Film / Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

"What a wonderful day!"

Noa: When I sleep, I see strange things...
Raka: Memories?
Noa: Not memories. New things. I see everything.
Raka: (Chuckles) That is not... everything.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the third sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the fourth film in the reboot series, and tenth overall film in the Planet of the Apes series. Wes Ball (The Maze Runner Series) takes over the director’s chair from Matt Reeves.

The film is set roughly three centuries after the events of War for the Planet of the Apes, where apes are the dominant species living harmoniously and humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), builds his empire, a young ape embarks on a journey that will cause him to question all he has ever known and make choices that will define the future of the Earth.

The film was released on May 10, 2024.

Previews: Teaser, Official Trailer.

Cast:

• Owen Teague as Noa
• Freya Allan as Nova / Mae
• Kevin Durand as Proximus Caesar
• Peter Macon as Raka
• William H. Macy as Trevathan
• Travis Jeffrey as Anaya
• Lydia Peckham as Soona
• Neil Sandilands as Koro
• Eka Darville as Sylva

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes contains examples of:

• After the End: More so than the previous two films. In the time since War, most of humanity's achievements have been reclaimed by nature and mankind itself have been reduced to little more than feral animals hunted by the now dominant apes. And now history is set to start again as one faction rises with the goal of conquering their own kind.
• All for Nothing: Proximus is hit with this on several levels. For starters, after spending and ungodly amount of time and resources trying to get the vault door open, the whole place is drowned before he gets a chance to get his hands on what is inside. Then there’s the fact that given the vastness of the place, neither he nor the audience will ever get to know if it contained something more than a few small arms and rusted tanks. And even if the lower levels did contain the vast quantities of equipment Proximus dreams of, it would all still be useless to him because Mae already killed Trevathan, and without the human traitor to repair and maintain the equipment, and most importantly, teach the apes its secrets, Proximus’ dreams of sped up evolution are dead on arrival.
• All There in the Manual: The fact that this film is set 300 years after the previous one is only established in supplementary materials and interviews. The film's opening only mentions a far more vague descriptor of "many generations".
• Animal Is the New Man: Apes have taken over the world after human civilization collapsed centuries prior, just like in the original films.
• Arc Symbol:
  • A representation of Caesar's window at the Rodman house, often used to represent home throughout the previous trilogy, has become a symbol of Caesar and his teachings by the time of the events of this films. Multiple ape factions use it, and Caesar's legacy, to claim legitimacy.
  • The window symbol even appears and replaces the traditional 0 on the teaser poster.
• Big Bad: Proximus Caesar, the leader of the Ape Kingdom. Proximus has his apes hunt humans, and he seeks to rediscover lost human technology in order to strengthen his rule.
• Bittersweet Ending: Proximus is dead, his kingdom broken before it could rise, the bunker with its secrets drowned beneath the waves and Eagle Clan is rebuilding… but Noa's father and many others are dead; with Raka's death the Order of Caesar is extinguished and with it maybe the last remnants of Caesar's true legacy; Eagle Clan may never trust humans, intelligent or otherwise; and after centuries the remnants of human civilization are revealed to have not given up on reclaiming the planet from the apes.
• Both Sides Have a Point: By the end of the film it's become clear that there will likely soon be conflict between the apes and the remaining intelligent humans over who will retain/reclaim control of the planet, since Mae believes that humans deserve their chance again as they were previously the dominant species. While it's understandable that the pockets of intelligent humans want to come out of hiding and not live in fear of the apes massacring them or the Simian Flu robbing them of their sapience, Noa rightfully questions what this return to power would mean for the apes and whether they would be enslaved once more.
• Breaking Old Trends: Unlike the previous trilogy, which mostly centered around humanity's fight with apes as they were slowly pushed to ruin as ape-kind's society rose from the ashes, this film is the first to specifically depict a conflict between two different groups of apes as well as take place at a point where humanity is no longer a ragtag group of post-apocalyptic survivors but feral cavemen-like society (if they have one).^note While Koba was the true Big Bad of the second film, promotional material, and the trilogy overall was about the war between humanity and ape-kind and how the two had Swapped Roles. Or so it seems at first. It is eventually revealed that even at this point in history, there are still pockets of intelligent, technologically advanced humans, and while not directly challenging the apes, they have very much not given up on the idea of one day reclaiming the planet. The end of the movie sees all these scattered pockets across the world reestablish satellite communication with each other.
• Call-Back: Once again, the Apes Together Strong maxim is referenced in the trailer. While this exchange is spliced together from different sections of the film, several characters do reference it.
  Proximus Caesar: Together you will die.
  Noa: No... together, strong.
  • Proximus works it into his speech reinforcing his ideals upon his subjects. Raka also repeats it while describing the original Caesar's teachings.
• Call-Forward: Proximus' apes are shown to have started hunting humans, however it turns out the practice started as they are looking for one in particular and checking each one they catch, instead of just catching or killing as many as possible for sport and test subjects as it was in the orginal film.
• The Cameo: Caesar's group shows up in a silent opening scene, showing them all attending Caesar's funeral following his death at the end of War for the Planet of the Apes.
• Category Traitor: Mae is utterly incensed that Trevathan would betray his people by helping the apes in general and Proximus in particular gain access to the bunker and all its weapons and technology, because it is a human place.
• Chekhov's Skill: As part of their initiation rituals the apes of Eagle Clan must climb the ruins of skyscrapers to retrieve eagle eggs from their nests, and their village is also built around very tall wooden aeries that they’ve built for their eagles. All of this means that they are far more proficient at free climbing than all the other apes. Noa and his friends use these skills to get into the bunker through the cliffside ventilation shafts Mae leads them to, and during the climax Eagle Clan are the only ones skilled enough at climbing to use this route to escape the flooding bunker.
• Disney Villain Death: Proximus Caesar dies when he falls over a cliff while being attacked by the Eagle Clan's flock of trained eagles under Noa's direction.
• Distant Prologue: The first scene is set immediately after the ending of War for the Planet of the Apes, showing Maurice and the rest of Caesar's clan paying their respects to their leader after his death. The film then skips ahead several centuries to its main narrative.
• Distant Sequel: The film is set "many generations" after the events of the previous film in the franchise. Enough time has passed for all the human cities to have become completely overgrown by vegetation and for the events of the original trilogy to have completely passed from memory for most apes.
• Dolled-Up Installment: The film was initially intended to be a completely new adaptation with no connection to the previous trilogy. At some point during development, it was ultimately decided to make the film a Distant Sequel instead, with the story taking place three centuries after War for the Planet of the Apes.
• The Dragon: Sylva, the gorilla who leads the attack on Noa's clan, acts primarily as the muscle for Proximus.
• Elaborate Underground Base: The main goal of Proximus Caesar is to force his way into a great "vault" from the time of the humans, revealed to be a vast underground bunker where "half the [US] government" took refuge when the Simian Flu devastated the world. It is potentially full with an arsenal of weapons that Proximus very much wants to get his hands on.
• Establishing Shot: The teaser opens with a panning shot of a landscape before revealing that wherever it is, it was once a human city that has since been Reclaimed by Nature. This establishes the setting to take place a great deal of time after the last film.
• Evolutionary Levels: In an interview with Empire, the director made the comparison that in the prior movies, we saw the apes in their Stone Age, but in this movie, we will see them in their Bronze Age, i.e. whereas before they were (organized) hunter-gatherers, now they have more permanent settlements, wear clothing, use metal tools, and have a more developed culture with religion and a writing system. However, their actual depiction in the film would put the apes in something more akin to their Chalcolithic period, as some clans are still using stone tools, and other than salvaged human artifacts, ape metalwork is mostly copper.
• Foreign Culture Fetish: Proximus Caesar is interested in ancient human civilization in general, but obsessed with Ancient Rome in particular.
• Foreshadowing:
  • While the other humans wear pelts, Nova/Mae wears a fitted top and trousers, hinting at the technology and sapience required to make such garments.
  • Proximus' speech about And Man Grew Proud notes that humans once possessed the ability to "speak across oceans" before losing it along with their sapience. The end of the film reveals that there are pockets of humanity that managed to retain their intelligence, and with Mae's efforts, manage to re-establish that very asset, reactivating radio communication across the globe.
  • As the humans activate the satellite network at the end of the movie, Noa and Soona are shown back in the observatory, with the camera focusing on the astronaut drawing on the wall. Noa seems concerned about something in the sky, hinting at the spaceship from the first film returning to Earth.
• Formerly Sapient Species: Seemingly the fate of humans in the future, robbed of their higher intellect and speech, and being no more advanced than apes used to be.
• Future Imperfect: Despite their intended purpose being the preservation of knowledge, the Order of Caesar have a very shaky knowledge of what the world was actually like during Caesar's time or what the relationship between human and ape was. Thanks to his pet intelligent human Trevathan Proximus actually has a far more accurate grasp of the world's history.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Downplayed in that while Mae is hardly a villain, and her goal of using the technology in the vault to help kickstart the rebuilding of human society is noble on its face, her callousness in manipulating both Noa and Proximus and what her ultimate goal would mean for apekind make her a bigger threat in the long run than Proximus could ever hope to be.
• History Repeats:
  • Ape-populated areas are beginning to impose upon nature much like the humans once did, and they are beginning to fight amongst themselves in their clans. To hammer home the idea that they have become humans in all but look, one is shown with a stun rod, posed much like Dodge back in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
  • Once again, a tyrannical bonobo is the Big Bad of the movie, just like Koba in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. And just like Koba, he suffers a Disney Villain Death caused by a fellow ape.
• The Hero: Noa, the new ape protagonist that takes over for Caesar from the previous trilogy, as he goes on his quest for knowledge and to recover his kidnapped clan. However, the revelation of what Mae's key actually does and that there are scattered pockets of intelligent humanity still remaining makes Mae the heroic protagonist for humanity, and by the film's ending her success in re-establishing radio communication turns Noa and his heroic tale of freeing his tribe from a tyrannical oppressor into a sort of Decoy Protagonist whose role distracted everybody from Mae's long-term goals in re-starting the ape/human conflict in apes of allowing humanity to once again be on top.
• Here We Go Again!: The ending of the film teases yet another conflict between the apes and the remaining intelligent humans scattered on Earth...
• Humans Are Not the Dominant Species: Humankind as we know it is gone. All that remains are the feral, neanderthal-esque people living in the wild, descendants of the last victims of the Simian Flu while the apes have taken their place as the dominant species without resistance. The old cities are overgrown, and the apes are shown exploring abandoned facilities and living in a beached ship. Or so it seems at first. It is eventually revealed that pockets of intelligent humans remain, confined to sealed enclaves to protect them from the mutated Simian Flu virus.
• Humans Are Survivors: Despite the extent to which the Simian Flu had ravaged humanity, it's revealed that not only are intelligent humans still around three centuries after the events of War, but they have been able to retain some form of society with modern technology after all this time. And on top of that, when they are able to re-activate their satellite system, it's revealed that there are similar humans all over the world.
• Humans by Any Other Name: Due to the sheer amount of time passed, the term "human" is no longer universally used. Noa's tribe call the humans of the forbidden zone "Echoes", although with their lack of knowledge of history the meaning of this name is lost on them.
• Humanity's Wake: Modern humanity is now gone, but their technology still lingers; and its Proximus' desire to attain them so he can use them to rule over apekind as a whole.
• The Immune: This films reveals that there are some humans, such as Mae and Trevathan, who are immune to mutated Simian Flu, being able to retain speech and normal intellect, instead of turning into dumb mutes. That this is the result of random natural immunity and not some cure that was eventually developed is implied by the fact that the people Mae delivers the satellite decryption key to, live in a sealed environment and the woman who interacts with Mae wears a sealed hazmat suit to do so and needs to go through decontamination before rejoining everyone else.
• Interspecies Friendship: The principal protagonists–Noa and Mae–are a male ape and a female human, respectively. Circumstances forcing them to work together to survive.
• Ironic Name: Proximus Caesar means "next to Caesar" or "close to Caesar". Yet, being a tyrannical bonobo who kills humans for sport, wages war against his fellow apes, and twists Caesar's ideologies to serve his own agenda, he's a lot closer to Koba.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Noa despises Proximus and everything he represents, but he reluctantly agrees with his point that intelligent humans are lying, duplicitous beings that can hardly be trusted.
• Kneel Before Zod: At one point, Proximus Caesar orders someone "bend for your king". Many trailers splice the footage so Noa is responding to him with a defiant "Never!"
• Large Ham: Proximus Caesar.
  "WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY!''
• Last of His Kind: Raka is the last surviving member of the Order of Caesar, a group of apes who seek to preserve Caesar's original teachings, as well as books and knowledge from the ancient world left by mankind.
• Lost Technology: Ape-kind as nowhere near where humanity was at its peak technologically since they either aren't as interested in technological progress as their former human masters or simply haven’t had the time to develop it. This creates a problem when a faction of malicious apes recover some of the technology, particularly weapons and electricity, left behind, giving them an edge over the other ape tribes.
• Metaphorically True: Mae tells Noa that what she seeks inside the bunker is a "sort of book" that will allow humans to regain the ability to speak that they lost long ago when their civilization fell. While on the strictest terms this turns out to be a load of bullshit, it is actually true in a sense: the satellite decryption key that Mae retrieves from the bunker does indeed give them the capability to "talk" to each other across vast distances by reestablishing satellite communication between all the isolated pockets of remaining intelligent humans, something they had lost with the Fall.
• Meaningful Echo: Mae reveals that she can converse intelligently to Noa and Raka by standing up straight, looking them in the eye and rejecting the label of "Nova" they consider calling her by saying "My name is Mae", to their Stunned Silence. The camera work and facial acting deliberately evoke Caesar's iconic Big "NO!" moment from Rise, his own poignant demonstration of intelligence to his captors. This foreshadows that Mae likewise is acting with the aim of getting the oppressed humankind back on top of the social order over apes, like Caesar became a Rebel Leader of his oppressed herd, although in Mae's case, her much more intentionally damaging actions and demonstrated anger towards a Category Traitor like Trevathan for leading the apes to a "human place" push her towards being a Big Bad Friend to Noa by the end, in an inverse of Caesar and Will's relationship throughout Rise.
• Meaningful Name: The Big Bad of the film is named Proximus Caesar. Proximus is Latin for "recent" or "close to" and sounds similar to "proxy" and "proximity"; he presents himself as the second coming of the apes' mythic messiah.
• Meet the New Boss: Proximus Ceasar's tyranny is no different than any other human from history, suggesting that tyranny itself is a condition of sentience rather than species.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Noa experiences this twice in the film.
  • It’s established early on that Noa is a "Well Done, Son" Guy to his father Koro, who claims that there is still "much to teach and much to learn" for them both, shortly before the latter is killed during the raid against their clan.
  • When he sets out on his own, Noa befriends the wise orangutan Raka, who passes on some of Caesar's wisdom and even takes Mae under his wing. When crossing a raging river to Proximus' hideout, Raka commits a Heroic Sacrifice to save Mae from drowning, and is swept away by the current himself while Noa and Mae watch in horror.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Noa, Mae and Raka are surprised to find zebras in what was once the United States that are likely descendants of zebras housed in US zoos.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The scene with a scared Mae hiding in the tall grass is shot in the same way as the scene of a scared Taylor hiding from the gorilla hunters in the 1968 film. She even runs up a log to avoid the gorillas as Taylor did.
  • While in the US government bunker, the apes come upon a doll that goes "Mama!!" in the same voice as the doll Taylor found in the 1968 film which increases their realization that humans once were the dominant species of Earth.
  • The feral Humans are all either either wearing a Fur Bikini or a Loincloth like in the first film. Mae wears both a fur-made shirt and blue jeans.
• Named After Someone Famous: And with a sinister twist; Raka tells Noa that all captured female humans are named "Nova", likely after the character from War for the Planet of the Apes. So the young girl whom Caesar and his friends loved and protected is now the namesake for the last remnants of her species, who are seen as beasts by the apes and treated accordingly.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: For both protagonists by the end of the film.
  • For Noa, his actions in overthrowing Proximus unknowingly allowed Mae to access a decryption key stored in the vault necessary for what's left of intelligent humanity to re-establish radio communication with each other, with the overall aim of re-establishing humanity's place atop the social order, even if that involves forcing Apekind back into non-sapience. This leaves the seeds for another ape/human war of domination to erupt on a global scale, with Noa none the wiser as to the extent of the chaos coming. Whilst undoubtably a selfish tyrannical oppressor, Proximus seemed to be the only one fully aware of the extent of humanity's ambitions thanks to his "pet" human Trevathan, and whilst he intended to usurp elements of said plan to benefit himself in creating his kingdom, his efforts would nonetheless have allowed Apekind to begin mastering human armaments and weapons, depriving the intelligent humans of the one advantage they possess over the Apes, which is what Mae was most desperate to avoid in the end.
  • For Mae, her efforts have allowed radio communication once more, but ultimately no matter what she does, humanity's time as the dominant sapient species is done, and everything she does to achieve that only proved to Noa, her most steadfast ally, that Proximus did have a valid point about humanity's inherent lying and manipulative nature. Despite leaving her a peace offering at the end and questioning if it was truly impossible for both sapient species to co-exist, Mae still believes at the end that humanity "deserves" another chance to rule the planet, when it's actually implied that the intelligent humans' refusal to co-exist is what will convince later ape generations of their inherent savage nature and use that to justify enslaving what devolved humans remain by the end. Furthermore, while Apekind is currently in its "bronze age" of development, it's implied that the functioning tools of civilisation still active within the human bunkers is what will later fast-forward their society into becoming more "civilised" down the line.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: After the destruction of his village, enslavement of his tribe and murder of his father right before his eyes, Noa goes on a heroic quest to rescue his people from Proximus' tyranny, whilst also protecting the weaker and more vulnerable Mae from his forces after it transpires they're searching for her, apparently due to her retaining higher intelligence amongst humans due to being The Immune to the virus. However, once Noa succeeds, the end of the film reveals that Mae was a scout for an isolated pocket of still-intelligent humanity living in a hermetically-sealed underground bunker to protect themselves from the virus, and her actions throughout the film were manipulating Noa into helping her breach the Vault that Proximus was interested in for the human armaments within so she could gain access to a decryptor key. This key enables the intelligent humans around the world to re-establish radio communication with each other, potentially starting the seeds for another ape/ human war between the species. Noa even seems to become aware of this by the end, noting that Proximus had a point about humans being untrustworthy and manipulative, after Mae intentionally endangered his tribe to drown the Vault and deny Proximus the weapons. It's even hinted that her main focus on stopping Proximus mastering human armaments was not to prevent him from becoming a more powerful conquerer, but to deny the possibility for apekind as a whole to master guns and armaments before humanity is ready to strike back as a united force with their retained knowledge of such weapons; their only advantage against the biologically and now mentally superior apes.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. Prior to learning her name, Raka names Mae "Nova", before revealing that all the captured humans are named "Nova". Given the human Nova was adopted into Caesar's herd as a Morality Pet by the end of War, it further showcases how far removed ape kind has become from Caesar's teachings, that the name of the human girl he showed kindness, empathy, mercy and safety to has become the catch-all term for humans who are basically Apekind's pets.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Despite three centuries having passed, gunpowder still works, paperback books have not disintegrated, exposed steel has not completely rusted into nothingness, and all the equipment inside the government bunker, including power generators, computers and weapons are fully operational. The satellite network in orbit also remains operational after 300 years without maintenance.
• Reclaimed by Nature: The Earth has been reclaimed by nature, with the remnants of human civilization claimed by the forests. The familiar sight of the LAX airport terminal covered in green confirms this movie takes place in the greater Los Angeles area. The Eagle Clan have made their home within some giant electrical towers, eagles have made nests high up in the rusted skeletons of skyscrapers, and hunks of rusted out vehicles still dot the landscape. Proximus makes his kingdom out of the remains of a massive rusted out tanker on the coast.
• Sequel Hook: We get two:
  • We discover that there are pockets of sapient, technologically advanced humans still around. While probably not as hostile as Colonel McCullough, they still have the ultimate goal of reclaiming the planet for humanity, which does not bode well for the burgeoning ape society.
  • One of the last shots is Noa looking through the observatory telescope and seeing a shape that concerns him, contrasted with a drawing of astronauts, implying that the astronauts that were lost in space all the way back in Rise are finally making their way back to Earth.
• Shout-Out: Proximus Caesar's "WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY!" can't help but bring to mind the almost identical "OH WHAT A DAY, WHAT A LOVELY DAY!" - another war cry associated with a post-apocalyptic tyrant.
• Sole Survivor:
  • According to the backstory that Mae tells Noa and Raka, she is the only survivor from a settlement of intelligent humans that was previously wiped out by Proximus's forces.
  • The above backstory turns out to be a partial fabrication. Mae does originate from a settlement of intelligent humans, and she is the sole survivor of a group that was wiped out by Proximus's forces... but said group was a small party sent by the aforementioned settlement on a mission to find the "vault" Proximus is trying to break into and retrieve something from it.
• Super Drowning Skills: Zigzagged. While Raka and Sylva both die via drowning, both instances happen under circumstances where even a human who knows how to swim would be unlikely to survive (Raka being swept under in a fast-moving river and Sylva being trapped in a rapidly flooding room).
• Take a Third Option: By the end of the film, Noa realises that whilst understandable from their perspective, [Mae's desire to allow humanity to reclaim its place on top of the social order is no different to Proximus oppressing the Ape tribes to force them to join his kingdom, and both species seem destined to subjugate the other in order to become the "dominant" sapient race. He gifts Mae a necklace symbol of the Ape religion and questions her if it is really impossible for their two sapient races to co-exist together despite their differences. It won't work, and by the final scenes of the film, it's revealed that Mae's efforts have allowed what's left of intelligent humanity to communicate with each other, with the unspoken aim of "overthrowing" Apekind as the dominant species once they're organised together.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The farther the plot progresses, the harder Noa finds it to work with Mae, because she keeps lying and hiding things from him every step of the way.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Initial press releases plain revealed that Freya Allan's character was both named Nova and Mae, spoiling the reveal of her real name in the movie. Then one month before release, several trailers and scenes were made public including the one where she is named which also reveals that she can talk, along with another that shows her and William H. Macy's character are intelligent people. In the weeks preceding those, director Wes Ball outright told fans to not watch promotional material if they wanted to enjoy the film as intended.
• Trilogy Creep: The film was initially to be a Continuity Reboot to the 2011-2017 films which had a conclusion with War for the Planet of the Apes, only to become a sequel to them.
• Truer to the Text: The previous films focused on the fall of humanity and the rise of ape-kind with only Caesar shown to consistently speak though his voice sounded like his body wasn't made to speak and his vocabulary was initially limited while the others used sign-language. The teaser is set long after humanity has been reduced to little more than feral animals while apes rule as the dominant species, with a culture that includes clothing along with the ability to speak clearly and in whole sentences; overall bringing the franchise into closer alignment with past continuities.
• The Unreveal: The bunker in which "Half the [U.S.] Government" hid is in fact abandoned, as the one thing conspicuously absent when Mae and the Apes finally go inside is dead bodies, despite the bunker being sealed from the inside. Who went in, how long they stayed, what happened to them or their plans is not revealed. Mae's detailed knowledge of how to access the facility implies she knows, but she of all people is unlikely to tell.
• Unscrupulous Hero: Mae is willing to resort to some pretty morally questionably extremes for the sake of completing her mission and what she sees as protecting the future of humanity (whose time as the dominant species is already done for), ranging from lying and manipulating to murder, up to and including the mass murder of all of Proximus' soldiers and slaves (save for Eagle Clan who manage to escape) to prevent the ape tyrant from getting his hands on the arsenal inside the bunker.
• Uplifted Animal: The teaser shows that ape-kind has developed and expanded to the point they now inhabit a portion of the land Caesar and his people found, divided into different clans and other factions. Unfortunately, this naturally means that at least one such group has risen intending to conquer the others using recovered human technology.
• Villain Ball: It never occurs to either Proximus or Trevathan to suggest that perhaps there may be another entrance into the vault.
• Villain Respect: Proximus is overcome with joy when Mae produces a hidden revolver to gun down his Lieutenant Lighting. His expectations of the bunker have exceeded his wildest dreams. So much so he offers Mae safe passage away from the bunker.
• Visionary Villain: Proximus Caesar seeks to unite all the myriad ape clans into a single kingdom under his rule... by force.
• You Are a Credit to Your Race:
  • Raka commends Mae as being "smarter than most" of the devolved humans and he and Noa both consider her better than the majority of the caveman-like humanoids that are all that remain of civilisation. Once Mae reveals both her real name and that she can speak, she makes it clear that their attempts to care for her wellbeing akin to a pet animal was Condescending Compassion at best for her.
  • At then end of the film, Mae chooses to have a final goodbye with Noa, despite his understandable animosity towards her for nearly killing his entire tribe in the crossfire of destroying Proximus' kingdom, having come to see him as a "good" ape of his kind for all the aid and support they gave each other. Most notably, Mae had already completed her mission with the decryption key, so there was no real motivation for their talk other than a final goodbye between two former allies. Noa for his part, can only disappointedly comment that Mae isn't better than the rest of her kind like he thought, and only proved Proximus' warning about humankind's deceitful and manipulative nature true in the end. At best, her treating him as better that the rest of his kind was mere condescending compassion from her side as well.

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"Apes hunt humans. That… is wrong."