BEFORE: We have our first Birthday SHOUT-out of 2026, this one goes out to Kevin Durand, born 1/14/74 and Mr. Durand also carries over from "The Naked Gun", so that means I had two chances to land a film on his birthday, and hey, one of them worked out. I'm not sure if it's just his voice in this film, or if he was the motion-capture model for an ape, but it doesn't really matter these days, whether the monkey looks like him or not, acting is acting. We've only got about two more years until all movies are made by AI anyway, and we won't even need human actors and my linking system will no longer be of any use.
I know, in a typical year I would have followed up "The Naked Gun" with a bunch of other Liam Neeson movies - I did watch 10 of those in a row last year - but I kind of used them all up, I only have TWO other films with him on the list right now, one is a horror film and the other is "Ice Road: Vengeance", which does sounds seasonally appropriate for January, but it just doesn't get me where I want to go this month. I've got other fish to fry right now.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "War for the Planet of the Apes" (Movie #2,943)
THE PLOT: 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.
AFTER: Well, it's been a while since the last "Planet of the Apes" movie - that was more than 2,200 movies ago, or 7 1/2 years of human time - Woody Harrelson carried over from "Solo: A Star Wars Story" to the last POTA movie. And sure, a lot has changed since 2018. Say, you don't suppose this film was influenced by the political events of the last eight years, do you?
Back then Caesar was the only ape that openly spoke English, though a few older apes could also do it and the rest used ASL (ape sign language) to communicate. The simian flu (monkey pox) was making humans dumber and apes smarter, so mankind was making a sort of last-ditch effort to strike back against the monkeys, ironically using "guerrilla" warfare. Umm, if you hate monkey-based puns you're probably going to want to close your browser now, because I can literally do this all day long.
Noa is a chimpanzee in the Eagle clan, which is cut off from the rest of ape society, and trains eagles to catch fish for them, in a variation on falconry. Noa's father is "Master of the Birds", and he's about to go through some coming-of-age ceremony, after climbing some very high structures that were probably once human skyscrapers back in the day to obtain an eagle's egg. But the night before the ceremony, his egg is smashed by a human (he calls her an "Echo") that followed him home. His entire city is then targeted by the Primate National Guard, troops that were sent in to their Sanctuary City without cause (sound familiar?) and whoever wasn't killed was deported by ICE (Immigration and Chimpanzee Enforcement). So Noa sets out on horseback to find the captured members of his tribe and try to bring them back home before they're sent to South America or something.
Along the way he meets an older orangutan named Raka who conveniently recaps the last few movies and tells him who Caesar was, and that there was a time when humans and apes lived side-by-side and also that there were things called "books" and "magazines" which is where ideas were stored, however printed material eventually fell out of favor (relatable) and everyone forgot what the symbols in the books mean (oh, it's coming...). Also there's that human woman who is still following Noa, Raka says they should take pity on the lesser species and make sure it has food and clothing, because it's not as hairy as they are, so it gets cold. It also smells bad but they should still add it to their party. They call her "Nova" which would only be confusing if every woman in every Planet of the Apes movie was called "Nova".
After they follow the tracks of the hunting party, they eventually reach the Kingdom, which is ruled by Proxima Caesar, who has taken over many different monkey territories (let's say from Greenland down to Venezuela) and enslaved many monkeys which are now being tasked with opening up a large human vault, because he believes that whatever is in the vault holds the key to him maintaining power and defeating what remains of the humans. Also he'll find the proof that the voting machines in the last election were rigged - plus keeping all the other monkeys busy and distracts them from the news about the release of the Ape-Stein files (well, I did warn you...). Proxima is coming off of a win, having recently changed the name of the nearby body of water from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Monkey. Anyway, they try brute strength and fire, but nothing works when it comes to opening the vault - why, it's almost like the leader of the apes has zero idea about how to accomplish things successfully.
The message here is probably that when a leader goes rogue, and invades places that he shouldn't, and exerts too much power over the country by, say, imprisoning other monkeys without cause or enacting personal vendettas against other monkeys while acquiring vast amounts of wealth for himself, it's up to the other monkeys to maybe NOT follow his irrational orders, and they would do well to remember that there are millions of THEM and only one of HIM, so I don't know, he could be impeached or removed from power or forced to obey the laws of society or common decency, maybe? Or, you know, thrown off a cliff, whatever works. Just putting that out there. If I get shut down or disappeared for saying that, so be it.
I don't know what I was expecting them to find in the vault - a nuclear device, the KFC secret spices recipe, or the Holy Grail - but the MacGuffin they find really didn't seem like that big of a deal. Maybe that will be important in the next PTOA film, if there is another one, I don't know. Well, it's clear to me now what we need to do to fix our country in these crazy and uncertain political times - we need a diverse group of ragtag misfits to go on a quest across a great distance and determine what's going on. I'm not exactly sure how that's going to fix things, but if their hearts are true and they believe in the cause they should perservere, Hollywood tells me so.
There's an internet meme that made the rounds a few years ago, detailing exactly where we are on the futuristic movie timeline - it's sort of a "doomsday clock" based on the years in which certain famous sci-fi movies were SET (not made). We're obviously well past "1984" and "2001", but think about the fact that "Robocop" was set in 2015, the original version of "The Running Man" was set in 2017, and the original "Blade Runner" in 2019. Hell, even "Soylent Green" was set in 2022 - so coming up next for us all, theoretically, is "Children of Men" in 2027, "12 Monkeys" in 2028 and "Demolition Man" in 2032. Again, don't act like you haven't been warned when bits and pieces from these movies start coming true - there's a meal-replacement beverage brand now called "Soylent" and it's probably made from soybeans, but still, I ain't gonna drink it. You first.
Right exactly now, IRL, we're at the point where RFK Jr. and the Trump administration have reduced the number of vaccines required to be given to children - so be prepared for more outbreaks of flu, hepatitis and COVID, and you can't tell me for sure that we're not headed straight for simian flu or a monkeypox outbreak at this point. Just saying.
Directed by Wes Ball
Also starring Freya Allen (last seen in "Gunpowder Milkshake"), William H. Macy (last seen in "Murder in the First"), Dichen Lachman (last seen in "Jurassic World: Dominion"), and voices/mo-cap performances by Owen Teague (last seen in "You Hurt My Feelings"), Peter Macon, Eka Darville (last seen in "Her Smell"), Travis Jeffery, Lydia Peckham, Neil Sandilands (last seen in "News of the World"), Ras-Samuel, Sara Wiseman, Kaden Hartcher, Andy McPhee (last seen in "Animal Kingdom"), Karin Konoval (last seen in "Black Christmas"), Frances Berry, with archive footage of Terry Notary (not mentioned in IMDB, there may have been a falling-out)
RATING: 6 out of 10 zebras (they must be descendants of ones from the San Diego Zoo - you can ride a zebra like a horse, probably, but you just never see anybody doing that)
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