a fashion, jewellery or fragrance line. Sex still sells, even in this watered-down, 12A-adjacent form. Guadagnino remains a great hype man, and his prodigious gift for overcompensation is almost enough to forgive him his many bad calls as a film-maker. Amid a climactic whirlwind, the movie’s abundant, self-generated hot air whips up every last fast-food wrapper dropped on an American sidewalk; he pummels us around the tennis court as if we had Slazenger stamped on our backsides. Here, at least, Challengers gets properly pornographic, with grabby angles and cuts, POV fist-pumping and a pounding (read: awful) Reznor-Ross score. The sweat drips like cum. But there’s no finesse or foreplay, no sign of a change-up or B-game: it’s Boris Becker in the broom cupboard, pre-bankruptcy. Boom boom; that’s your lot. The agitated online tittle-tattle reflects a desire for more. How does this Justin Kuritzkes-scripted throuple relate to last year’s Past Lives, written and directed by Kuritzkes’ wife, Celine Song? Issues much? Yet Kuritzkes and Song clearly have something in common: a weakness for tissue-thin characters who barely hold water outside the context of their own sophomoric triangulations. Past Lives crafted elegantly empty vessels we had to fill with emotive memories of our own what-ifs; the hollow bodies of Challengers only assume fullness upon absorbing viewer lust. Never forget: Past Lives’ Kuritzkes surrogate authored a novel called Boner. Challengers’ punning title is also positioning, a play to be considered major and transgressive in what it depicts. But another title suggests itself: Balls.

• Luca Guadagnino
• Sport films
• Drama films
• Romance films

Most viewed

The brand-new issue of Empire – featuring a world-exclusive first look at...

Movies | 10 05 2024

Soil gently brushed off an ancient piece of pottery, paint peeling from a villa...

There’s news. And there’s huge news. And there’s planet-sized news. And...

It is, generally speaking, ill-advised to go into creepy basements in rented...

Movies | 09 05 2024

Even starring amid the heavyweight likes of Robert De Niro and Leonardo...

BREAKING UPDATE: According to Variety, the next Lord Of The Rings film will be...

Sometimes you just need a good scare. It doesn't have to be a dark night or...

Has Sydney Sweeney found a sneaky way to get ripped and find an excuse to punch...

Movies | 08 05 2024

Following our first glimpse of new disaster movie sequel Twisters during this...

Of any Pixar film to sequelise, a follow-up to Inside Out makes perhaps the...

It may be hard to get excited about a sequel trilogy to a prequel trilogy to...

When Will Smith and Martin Lawrence first made Bad Boys, they were – if not...

Three decades after he last graced our screen, Axel Foley is back, back, back....

The MCU is about to mutate. The arrival of Deadpool & Wolverine is set to...

You might think that Vin Diesel would be mostly focused on finishing the Fast...

Movies | 07 05 2024

There are many remarkable things about Deadpool & Wolverine. For one, it...

Prepare to witness the wildest movie ride of the year? George Miller’s...

The majority of Pixar films are not to be watched without tissues. From the...

With X, Ti West lovingly re-conjured the scuzzy spirit of ‘70s classics like...

What’s hairy, has sharp claws, and is about to crash into Deadpool’s life...

It’s usually smart for a director to these days get ahead of the scoopers...

Movies | 06 05 2024

Looking to replicate the present-day Halloween franchise’s (albeit mixed)...

Even given the usually significant security provisions in place around any...

With just a month to go until the arrival of the latest Star Wars series The...

Movies | 05 05 2024

We’ve already heard so much about Francis Ford Coppola’s struggles...

Bernard Hill, the actor whose memorable tones and rugged visage brought to life...

It’s another cracking episode of the Empire Podcast, folks, as Rose...

Movies | 03 05 2024

Marvel fans have waited a long time to see their all-new Captain America in...

If there’s one thing you can say about Kristen Stewart, it’s that she...

Advertisement

Supported by

Critic’s Pick

‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ Review: Hail, Caesar

The latest installment in an excellent series finds mythology turning into power.

• Share full article

‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director wes ball narrates a sequence from his film..

I’m Wes Ball, director of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” This is a little sequence in the very beginning of the movie after our trio of apes here, Noa, Soona and Anaya, have just had a little adventure and they’re on their way back to their village, where we get to meet the life of Eagle Clan and where Noa and his family reside, this little isolated existence. And we get to see the way the apes live in this world with their eagles. And and how this ritual of collecting their egg, which they’re going to raise as companions, which is part of the way the Eagle Clan kind of works in their culture. And the goal was really just to set up a world that was wonderful, that was ultimately going to be forever changed when the course of events leads to Noa’s village being attacked for the most part, everything you see here was actually shot with the actors. We shoot it twice, we shoot it once with the actors and all of their little performance things and the camera movement and everything. So we are shooting a regular movie. It just happens to be that these guys are wearing these kind of strange suits along with the cameras and the dots on their face that captures all the performance. And then I have to go in and then re- duplicate those shots without the apes, which is where I choose. Whatever performance I choose now gets dropped into the scene itself. So this isn’t something where we just kind of animate the characters after the fact. We’re actually on location and they’re there in their digital costumes, essentially, acting out everything you see on camera, with the exception of, say, background action, there’s a group of apes in the background playing what we called monkey ball, and just we did that all on stage. So that’s kind of the beauty of the power of this process, is that we can populate this whole scene with hundreds of apes. But we only needed a handful of apes on set. This is Dar, Noa’s mother, who’s a fantastic character, played by Sara Wiseman, who did a great job. “I knew you would climb well.” “He waits.” And this character of Noa here, you kind start to see this relationship that he has with his father, which is an interesting kind of relationship that I imagine a lot of people could relate to. They don’t know quite how to communicate with each other, but there’s obviously still love there. It’s an interesting process where I can take all these different little elements and layer them all together and stack them into this — what you see is the end result here, this little idyllic community.

By Alissa Wilkinson

For a series with a goofy premise — what if talking apes overthrew humanity — the “Planet of the Apes” universe is uncommonly thoughtful, even insightful. If science fiction situates us in a universe that’s just different enough to slip daring questions past our mental barriers, then the “Apes” movies are among the best examples. That very premise, launched with talking actors in ape costumes in the 1968 film, has given storytellers a lot to chew on, contemplating racism, authoritarianism, police brutality and, in later installments, the upending of human society by a brutal, fast-moving virus. (Oops.)

Those later virus-ridden installments, a trilogy released between 2011 and 2017, are among the series’ best, and well worth revisiting. The newest film, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” picks up exactly where that trilogy left off: with the death of Caesar, the ultrasmart chimpanzee who has led the apes away from what’s left of humanity and into a paradise. (The scene was a direct quotation of the story of Moses leading the Israelites to the Promised Land, but dying before he could set foot there.) The apes honor his memory and vow to keep his teachings, especially the first dictum — “ape not kill ape.” Caesar preached a gospel of peacefulness, loyalty, generosity, nonaggression and care for the earth; unlike the humans, they intend to live in harmony.

The teachings of peaceful prophets, however, tend to be twisted by power-seekers, and apparently this isn’t just a human problem. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” directed by Wes Ball from a screenplay by Josh Friedman, leaps forward almost immediately by “many generations” (years matter less in this post-human world), and the inevitable has happened. The apes have fractured into tribes, while Caesar has passed from historical figure to mythic one, a figure venerated by some and forgotten by most.

That there even was a Caesar is unknown to Noa (Owen Teague), a young chimpanzee whose father, Koro (Neil Sandilands) is leader of his clan and an avid breeder of birds. That clan has its own laws, mostly having to do with how to treat birds’ nests, and that’s all that Noa and his friends Anaya (Travis Jeffery) and Soona (Lydia Peckham) have known.

But then one day tragedy strikes, in the form of an attack on the clan by the soldiers of Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), the leader of a clan of coastal apes. Noa finds himself alone, searching for his clan, who have been carted away. On his journey Noa meets a human (Freya Allen) who, like the other humans, doesn’t speak.

At this point in the evolution of the virus, mutations have rendered any surviving humanity speechless and dull-witted, living in roving bands and running from predators; to the apes it’s as preposterous to imagine a talking human as a talking ape is to us. But he also meets Raka (Peter Macon), who believes himself to be the last of the faithful followers of Caesar’s peaceful teachings, even wearing Caesar’s diamond-shaped symbol around his neck. (Eagle-eyed viewers will recall that the symbol echoes the shape of the window in the room in which Caesar was raised as a baby.) Noa learns from Raka. And when he finds what he’s looking for, he realizes he has an important job to do.

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is not quite as transporting as the previous trilogy, perhaps because the apes now act so much like humans that the fruitful dissonance in our minds has mostly been mitigated. It’s simpler to imagine the apes as just stand-in humans when they’re all talking, and thus easier to just imagine you’re watching, say, “The Lion King” or something.

But there’s still a tremendous amount to mull over here, like Proximus Caesar, who borrows the idea of Caesar to prop up his own version of leadership. The real Caesar was undoubtedly strong and brave, but Proximus Caesar has mutated this into swagger and shows of force, an aggression designed to keep his apes in line. He is not brutal, exactly; He is simply insistently powerful and more than a bit of a fascist. Every morning, he greets his subjects by proclaiming that it is a “wonderful day,” and that he is Caesar’s rightful heir, and that they must all work together as one to build their civilization ever stronger.

Visual cues indicate that Proximus Caesar’s kingdom is modeled partly on the Roman Empire, with its colonizing influence and its intention to sweep the riches of the ancient human world — its history, its labor, its technology — into its own coffers. By telling his version of Caesar’s legacy, Proximus Caesar makes the apes believe they are part of some mighty, unstoppable force of history.

But of course, history has a habit of repeating itself, whether it’s ancient Rome or Egypt, and in Proximus Caesar’s proclamations one detects a bit of Ozymandias : Look on his works, ye mighty, and despair! “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is set in the future, but like a lot of science fiction — “Dune,” for instance, or “Battlestar Galactica,” or Walter Miller’s “A Canticle for Leibowitz” — there’s a knowing sense that all this has happened before, and all this will happen again.

That’s what makes “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” powerful, in the end. It probes how the act of co-opting idealisms and converting them to dogmas has occurred many times over. What’s more, it points directly at the immense danger of romanticizing the past, imagining that if we could only reclaim and reframe and resurrect history, our present problems would be solved. Golden ages were rarely actually golden, but history is littered with leaders who tried to make people believe they were anyhow. It’s a great way to make people do their bidding.

There are some hints near the end of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” of what might be next for the franchise, should it be fated to continue. But the uneasy fun of the series is we already know what happens, eventually; it was right there in the first movie, and the warning it poses remains bleak.

At the start of the 1968 film, the star Charlton Heston explains, “I can’t help thinking somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man.” You might have expected, from a movie like this, that “better” species would be these apes. But it turns out we might have to keep looking.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Rated PG-13, for scenes of peril and woe and a couple of funny, mild swear words. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. In theaters.

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help.a.

Andy Serkis, the star of the earlier “Planet of the Apes” movies, and Owen Teague, the new lead, discuss the latest film in the franchise , “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”

The HBO series “The Sympathizer” is not just a good story, it’s a sharp piece of criticism on Vietnam war movies, our critic writes .

In “Dark Matter,” the new Apple TV+ techno-thriller, a portal to parallel realities allows people to visit new worlds and revisit their own past decisions .

The tennis movie “Challengers” comes to an abrupt stop midmatch, so we don’t know who won. Does that matter? Our critics have thoughts .

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, kingdom of the planet of the apes.

Now streaming on:

When Rupert Wyatt's 2011 prequel " Rise of the Planet of the Apes " revived a five-decade-old franchise—one that spanned books, films, TV series, and comics since the '60s—it did so with a refreshing commitment to a powerful, timeless story: simple but not simple-minded, deeply emotional but far from corny.

Portrayed via groundbreaking performance capture technology by Andy Serkis (delivering the kind of actorly nuance that shouldn’t have been overlooked by The Academy), the film’s Ape protagonist Caesar has led that story through the two sequels, both of them elegantly directed by Matt Reeves —2014’s “ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes ” and 2017’s “ War for the Planet of the Apes .” Raised by James Franco ’s caring human hands in the first film, Caesar quickly broke through the classist and discriminatory human world’s self-destructive greed in the trilogy and claimed his deserving place as the leader of his kind, while a manmade virus made Apes smarter, and robbed humans of their intelligence and speech abilities, nearly eradicating mankind.

As a whole, the trilogy became perhaps the finest franchise of this century, standing tall against the loud, bloated mega-verses and unexpectedly reminding us what we want from big-budget, sequel-minded Hollywood: something thoughtful, entertaining and insightful about who we are and aspire to be. The new film, “ The Maze Runner ” director Wes Ball ’s brilliant “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” walks securely in the footsteps of this recent legacy, wearing the Caesar-centric films’ values like fairness, loyalty and communal solidarity on its sleeve with pride.

Like its predecessors, Ball’s sequel knows these principles don’t belong to humans exclusively—not in his highly imaginative sci-fi adventure, not in the real world where the animal kingdom lives by its own set of rules and ethics. And along with his screenwriter Josh Friedman (of the wonderful “ Avatar: The Way of Water ,” with which you will notice plenty of visual and thematic parallels here), Ball confidently puts forth a film that is exciting and visually articulate in its action setpieces as it is thoughtfully coherent in its plotting. In “Kingdom,” there is not a single wasted idea or scene that feels randomly introduced without a soundly rewarding payoff that deepens and completes story. In other words, here’s a film—well, a franchise—where you see smart writers and filmmakers at work towards bringing things full circle, not meeting rooms dedicated to soulless fan-servicing.

The tale of “Kingdom” is set generations after the events of the “ War ,” after the time of Caesar. Young chimpanzees Noa ( Owen Teague ), Anaya ( Travis Jeffery ), and Soona ( Lydia Peckham ) of the Eagle Clan—all also portrayed via performance capture—climb massive heights at the start of the film so that Noa can find an eagle egg of his own per his clan’s rituals and bond with the majestic bird over the years like the elderly of his world. After a beautifully shot, eventful escapade nearly costing him his life, the fearless Noa manages to claim his egg from a nest. 

But when a mysterious human— Freya Allan ’s feral and mercurial Mae—who is tailing him accidentally breaks it, Noa sets off to find a new one, unintentionally making his peaceful home base a target of the villainous masked apes led by Proximus Caesar ( Kevin Durand ). Twisting Caesar’s dignified teachings and wise words like “Apes Together Strong” and building an army to one day possess the secrets to the technology humans have left behind generations ago, Proximus destroys Noa’s village, kills his father, and hunts down Mae in his quest. Throughout these nail-biter cat-and-mouse sequences, immersive cinematographer Gyula Pados ’ camerawork is impressive and spine-tinglingly exciting, crafting large-scaled action that is heart-poundingly tense, and more logically constructed than what we often see these days.

After a lovely interlude when Noa meets a lonesome orangutan and learns about the real Caesar as a strong, moral, and compassionate leader, the young ape and Mae find themselves in Proximus’ captivity along with other enslaved members of the Eagle Clan, including Noa’s aforementioned buddies. At a windswept and ocean-battered base next to a locked vault that humans have evacuated, there is also William H. Macy ’s Trevathan, an intelligent, Vonnegut-reading human tasked to teach Proximus everything he knows about the human ways. Daniel T. Dorrance ’s production design truly sings in these segments with the level of detail draped across the “ Waterworld ”-like ape settlement and the vault, once we finally get inside (albeit, perhaps a bit conveniently).

Gradually and throughout a stunning third act where the “Kingdom” unleashes some truly stunning “The Way of Water”-style visuals, the film plants the seeds of even further chapters to come, renewing its thematic queries around whether inter-species peace could ever be achieved. But perhaps more importantly, the pronouncedly anti-gun and anti-violence “Kingdom” explores the concerns and catastrophes of the modern world smartly and thoughtfully within its construct. Are there times that necessitate the abandonment of pacificism? (There is especially one shocking scene involving Mae that ponders this question that a lesser toothless film would be too afraid to ask.) Are we learning the right lessons from our past, if we’re learning anything at all? Why the hell can’t we all get along?

To be clear, “Kingdom” doesn’t have the answers. But you can bet your bottom dollar that this rare, deeply cinematic Hollywood franchise won’t stop digging until we get a little closer to knowing.

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

Now playing

Lousy Carter

Clint worthington.

Turtles All the Way Down

Peyton robinson.

The Sympathizer

Nandini balial.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead

Black Twitter: A People's History

Rendy jones, film credits.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Rated PG-13

145 minutes

Owen Teague as Noa

Freya Allan as Nova / Mae

Kevin Durand as Proximus Caesar

Peter Macon as Raka

William H. Macy as Trevathan

• Josh Friedman

Latest blog posts

The 10 Most Anticipated Films of Cannes 2024

The Importance of Connections in Ryusuke Hamaguchi Films

Saving Film History One Frame at a Time: A Preview of Restored & Rediscovered Series at the Jacob Burns Film Center

The Beatles Were Never More Human Than in ‘Let It Be’