The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: Abbott Elementary, season 3

TV #24 of 2024:

Abbott Elementary, season 3

Every serialized TV show — which in today’s landscape includes most sitcoms — has to branch out and try new things as it goes along, lest the initially-entertaining formulas for its episodes grow stale through over-repetition. Sometimes that change in direction can feel like an organic extension of what has worked before, bringing a fresh energy that takes the series to even greater heights. But sometimes, unfortunately, experiments can fail.

Abbott Elementary in its third season is still a solid program that I’ve generally enjoyed watching from week to week. I like these characters, and I regularly laugh at the brand of humor that derives from their personalities, their profession, and their particular situations. (The current highlight for me: custodian Mr. Johnson revealing that he always keeps a little bit of mop water in the bucket for next time like a sourdough starter. So gross!) But this year shakes up its usual structure by sending Janine out of the classroom for a job at the local school district, and while I can’t fault the impulse to break from the norm, the result winds up feeling pretty half-baked, sourdough pun not intended.

The main problem here is that the show can’t commit to its new paradigm. Its lead character is nominally working somewhere else and repeatedly regretting that she hasn’t been spending time at Abbott, but circumstances actually keep bringing her back there every episode to interact with the rest of the cast. Moreover, her office life stays fairly underwritten, with only a few flat supporting characters and no challenges that ever arise, develop, and get solved solely in that sphere. By contrast, consider how The Office would occasionally toy with storylines like Jim transferring to the Stamford branch or Michael starting a rival paper company downstairs from Dunder Mifflin, where those felt like fully fleshed-out alternate locations with their own casts and distinctive rhythms. The district side of this series feels so empty by comparison.

Like any strained love triangle between a protagonist’s obvious endgame and what TV Tropes calls the Romantic False Lead who delays that happily ever after, Janine’s eventual return to Abbott full-time is an entirely foregone conclusion. It doesn’t help that those two career options for her are literally and simplistically represented in the show’s narrative as two potential guys she could date, either. There’s of course her long-running will they / won’t they dynamic with her fellow teacher Gregory Eddie standing in for the school, while her new coworker played by Josh Segarra (doing his best without much in the scripts to work with) is set up as a possible suitor in the other camp. In the end, as is heavily telegraphed throughout, she goes with the former.

Looking again at The Office, since that remains one of the primary series that this half-hour mockumentary seems to model itself after, there are vibes here of Michael and Jim both turning down corporate jobs to stay with their ragtag team of scrappy underdog friends in Scranton. But those dilemmas came across as more in doubt in the context of their respective arcs, and therefore more triumphant in their ultimate resolution. On Abbott, it’s instead all very pat.

Other weaknesses shake out from that flaw at the creative core, or else are less hidden than they might have been in a stronger surrounding plot. A teachers book club devolves into bitter squabbling over optimal post-apocalyptic strategies? A.I. detection software, tested for the first time in front of students for some reason, reveals that Boomer luddites like Melissa and Barbara have been using ChatGPT to answer emails? Jacob is largely reduced in his role to that of a supportive gay best friend for both Gregory and Janine? The jokes are there, but it’s all way below the quality level of storytelling I had expected after the first two seasons of this show.

★★★☆☆

Like this review?
–Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
–Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
–Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler
–Or click here to browse through all my previous reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog

TV Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 2

TV #23 of 2024:

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 2

The second year of this TOS prequel and technical Discovery spinoff isn’t flawless, but I’m comfortable saying it’s the single best season of Star Trek we’ve gotten since Deep Space Nine went off the air a quarter-century ago. The first run of Strange New Worlds already distinguished itself with a firm grasp of its characters and a zippy sense of fun, and this follow-up doubles down on both those strengths, continuing to rotate through who gets to be the focal protagonist(s) each week so that nearly everyone gets their turn to shine. It even takes the standoffish security officer La’an, who had probably the most under-served role last time around, and turns her into one of the most emotionally engaging elements of the show, all thanks to an improbable time-travel adventure with an alternate-universe version of James T. Kirk.

That wild sense of experimentation also lifts the series. Although the big musical episode falls a little flat for me — the songs themselves aren’t especially catchy or distinctive from one another, in my humble opinion — it’s the sort of swing that I can’t imagine any other iteration of Trek attempting, let alone managing to use in a “Once More, with Feeling” style to push the crew to express long-building but restrained emotions. That it can be in the same conversation as that classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer story, which built on over 100 previous episodes of evolving plot threads versus SNW’s 18 at this point, is a true testament to how well the newer program has been developing its own personal arcs in such a limited space.

More successful than “Subspace Rhapsody” for me is the Lower Decks crossover “Those Old Scientists,” which sounds ludicrous on paper but turns out to be a perfect meld of the two shows’ different sensibilities (and a real tour-de-force for actor Jack Quaid, who obviously was not cast or had ever approached his role on the cartoon with a thought for how the character would look in live-action). Despite the inherent goofiness, that hour plays out in a way that respects both sides of its creative DNA, while also finding room for the little character moments that elevate it further. Nurse Chapel realizing from an offhand comment by Boimler that her time with Spock has an expiration date on it; La’an bringing up her own recent experience visiting the past… I love how this series carefully takes the time to fold updates on ongoing character arcs like that into the most one-off of episodic adventures. Lower Decks is considerably looser with anything resembling a consistent storyline — good luck establishing when exactly the portal trip takes place in the animated continuity, other than the main cast all being together on the Cerritos — but this is an episode that couldn’t work outside of this particular moment on Strange New Worlds without some significant changes. It’s one of the biggest differences in vibe to the made-for-syndication TOS, but also part of why I consistently find this series to be a more enjoyable exploration of that era.

The show goes dark on occasion, too, beginning this year with one character under arrest for a plainly racist Starfleet law that must be challenged in court like the anti-android rules in TNG‘s “The Measure of a Man,” and then repeatedly exploring the traumatic ramifications of Discovery’s big Klingon war better than that program ever bothered to do. But at its grimmest, just as at its most gimmicky, the characterization soars.

I do have a few small critiques, in closing. The ten-episode length of the season is in line with other contemporary genre TV series, but it’s a real disservice to this one, which wants to both juggle a variety of ongoing storylines like DS9 and regularly experiment in format like the sitcom Community. Both goals would yield substantially stronger results in a longer season! We could maybe even get to see the starship explore more actual strange new worlds, as that title increasingly feels like a holdover from an earlier creative vision for this show and not an accurate description of its present ethos at all. It’s similarly a problem how little Captain Pike gets to do here, and while I’ve heard that that was a specific choice to allow his actor more time with his newborn child, it still leaves this stretch a little aimless, thematically speaking. With so few episodes, space is at too much of a premium to sideline the central figure of the captain like that.

Finally, I want to say that this program is suffering from a lack of canonical queer representation — especially compared to the much weaker Discovery, which for all its flaws includes Stamets, Culber, Adira, and Reno all in the main cast. Trek as a franchise is supposed to be all about building a welcoming future for everyone, and very specifically featured a multicultural bridge crew for Kirk’s Enterprise when the original show launched in the mid-1960s. While that racial diversity thankfully remains, it feels like an abdication of duty for this modern flagship series to not embrace a wider band of gender and sexuality in an era when LGBTQ+ rights remain under threat. I’ll get off my soapbox now and reiterate how great I find this show overall, but this is one area where it’s definitely letting me down.

[Content warning for gun violence, torture, and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

Book #78 of 2024:

The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

An astonishing debut novel that introduces one of the most original conceptions of time travel that I’ve ever encountered, yet then wisely waits to fully deploy it until the very end. For the majority of the plot, we are instead lingering in the present moment with the heroine, experiencing her teenage hopes and setbacks and taking in the peculiar details of her reality. (Peculiar to us, that is — like The Giver or Never Let Me Go, this title masterfully and naturalistically presents its setting through characters who have grown up never questioning it, though the contours will prove wholly alien to readers.)

Essentially, this story is set in a small isolated community bordered on either side by its own past and future. Crossing to the east would bring a person back into town but twenty years further ahead, while crossing to the west would deliver them the same distance backwards. As far as anyone knows, that situation stretches on in both directions indefinitely; there is no true outside world or even any remote idea of such a thing in the characters’ minds. And within the span of this text, at least, no external presence ever does intrude on the valley(s) and the inhabitants’ particular existence therein.

To preserve the timeline, travel is highly restricted. Armed guards patrol the borders, and a prestigious council weighs visa petitions delicately, allowing occasional masked visitors to see their loved ones from afar — either those to the west who have passed away in their own time or those to the east whom the petitioners can’t reasonably expect to live to see grown. Such visits are dangerous and must be carefully coordinated on both sides, but because they clearly remain allowed later on, they cannot be outlawed today.

It’s a fascinating high-concept premise, but one that would be bloodless without the living and breathing individuals at its core. We watch as the sixteen-year-old protagonist comes of age in this strange place, forging new friendships and a budding potential relationship whilst striving to be chosen for a career among the elite decision-makers who evaluate visitation requests. She’s also burdened by the accidental insight that the young man she’s drawn to will inevitably soon die, since she’s recognized the older versions of his parents as the obscured figures watching the schoolyard on a recent visit.

Although the action eventually picks up, sending the now-adult lead on a desperate and illegal quest to save her long-dead friend and reorient her own life accordingly, this is primarily not a thrilling adventure tale like most entries in the science-fiction genre. It’s rather a slow and sadly wistful look at youth and grown-up regrets over squandered potential and the ways people change over time, with or without improper knowledge of future events. The specter of the neighboring valleys adds a melancholic tinge to the first half of the novel leading up to the boy’s death, after which we jump forward to follow his bereft paramour as a jaded woman in her thirties, for whom nothing has ever gone according to plan. Given the setup, it’s predictable enough that she’ll ultimately be driven to attempt the journey back to her younger days, but author Scott Alexander Howard continues to spool out the narrative gradually for us, earning the character-based resolution that could have seemed mandated by the needs of the plot alone.

I won’t spoil the actual ending in terms of the results of her mission, but it’s almost inconsequential compared to the overall effect of everything in the work building up to that point. Suffice to say, I loved this book the entire way through, and will now eagerly await whatever its talented writer devises next.

[Content warning for gun violence, domestic abuse, and alcohol abuse.]

★★★★★

Book Review: Dragonsteel Prime: A Sanderson Curiosity by Brandon Sanderson

Book #77 of 2024:

Dragonsteel Prime: A Sanderson Curiosity by Brandon Sanderson

[Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.]

A fresh release of an old unpublished novel — one that began all the way back as author Brandon Sanderson’s undergraduate honors thesis, and long existed as only a single physical manuscript that could be checked out from the BYU campus library upon request. Though he’s now seen fit to share the book more broadly, he cautions readers in a new introduction that we probably won’t find it up to his current standard, nor should we take it as wholly canonical to his Cosmere continuity of interconnected stories that followed. Instead, it is best considered as what he calls “half-canon,” offering a glimpse of worldbuilding details and character backgrounds that inform the subsequent works but would be contradictory to take literally. If a revised iteration of Dragonsteel is ever published for real, it will be with widespread changes from this early edition.

(The subplot involving Bridge Four on the Shattered Plains, for instance, was later incorporated into the author’s Stormlight Archive series, where it fits better with a protagonist who’s an adult slave rather than just an impulsive teenage army recruit. So that’s hardly going to appear in the finished version of this one. I’d also imagine that the young mind which named a certain magical force “the hor” and its practitioners “horwatchers” gave no thought to how those particular names would sound in the mouths of future audiobook narrators.)

So, is this ‘Sanderson curiosity’ worth the read? I’d say it is, for the uber-fans willing to tackle 700 pages of non-canon material. In addition to displaying how the writer’s personal style of epic fantasy developed over time, it gives us an interesting look at the quasi-origins of the dragon Frost and the man who will someday be called Hoid, both still on their original homeworld of Yolen well before the mysterious Shattering of Adonalsium in the general saga’s backstory. If you’re caught up with the latest Cosmere happenings, the information on Realmatic Theory won’t be as surprising, but it remains fascinating to see how much of that concept was already planned out so far ahead of its official debut. I’m sure the select group who gained access to this title before such revelations had gone public were even more struck by them.

Nevertheless, the text does have some of the issues that its creator suggests. The various plot pieces don’t quite cohere together, and the story ends without resolving very many of its specific component arcs. The overall effect is more generic than classic Sandersonian, especially concerning the rules-based magic system, and the familiar tropes aren’t tweaked enough to register in a crowded genre. I’m not surprised to learn that multiple publishers rejected this draft, although the raw potential talent is certainly there on the page. But in the end and from a modern perspective, “curiosity” seems an apt label for it.

[Content warning for fatphobia, racism, slavery, rape, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Bob’s Burgers, season 14

TV #22 of 2024:

Bob’s Burgers, season 14

This is a weird season to review, because I actually don’t remember most of it particularly clearly! The writers and actors strike resulted in the episode order getting slashed from 22 to 13 installments, eleven of which aired from October 2023 to January 2024. Then one more episode randomly followed in March, and finally a belated finale just now in May.

So, is it any good? Well… it’s at least baseline Bob’s Burgers, which in recent years has generally meant competent humor and comfortable character-based storytelling, but little that still pushes the ensemble forward in personal development or adds any fun new recurring members to its ranks. Behind the scenes, however, it’s worthwhile that this season recasts the role of Marshmallow from a white cis actor to a Black trans actress, and hilarious that it likewise replaces the guy who formerly voiced Jimmy Pesto — not for issues of authenticity and representation in that case, but because the old one was arrested for storming the Capitol on January 6th, which is absolutely something Jimmy Pesto would have done as well.

I’m feeling charitable towards the program for those unusual production moves, and sympathetic over the unique constraints placed upon it by outside forces at the network. I suspect an audience watching straight through might enjoy this year even better, and I will specifically highlight the early episode “The Amazing Rudy” for doing exactly what I’d like to see more of on the show, diverging from the typical formula to deepen a minor character with a richer sense of interior life. Not every half-hour reaches those heights (from what I can recall), but the fact that one such entry does is ultimately enough to tip the scales for me overall.

★★★★☆

TV Review: Saturday Night Live, season 49

TV #21 of 2024:

Saturday Night Live, season 49

The last season of SNL was cut short by the onset of the recent writers strike, and the premiere of this next one was delayed while negotiations were ongoing. Whether due to those factors or not, there wasn’t any significant cast turnover in-between, with no one from season 48 leaving the show and only one newcomer joining the ranks (Chloe Troast, who hasn’t made much of an impression on me yet). Overall, the troupe still has something of a welcome leaner feel to it, although as usual, screentime is hardly uniform across all the players.

In his monologue for the final episode, host Jake Gyllenhaal riffed on how season 50 will obviously be the big occasion that everyone tunes in for, with the year before that anniversary coming off as more of an afterthought. Nevertheless, the sketch comedy and semi-topical political material has generally acquitted itself well this time around. In terms of earworms that immediately lodged in my brain, the highest SNL honors would have to go to Emma Stone and the ensemble in “Fully Naked in New York” and Kristen Wiig and Andrew Dismukes for “Jumanji,” but plenty of other skits in this run are pretty classic too, like “Hallmark Horror” or especially “Diet Coke by Olay.” Over in the Weekend Update corner, Michael Che and Colin Jost likewise continue to exhibit a fun repartee, despite/because of this being their tenth season at it (far past the previous record set by Seth Meyers), while James Austin Johnson’s Trump impression remains hilariously uncanny. In general, I’d say that the series is on a strong footing for its celebration event ahead, whatever that actually winds up looking like.

★★★★☆

Movie Review: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Movie #12 of 2024:

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Another thrilling post-apocalyptic adventure, with some excellent worldbuilding for this new era of the setting: “many generations” beyond the lifetime of Caesar, the chimpanzee protagonist of the 2011-2017 trilogy who experienced the collapse of human civilization and the rise of his own people firsthand. By now, that leader’s name has fallen into legend, with piecemeal and contradictory accounts of his time. In fact, our new hero’s tribe doesn’t seem to know that history at all, adding to the fragmented feel of the current ape culture. They do have their own cherished practices and teachings, like raising eagles as hunting companions, but those customs extend no further than the valley they call home. It’s very Clan of the Cave Bear, and helps to suggest a more expansive vista than we’re ever actually shown.

The villain of the piece is ape with delusions of grandeur, who styles himself a king and is willing to raze and enslave the smaller communities to forge his realm. That’s what initially sends Noa on a quest of rescue and revenge, as the outside world intrudes forcibly on his quiet and insular one. Along the way, he also connects with a wise orangutan and one of the few humans who has miraculously retained the powers of speech and higher thought.

That character is the only one in the film whose presence doesn’t really work for me. She’s too clean and modern in her appearance, with her sculpted eyebrows looking like she just walked off the set of an Abercrombie & Fitch commercial. I also don’t buy how familiar she is with the old world — the script’s treatment of the apes does such a great job of conveying how much knowledge has been lost over the centuries, it becomes jarring whenever she speaks up to mention concepts like viruses or government. She comes off almost as a time-traveler visitor from the past like Taylor the astronaut in the original movie, rather than someone who would have been born and raised long after such ideas fell out of common use.

But that element aside, the story is good. I love the design visuals of all the overgrown, broken, and repurposed artifacts of our day, and Noa is a worthy new lead, whether any subsequent sequels continue to follow his journey or not. I’m so glad that this franchise didn’t end with Caesar’s last stand in the previous film, even if this one never comes close to matching it in spectacle or pathos.

[Content warning for gun violence and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Book of Games by John Peel

Book #76 of 2024:

Book of Games by John Peel (Diadem #12)

This novel is one of two that author John Peel self-published (in a single bound volume) to close out his long-running Diadem fantasy saga, but I really wish he hadn’t bothered. It’s an embarrassingly poor effort, riddled with typos, repetitive wording, and rather basic continuity errors that any competent proofreader should have been able to catch. (To pick just a few examples: the planet from book #8 is referred to as Ocean instead of Brine, the spelling of Zarathan temporarily switches to Xarathan for a few pages, and Destiny gives her age as twenty-three after earlier saying that she’s twenty-seven.)

The protagonists all feel out-of-character, too — Score keeps threatening to spank people for some reason, Helaine calls the antagonist a bitch and a slut, and so on. The warrior girl is also sexually objectified herself pretty strongly throughout the text, with other characters making comments about her chest and legs, calling her a bimbo, and magically forcing her into skimpy “harem gear.” If this is Peel’s unfiltered writing, his former publishers must have been doing quite a lot of unsung work to shape it into acceptable middle-grade and YA fare before.

The plot, such as it is: we basically abandon the unresolved time-travel antics of the previous story to whisk the heroes along a sequence of artificial storybook scenarios, playing the imposed roles whilst trying to gain the upper hand over their opponent. It’s like one of the more infuriating Q or holodeck malfunction episodes of Star Trek, and although it eventually wraps around to perfunctorily conclude the business concerning Score’s mother, there’s no real sense of urgency or climax like an epic final showdown against the Triad or anything. No, instead the teens simply convince the superpowered eleven-year-old that they aren’t the bad guys like Destiny said, team up to stop her, and notice almost in passing that Oracle has become corporeal again. And then in the literal closing sentence of the book he announces that he’s dating Shanara now, because sure. Why not.

I liked the early books in this series a lot when I was younger, and I’m glad that I took the time to reread those and see how the sequels developed the characters further. But these last two novels are so thoroughly and utterly bad that I’m having trouble even reconciling them as being part of the same broad narrative at all.

This volume: ★☆☆☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Volumes ranked: 5 > 10 > 9 > 7 > 2 > 3 > 1 > 6 > 4 > 8 > 11 > 12

Movie Review: War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

Movie #11 of 2024:

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

[Edited version of my original review from 2017.]

When I first came home from seeing this in theaters, I noted that it was “probably the best Planet of the Apes movie ever made.” Having had seven years to sit with that assessment, and having just spent the last week rewatching all nine of the existing films in the lead-up to catching a matinee of the new one for my birthday tomorrow, I can now categorically double-down on that claim. This is the Apes movie, folks. I love the 1968 original and the 2011 reboot too, but War is really in a class of its own.

Obviously it builds on everything that the franchise had previously established in terms of worldbuilding lore and Caesar’s characterization, but I think an audience could basically start here and still follow along (and be blown away) just fine. The script establishes itself with an immediate confidence, despite jumping several years from the seeming cliffhanger end of the preceding feature, and from there all the pertinent backstory is delivered naturally as it becomes relevant. In fact, I would say that the weakest part of this title is how disconnected it feels to its direct predecessor — we’ve skipped over the Colonel and Caesar’s initial encounter(s) to find them already mortal enemies, and there’s no sign or mention of Malcolm and his fellow human allies from Dawn (which likewise summarily dropped Will and Caroline from Rise). That’s especially jarring when you watch through the films in quick succession.

But this is Caesar’s story overall, and it serves him well by sending him off on a bitter dig-two-graves revenge narrative, only for his arc to finally come back around to his roots as a Moses figure for his people at the journey’s end. As a protagonist, he’s offset by Woody Harrelson as the unhinged military leader — the chimpanzee’s Kurtz in their cross-species dystopian take on Apocalypse Now — providing electrifying scenes together and the first truly worthy villain for this series since the days of Dr. Zaius.

Even outside of those opposing primal personalities, this film is a gorgeously-shot snow-covered post-apocalyptic western mashed up with a war movie – which doesn’t mean we’re subjected to endless combat maneuvers, but rather to a personal tale suffused in the anguish of sustained warfare with thoughtful treatment of occupying forces, collaborators, POW labor camps, and so much more. Yet even with all that heaviness, the comedy lands nicely too, tapping into a sense of humor that we haven’t really seen in this franchise since Escape in 1971. And the plot meanwhile feeds lightly into the context of the original Charlton Heston piece, in that the apes continue to develop their powers of speech while the dwindling remnants of human civilization have begun losing theirs. There’s even a plausible link to the “alpha and omega” mutant cult of Beneath and Battle, though thankfully without the accompanying campiness.

I’m so excited to see how Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes brings this setting forward even further — reportedly by centuries, to a time when Caesar’s name has passed into legend — and the rest of the era that I’m sure is being planned to follow. There’s still plenty of ground left to cover before the Icarus arrives, but I’ll take this opportunity to sing the praises of Andy Serkis and his supporting team of motion-capture animators, who have elevated this old science-fiction saga to new heights over the course of their modern trilogy. Take a deserved rest, king. Apes together strong.

[Content warning for gun violence, suicide, torture, and gore.]

★★★★★

Like this review?
–Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
–Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
–Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler
–Or click here to browse through all my previous reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog

Movie Review: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Movie #10 of 2024:

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

[Edited version of my original review from 2017.]

Still a very strong picture, but not quite as good as Rise in my personal opinion. This sequel is the first time that the modern Apes series goes fully post-apocalyptic, but we’ve jumped forwards ten years, and there’s not a whole lot of worldbuilding for how ape and human society alike have changed over that span. The human characters are likewise pretty thinly-sketched compared to Will and his father in the last film, with both Gary Oldman as the primary villain and Keri Russell in the middle of her Americans era getting frustratingly wasted here. The ending too leaves a lot up in the air for the next movie to theoretically resolve — though it ultimately doesn’t — resulting in this one feeling somewhat adrift between two superior entries. (A string of short web films and a pair of tie-in novels by Greg Keyes are intended to bridge those canon gaps, but I’d imagine most audiences aren’t even aware of them.) And finally, as a big fan of the franchise, I can’t help but notice how much this title remixes key elements from Battle for the Planet of the Apes, like agitators on both sides ruining the chance for peace and Caesar’s belated realization that his species can be just as cruel as humanity.

Nevertheless, it uses those familiar pieces well, and is overall a compelling immediate story in its own right (if rather inelegantly named). The decision to tell much of the dialogue through subtitled ape sign language gives it a radically different feel from its 2011 predecessor, which presented an extraordinary amount of character and plot information through nonverbal visuals alone. In contrast to the humans, the apes around Caesar seem much more fleshed-out this time thanks to how much more they can communicate to one another / us. And even though the script ends on an apparent cliffhanger with the incoming military forces, the central conflict between the human settlers and their ape neighbors is well-told with legitimate motivations on all fronts. While I do think their individual characterizations could be deeper, I appreciate that the various antagonists are basically reasonable people who care for their loved ones, and that the production goes out of its way to humanize (/chimpize?) them all.

At 130 minutes of runtime — 25 longer than Rise — matters could stand to be more propulsive, but it’s hard to argue with the striking images like apes on horseback firing machine guns, a gas station reclaimed by woods, or Koba’s deceptive minstrel performance for the human guards. This probably ties with Battle for the single most forgettable Apes installment, but in the moment, it’s solid enough.

[Content warning for gore.]

★★★★☆