I liked the first instalment of the franchise. It really had all the makings of an epic. Followed Caesar’s story avidly as the other two sequels came to theatres. There was a cascade of evolutionary processes, where the apes evolved and where the humans devolved. It was good fare.

Then came along the movie I watched last night. It is set about 300 years post the death of Caesar. His fame has turned him into a Prophet and nearly into god for certain ape communities. There are other communities who have returned to the natural habitat and take their evolution as a natural process. They haven’t even heard about Caesar. They have their own system of beliefs. From these come the main protagonists. Noa, Anaya, and Soona. 

The tribe has their own law and Noa struggles to follow them. From the beginning he is shown to be the one who chooses his own path. They are close to nature and the eagles they bond with become the metaphor for all that is natural. 

Some followers of Caesar have become zealots and believe that it is their right to subjugate humanity. But it is not only human beings that they have a problem with. They have turned into evangelistic bullies, like most people who have misplaced faith in one entity do. Caesar has become the equivalent of the Roman Emperor that ruled with autocratic might. There are many megalomaniacs who want that kind of power, but without the honesty and morality that Caesar possessed. He was willing to work with humans for the betterment of the Apes. 

And this is the second part of the analogy. The first being respectful of the natural world. The second the problems that occur when faith turns into fanaticism. This is wonderfully brought out by the perspective of Noa, the human protagonist.

He is astounded by how apes kill apes – something that Caesar had a law about in the first three movies. Then he gets to know Nova, who can speak. There are those humans who do not as well and Nova does not see herself as part of that tribe. In fact, she comes with her own agendas and racial prejudices, and those juxtapose the ones Proximus Caesar has. They both want one race to subjugate the other. Each feels it is their Right to do so.

The themes are well-woven and intertwined with lovely spectacles and hard-hitting action. Each character stands out as unique and they all linger in the mind long after the movie is done. The tragedy of the movie is that human beings are coming back into power and the beauty of the natural world is once again in peril. If only the rise of the Right and the people who push religion down other’s throats in the guise of morality and proper conduct would understand what is being said. The world would be the home that Noa so desperately seeks to build and preserve, devoid of guns.