Spoilers follow for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, now streaming on Hulu.Â
Some lines of dialogue escape the confines of a single movie and define entire franchises. “I am your father†and Star Wars; “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti†and all movies about Hannibal Lecter; “Is Butterbean okay?†and every new iteration of Jackass. “Apes together strong,†from Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and War for the Planet of the Apes, belongs in this category. It’s an expression of solidarity and camaraderie against humanity’s most desperate and bloodthirsty survivors; a slogan that suggests separatism can be a viable political strategy for a historically oppressed group; an observation of fact that states the colonizer majority will never truly accept the ascendance of the colonized minority. And Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, those maniacs, they blew it up! The new movie champions a different stance: “together strong,†a phrase that cuts the word ape and slashes the motto’s political potency.
In the Andy Serkis–starring Planet of the Apes films, “apes together strong†is both a hopeful and inherently exclusive statement. Apes together are strong enough to break out of an abusive medical-testing laboratory, establish a new community of their own in the California woods, fend off humans who want to siphon their resources, and fight back against a rogue military unit that has trapped apes in work camps. That strength persists not just despite the continued existence of people, but purposefully separate from it. Rise, Dawn, and War are all littered with moments that prove humans can’t be trusted. In Rise, they’re cruel because they can be. In Dawn, they’re nefarious even when allowed into the apes’ land. In War, they’re ungrateful; consider how the soldier whose life Caesar spares in the beginning of the film is the one who tries to assassinate him in its climactic finale.
In Dawn, the original advanced ape, Caesar (Serkis), and his friend-turned-enemy Koba (Toby Kebbell) have conflicting interpretations of what “apes together strong†means — Caesar thinks it’s tolerance, Koba thinks it’s violence. But War ends on a note that suggests Caesar is coming around to Koba’s thinking — maybe not the “kill all humans†part, but certainly his insistence on separatism and letting human society fall to its own devices. Caesar is haunted by visions of Koba, whom he let fall to his death at the end of Dawn, and is agonized by how viciously Woody Harrelson’s Colonel treats the apes he’s made slaves. Caesar doesn’t kill the Colonel at the end of War, but he and his followers venture deeper into the wilderness, implying a back-turning on everything that’s come before, including their past connections with humans. Their choice to maintain the “apes together strong†ideology on their own gives War a bittersweet, dignified ending that suggests seclusion was the correct tactic all along. And then Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes went and ruined it by changing “apes together strong†from a motto for united apes into a declaration of war between apes, and offered the conciliatory “together strong†as an appeal for ape-and-human collaboration instead. It’s not exactly an All Lives Matter–esque swap, but it’s pretty close.
To be fair, Kingdom is attempting something interesting: How does reality become myth, and how do individuals use myths to galvanize themselves? Set “many generations†after Caesar’s death, Kingdom imagines a world in which most apes don’t even know who Caesar was. While ape societies have sprung up with their own customs and traditions, like Noa’s (Owen Teague) partnered-with-eagles clan, both Caesar’s philosophy and his knowledge of written language have been broadly lost to time. The only apes who do know of Caesar have taken wildly different approaches to understanding his legacy, stretching it to disparate extremes. Raka (Peter Macon) of the “Order of Caesar†teaches Noa that “apes together strong†and “ape shall not kill ape†were the most meaningful of Caesar’s teachings, and gives Noa a pendant decorated with Caesar’s symbol. But he also has a softer sympathy toward the surviving humans than Caesar did in his final days, telling Noa wondrously about “when humans and apes lived side by side†and explaining that because humans “were important to Caesar … they are important to me.†He resents the invading apes, who are led by the gregarious aspiring emperor Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), for how they “twist†Caesar’s words in order to enslave various clans. And while Proximus repeats “apes together strong†as a rallying cry against humans, his understanding of ape-Caesar has also deliberately been mixed up by a human, the opportunistic Trevathan (William H. Macy), who knows that staying useful to Proximus will ensure his own survival. (There’s no real explanation of why Trevathan would know about ape-Caesar when other apes don’t, but you gotta go with it.) Proximus then hides behind “apes together strong†while creating an autocratic system that elevates him to a level of fascist, rather than populist, power.
All of this is very twisted and tangled, meant to evoke how religious doctrine changes as it’s updated by each generation, mutating and shifting away from its original intentions; the collective memory of who Caesar was and what he believed changes as different sects and factions interpret (or forget) his lessons. What’s annoying about Kingdom, though, is how all this reinterpretation focuses only on the apes, suggesting that this kind of political and theological infighting is inherent to disenfranchised groups once they obtain power, as if they’re somehow deficient when it comes to maintaining actualization. And because Kingdom mires the apes in disagreement, it denies us the fist-pumping thrill of “apes together strong†by having each side misconstrue Caesar’s words. Proximus uses it as a war cry against his own people, dishonoring Caesar’s attempt at unanimity. Raka — the one character who’s supposed to get Caesar — turns it into “together strong,†an appeal for Noa and the shockingly-smart-for-a-human Mae (Freya Allan) to cooperate that misunderstands Caesar’s final disinterest in alliances with humans. Yes, sure, this is perhaps the point of Kingdom, that our legacy is no longer ours after we die. But man, throw us a bone and have Noa say “apes together strong†when the eagle clan comes together to kill Proximus, you know? Instead, Kingdom makes “apes together strong†a warning about the allure of propaganda and a reprimand for valorizing Caesar as a political martyr, and that’s a frustratingly conservative viewpoint for a franchise that up until this point has been so sneakily radical.
Admittedly, Kingdom’s human characters are exactly as selfish as they’ve always been, just as resentful and intent on maintaining social dominance as they were in Rise, Dawn, and War. Mae hiding a gun behind her back in her final meeting with Noa, whining about the possibility of apes having access to human weapons, and lying about the satcom key she took from the bunker where she left the apes to die is not exactly a flattering portrayal. When Noa gives her Raka’s pendant with Caesar’s symbol on it, though, and tells her that it’s “important,†Kingdom is again suggesting “together strong†as its noblest message. Franchises reboot all the time, and it’s not a bad thing when creators are given freedom to play with the material; too much nostalgia and coloring-within-the-lines can give us “Somehow, Palpatine returned†and the MCU admitting defeat by bringing Robert Downey Jr. back into the fold. But with its final ape/human interaction, Kingdom settles on appeasement, and Caesar never stood for that.