Movies
Mae: The True Villain of ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’
The new Planet of the Apes movie is superb, as is the rest of Wes Ball’s new Planet of the Apes series. Each one is a look into what makes us human, managing to bring a new spin to the question with each entry.
This article will contain major spoilers for ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’, so If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I highly recommend you do so.
However, while I believe ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ is just as good as the rest of the series, it’s probably for a different reason than most.
Each ape in the series is incredibly well characterized. This is one of the main draws behind the franchise, along with it’s deep philosophical questions. However, ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ is a departure from the original Wes Ball trilogy, taking place many generations after ‘War of the Planet of the Apes’, in a world where sentient humans are few and far between, the rest of their kind robbed of their speech and intelligence. The rest of the sentient humans are forced to go into hiding where the sentient apes dominate the earth in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
One ape in particular completely steals the show in ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’: Proximus Caesar.
He is originally presented as the main villain of the movie, capturing and attacking villages of apes to bring them into his “kingdom”. His main goal is to bring down the titanium-reinforced door to a major vault of human artifacts.
Thanks to a man called Travathan, who has given up on humanity and submitted himself to Proximus, Proximus has become aware of the concept of evolution, believing he can lead the apes to a higher plane of existence by speeding up the evolution process. He plans to do this by introducing them to the human remnants of technology in the vault, such as guns and books.
However, this is where our protagonists intervene. Noa is an ape whose family and clan was taken by Proximus’ forces to be citizens of his kingdom. Noa wishes to free the rest of his clan and family, leading the apes Proximus has taken to freedom. Mae is a human who still has her sentience and had her family also slaughtered by Proximus. Lost and alone, she is forced to join forces with Noa so she can return to her kind.
However, when Mae finds out the details of Proximus’ plan, she refuses to let him open the vault and give the remaining knowledge of humanity to the apes, fearing what Proximus plans to do with this knowledge and equipment. She agrees to help lead Noa’s apes to freedom if he helps her destroy the vault so Proximus cannot access it.
At first, I believed this was a noble goal. Proximus is clearly the villain, so why should he gain this knowledge? Why does he get to rule over these apes?
But my line of thinking completely changed with the next actions Mae takes.
Her plan is to rig explosives all over a dam that cuts off Proximus’ fort from the ocean, opening the gate to the vault via a back entrance and causing water to rush in, destroying the contents of the vault and Proximus’ fort with it. During the chaos, Noa will lead the rest of the apes away and towards freedom.
But things go south quickly when they open the gate. Proximus is immediately there with all of his apes, including those who have been captured, to confront Mae and Noa.
Mae decides to trigger the explosives then and there, potentially killing every single ape there just to prevent Proximus from getting into the Vault.
This is pure evil. Noa has saved Mae countless times, putting himself in harm’s way to save a human girl he barely knows simply because he doesn’t want to see her suffer, only for her to repay him by potentially brutally killing him and the rest of his comrades.
This choice was jarring enough for me to not even be able to focus on Proximus’ climactic defeat at the hands of an escaped Noa and his clan.
Even Noa confronts Mae on this choice towards the end of the movie. The apes are advancing already. Despite his brutal methods, Proximus’ goal was a noble one. He simply wanted to see his species grow to be the best they could be. Even without the knowledge of the vault, the intelligence of apes is growing at a massive rate. Noa informs Mae that the apes will come back better, stronger, and faster than ever before, and people like her will be powerless to stop them. This shakes Mae so much that she chooses not to kill Noa with a revolver she had concealed.
This moment was easily the most satisfying part of the movie. While I understand Mae’s motivations for wanting the apes to be taken out or at least staying the way they are — they killed her family and essentially took over the planet, after all — this doesn’t justify her actions.
Mae’s refusal to accept that the apes are the future is the most frustrating part of her character and what solidifies her as a villain in my eyes. Humans created these apes, and their sentience is on par with what’s remaining of their race. From my perspective, and from many of the other apes, this is equivalent to friendly fire, to genocide. It is entirely humanity’s fault that they have been reduced to their current state, and what’s left of their pride and selfish clinging to the past doesn’t give them the right to destroy the apes.
In a sense, the apes have even been better to humans than the humans were to them, mostly leaving them alone. But in the previous movie, humans actively killed apes in droves by capturing and imprisoning apes and then forcing them to reveal the location of the villages where their comrades lived.
As much as Mae deludes herself into thinking that the humans have the moral high ground, they have the exact opposite. I’ll go as far to say that they deserved what came to them.
With the way ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ ended, a sequel is all but inevitable. I’m excited to see what the future holds for her character, and I eagerly await her comeuppance.
