“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is a welcome return to “The Planet of Apes” universe, albeit one that doesn’t soar nearly as much as past entries have. It’s a grand adventure, not weighed down by lore and high on thrills. However, it fails to unleash a story that’s as impactful as we’ve come to expect from this ongoing clash between man and monkey.

Centuries after the events of the last film, the narrative refocuses itself on an ape named Noa (Owen Teague), who lives within a tribe of apes that harnessed a connection with eagles and isolated themselves above the rest of the ape-controlled world. Noa runs into apes from another tribe, and it leads to the destruction of his entire village and the separation of his family. 

With this profound shift, Noa braves the wider world that’s been shielded from him in order to find his family and exact revenge upon those who took his home from him. He befriends a worldly orangutan (Peter Macon), and they discover an abnormally advanced human who’s being pursued by a powerful primate leader named Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand). Proximus attempts to breach a vault that he thinks could have the key to the next step in the evolution of apes. Noa must navigate the new world and decide who he will ally with — humans or apes?

The trilogy that precedes this film set a new standard for on-screen visual effects, particularly the use of motion capture to aid the actor’s performance, epitomized by Andy Serkis’s legendary performance at Caeser. Teague delivers a performance that astounds in terms of sheer expressiveness and calculated emotion. He has moments where the ape sleeve, so to speak, falls away, and it felt like I was watching a human. The franchise has the process of having actors blend into the primate lifestyle nearly down to a science at this point. 

Even after being rebooted and retooled, the standard for performance has stayed the same. These movies have always understood the degree to which an audience must connect with characters, even when simulated or created through CGI, and continue to. Teague’s performance grounds the movie in something human even as its scope expands and its stakes heighten. 

Macon is another highlight as an orangutan who plays a mentor-like role to Noa and guides them through a world he hasn’t yet experienced. Noa’s adversary, Proximus Caeser, is played with considerable aplomb by Durand. Where Teague strives for realism to pierce the digital veil, Durand dials up both his showmanship and charisma for Proximus, who yells, preaches and proselytizes his way through this futuristic landscape. In a movie that is often predicated around silence and the wonder of speech, Durand is the exact kind of gonzo boost of fuel the movie needs.

Noa’s a fine protagonist to explore the new status quo of the planet of apes, but if there are more films to come, he’s too blank a slate to really engage with. He recalls more of a Luke Skywalker or Neo type, where they and the audience share the naivete about the mysteries of the magical world. Within the film’s exploration of the tenuous connection between humans and apes, a less layered ape feels like it cheapens some of that storytelling, simplified to move the action forward. 

Although “Kingdom” has all the hallmarks of a blockbuster — bigger, longer and louder — it makes itself small in ways that are necessary. Once the film settles on the prison camp Proximus Caeser operates to open the aforementioned vault, the whole sprawl of the film, and its various kingdoms and ape philosophies, fall away. The films instead favor a conflict that enters the picture much too late. It stops the films in its tracks ,and it took me a while to get back on board. 

I’m all for an apes-centric prison movie, and to the film’s credit, director Wes Ball knows how to mount a sequence well. As he did in the Maze Runner trilogy, he boils down centuries of lore and a feast of exposition into something more manageable that doesn’t slow the story down too often.

“Kingdom of the Planet of Apes” has plenty of action sequences and a sweep to it that the other movies didn’t, but it isn’t promising enough of a start to the new age of Apes movies.