Film Review: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Postmodern Realities Podcast)

This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Cole Burgett about his online movie review article, “Review of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and the Mythologizing of Evolutionary Humanism“.
[Editor’s Note: This review contains spoilers for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.]
The Planet of the Apes film series is fascinating. When the original film was released in 1968, its premise - of a world where apes ruled over humans - seemed like a far-fetched narrative unlikely to captivate a wide audience. Yet this sci-fi classic, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and based on a 1963 novel by French writer Pierre Boulle,1 was both a critical and box office success, spawning a plethora of sequels and reboots that has earned the series the distinction of being one of the longest running film series in cinematic history.
Boulle’s original novel, La Planète des Singes, published in the US as Planet of the Apes, questioned the very foundations of human exceptionalism by providing a commentary on evolutionary humanism, wrapped in a layer of satirical narrative. The story explores a reversal of the evolutionary ladder, where humans are primitive and apes are civilized and technologically advanced beings. The 1968 film adaptation is also deeply rooted in the intellectual currents of twentieth-century naturalism and modernism. In concept alone, one can hear the echoes of Darwinian evolution even as the script is being flipped, presenting a speculative evolution that questions the permanence and superiority of human intelligence and civilization.
The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes's story reflects a broader exploration of how societies use myth and religion to forge both communal identities and moral frameworks, particularly in the context of societal upheaval or the creation of new social orders. The reverence of Caesar among the apes directly parallels human religious traditions wherein seminal figures are seen as both historical and symbolic, embodying the values and aspirations of a culture. In other words, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes takes the reboot trilogy’s fascination with Caesar as a kind of Christ-figure for the apes and literalizes this a bit by turning him into a semi-religious icon many generations later.
The fact that this film places as its central conflict the tension between the foundational teachings of Caesar and the supremacist ideologies of Proximus underscores a key thematic question: can religion truly be extricated from societal fabric, or is it a permanent part of the cultural “warp and woof?” By framing this question within the context of an evolving ape civilization, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes effectively critiques the modernist assumption that progressive secularization is the inevitable trajectory of advanced societies. Instead, it suggests what Jaco Beyers concludes in his article, “Obituaries and Predictions: A Sociological Perspective on the Future of Religion,” that religious motifs and structures may evolve, but they never fully dissipate.
Can secularism fully replace religious structures? Much like Caesar roaring his first word, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes offers up a resounding, “No!” And this conclusion both challenges the narrative of the religion-less secular progress and reaffirms the influence of religion and mythic structures in shaping and sustaining societies - even those as radically different as that of the apes...
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Our film review "Review of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” and the Mythologizing of Evolutionary Humanism" can be read here: www.equip.org/articles/review-of-kingdom-of-the-planet-of-the-apes-and-the-mythologizing-of-evolutionary-humanism/