Planet Of The Apes Has 1 Big Challenge Disney’s Other Fox Franchises Don’t

The new movies in the Planet of the Apes franchise face a distinct challenge compared to other Fox franchises that are being rebooted by Disney. In February 2020, it was announced that the writer/ director of The Maze Runner trilogy, Wes Ball, would be directing and co-writing the next movie in the long-running Planet of the Apes series. This news was followed by the reveal of the title, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, in September 2022, before production began in Australia in October 2022.

The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes movie is the first Planet of the Apes film produced since Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox. However, these are not the only movie franchises that Disney is in the process of rebooting. Along with the excellent Prey’s successful rebooting of the Predator franchise, and the imminent arrival of Avatar: The Way of Water there is a planned Alien TV series and new X-Men, and Fantastic 4 movies. For Planet of the Apes, though, the road forward will be far harder, because of what came before.

Planet Of The Apes Has To Match A Great Trilogy (Unlike Other Fox Franchises)

What marks Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and its proposed sequels as different from these other franchise reboots is that it will be following a terrific trilogy. Director Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet Of The Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes are both fantastic movies that are built from the underrated first chapter of the trilogy, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. All three are beautiful, soulful, sci-fi movies that combine astonishing motion-capture technology with brilliant performances, particularly by Andy Serkis as Caesar.

This is in stark contrast with the other properties that Disney is rebooting. Alien, Fantastic 4, and X-Men are all coming off either bad movies or their franchises fizzling out. Similarly, Predator was a struggling franchise before its reboot with Prey, while even Avatar: The Way of Water has its own difficulties. Perhaps surprisingly, the biggest challenge the Avatar sequel faces is not because of Avatar’s status as the biggest movie of all time, but more whether audiences are still invested in Avatar after so much time.

Disney Appears To Be Getting Planet Of The Apes Right

Despite the unique challenge facing Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, there does appear to be plenty of reasons to believe that Disney is handling the franchise well. The decision to make the movie a sequel rather than a reboot seems sensible. Simply rebooting the Planet of the Apes series less than 10 years after War for the Planet of the Apes would have been a mistake since the Caesar trilogy deserved to be continued, albeit with the timeline being long after the conclusion of Caesar’s story.

More than this, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ title offers a possible tease of the expansion of the ape’s empire and power following the death of Caesar. It also suggests that apes may have become the dominant species and civilization on Earth, which in turn places the movie closer to the power dynamic between humans and apes in the classic, original Planet of the Apes movie. In this way, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes seems to point toward a potentially exciting future for the Planet of the Apes franchise that can build on rather than be defined by the excellence of its immediate predecessors.