A double feature of the Wasteland and Apes

Two big movies hit recently that I missed upon release, as the newest Apes film came out just as I was going on vacation, and newest Mad Max as I was returning, Finally rectified that this past weekend with a double feature at the theater, starting with Furiosa: A Mad Mad Saga (and despite the title, Max himself doesn’t show up; this is a prequel to 2015’s Fury Road and focuses on the character formerly played by Charlize Theron). The movie begins many years before that movie, and Furiosa is a girl (played by Ally Browne) living in a green valley around a river when she is kidnapped by encroachers of Dementus’s biker gang. Furiosa’s mom gives chase and is able to kill the kidnappers, but not before they (barely) make it back to Dementus with Furiosa in tow. Dementus sees that the young girl is well nourished and healthy, something unheard of in The Wasteland that Australia has become, and wants to know where her “place of abundance” is. Furiosa isn’t saying a word, and when her mom tries to rescue her, the mom is captured and, when she too will not talk, tortured to death.

A couple years later, Furiosa is traded by Dementus to Immortan Joe, the head of the Citadel and main bad guy from Fury Road. There, she is able to escape and hide in the crowd for many years, working her way up in rank with the soldiers until she is second in command of Immortan Joe’s gas rig driver, Praetorian Jack. Jack and Furiosa (now played by Anya Taylor-Joy) form a tight friendship, which gets them through when Dementus makes a new play to take over all of the major settlements in the area: Gastown, Bullet Farm, and ultimately the Citadel itself. The film builds to a satisfying conclusion just before the events of Fury Road. It’s a great movie, with tremendously bleak and disheartening visuals, a slick soundtrack (the heavy purr of the engines in otherwise total silence really grab you—whoever did sound editing should be on the short list for an Oscar), and nonstop heart-pounding action. I had minor quibble with how the final fight between Furiosa and Dementus goes down, but other than that I loved every minute of this movie. ★★★★½

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the fourth film in the newer reboot series which began with 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Newcomers can come in blind though, because as the beginning of the film states, it takes place “many generations later” after the last film, and while there are obvious references to the first trilogy of films, they aren’t necessary to know what is going on. And what is going on is that apes are now the dominant force on an Earth where jungle has taken back humanity’s once-gleaming cities. The same virus that made ape smarter killed the majority of humans, and for the survivors, took their voices so that humans are now the animals scraping by in the woods, while apes have formed clans. One such clan is the Clan of the Eagle, who practice falconry. Noa is a teen or young adult member of the clan, now old enough to bond with his first falcon, but on the eve of the ceremony his clan is attacked by a larger, violent clan from the valley. Noa is the sole escapee, with the rest of clan rounded up as labor and taken to the valley. Noa sets out to try to rescue them, going to a foreign land which his clan has traditionally avoided.

In the valley, Noa finds two unexpected allies. One is another ape, an orangutan named Raka, who still practices the teachings of Caesar from the first trilogy of films, things like apes sticking together and not harming each other. The second new friend is a surprise: a human woman named Mae, who surprisingly can still talk. She has knowledge of humanity’s past, and says that she too wants to get to the attacking clan’s settlement, a beach village that has sprung up outside an old human underground vault. Mae has her reasons for wanting to get in that vault, but she’s not the only one. The head of the “bad” ape clan, Proximus Caesar, knows that ancient human technology and weapons are in that vault, if he can only get in. Proximus, who has warped the original Caesar’s teachings to serve his own desires, is being coached and taught by another talking human, Trevathan, about what powers can be had if Proximus can get his hands on those ancient weapons. There’s a big battle coming, between Noa and his captured clansmen and Proximus’s army, with Mae’s secret goal still to be determined too. Very fun movie and a great story. I think I liked the original trilogy maybe a hair more, because it has a bit of that dystopian feel (I’m a sucker for those kinds of films), whereas by Kingdom, anything remaining of the Earth we know is long gone. Still, I had a great time, and the movie sets up more sequels in the future that I look forward to. ★★★½