Unlike so many remade, rebooted and reimagined franchises, there is no such thing as a “bad”Sure, some of the films – nine up till now, not counting the 70s television series, which was then re-edited into five TV movies – were as satisfying as a blackened banana.
Noa, left, Raka and the rest of their CGI bretheren are aesthetically enchanting creations, a genuinely impressive, even intimidating, blend of the real and surreal.By centering its conflict on the oppressive rule of Proximus, a despot who has twisted the benevolent words of Caesar to fit his own fascist ends,has the potential to deliver a provocative bit of monkey business.
Noa and his pals are aesthetically enchanting creations, a genuinely impressive, even intimidating, blend of the real and surreal. The nuances of a true flesh-and-blood performance collide with the magic of next-gen CGI to create something eye-popping. There are only one or two quick-flash moments in which Noa and company swing uneasily into the uncanny valley, only to Tarzan themselves right back to believability.
Yet gawking can only take audiences so far – and the journey that Ball and screenwriter Josh Friedman lay out is a long, treacherous, and exhausting one. What might have been a lean and mean affair at two hours is instead bloated to Harambe-sized proportions, up to and including a third-act development that prioritizes the least-interesting characters in the movie.
And while Teague, Macon and Durand bring impressive levels of humanity to their apes – Durand in particular is terrifying in both Proximus’s intellectual eloquence and brute physicality – no one here threatens to snatch the monkey-king crown from Serkis. Partly because their characters lack the urgent oomph that propelled Caesar’s growth in the previous films, but mostly because Ball and Friedman are more interested in the idea of conflict rather than the narrative potential of it.