The franchise of The Planet of the Apes released its fourth film in the new series of films and its tenth film overall in the franchise. The previous trilogy has been claimed by many pundits as one of the best trilogies of all-time, and some wondered why there was a need for a new film and how it would fit into the story.

Well, the film takes place several generations after the end of the War of the Planet of the Apes and focuses on a new set of protagonists, while still using the legacy of Caesar in the basic plot.

Our new protagonist is named Noa (Owen Teague) and he is trying to find his tribe after the were taken away. He was joined by the elder orangutan Raka (Peter Macon) and a human named Mae (Freya Allen). However, it turns out that Mae has her own motives for tagging along.

Our new antagonist is Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand) who arrived about an hour into the movie. He is trying to get inside this vault built into a cliffside where there were a bunch of human weapons.

I thought this new film was okay. I did like how they built this new group of characters and starting creating the world around them. I think it has set up for the future films well. The first part of this movie felt kind of dull at times. I did like the character work here, but there felt like too much going on.

The apes continue to look tremendous. The special effects are great. I will say that a few of the time when I would see Raka walking, it looked weird. Other than that, everything looked fabulous.

The third act was a lot of fun. I may have a small criticisms of it, but they are not major problems.

Truthfully, there were some ups and down for this film. I liked parts of it. There were parts that I found boring. It looked awesome. I do think it could have shaved off 10-15 minutes for the runtime. This may be better when you look back on this after the whole trilogy is done.

3.5 stars