Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes ending explained: What does Mae get from the bunker?
The latest film in the long-running franchise has just arrived in UK cinemas.
The latest entry to the sprawling Planet of the Apes franchise, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, has landed, introducing audiences to a new ape, and a new timeline.
Set 300 years after events depicted in the recent Andy Serkis-led trilogy, but before the 1968 film, Kingdom follows young ape Noa (Owen Teague), who leads a sheltered life in his settlement and is completely unaware that humans once ruled the planet. That's until Kevin Durand's Proximums Caesar comes along.
The villainous ape attacks Noa's tribe, killing many of its members and taking others prisoner. He claims his actions are in the name of Serkis's Cesar, whose legacy he seems to have seriously misinterpreted.
Noa manages to evade being taken, and plans to fight back, putting him in the path of an orangutan named Raka and Freya Allan's Mae, a human he finds surprisingly intelligent, and whose intentions might not be what they seem at first.
The film certainly leaves things open for more movies, with director Wes Ball recently telling RadioTimes.com,"We definitely have ideas of where we want to go with it. You know, this long legacy of these movies are always kind of about certain themes and ideas.
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"And if we're fortunate and we’re successful that we can make more, we'd certainly love to."
It looks like he might get his wish – but where exactly did Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes leave things off? Read on for all the details.
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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes ending explained
After Mae informs Raka and Noa that Proximus has taken his prisoners to a settlement near an old human bunker, the group close in on their destination – but soon find themselves under attack once again.
In the melee that follows, Raka sacrifices himself to save Mae and is swept away to sea. Meanwhile Mae and Noa are taken to Proximus's camp, where the rest of Noa's clan has been kept following their earlier capture.
Here, Proximus delivers a speech in which he outlines his desires: he wants to gain access to the bunker so he can use the human technology hidden within it, but has so far failed to break down the gates.
He also tries to recruit Noa to his side and warns him against following Mae – telling him that humans can never be trusted and that she does not have his best interests at heart.
This leads to Noa confronting her, and she admits that she knows how they can get into the bunker and that she wants to get in for her own reasons: she's looking for a book that she says has the power to give humanity its voice once again.
They agree on a deal to help each other, with Noa planning to destroy the bunker once Mae has got what she needs in order to prevent Proximus from gaining any tools that might further increase his power.
And so, together with Noa's friends Soona and Anaya, they plant gunpowder by a dam near the bunker – but not before Mae suffocates Proximus's human servant Trevathan, who had threatened to expose their plan. The apes seem shocked by this act of brutality, but help Mae dispose of the body nonetheless.
They are successful in gaining access to the bunker and – among various firearms – Mae soon finds what she is looking for, which turns out not to be a book but a piece of technology that looks like some kind of modem.
Meanwhile, during her search, the apes find an old human book that includes illustrations of their species in cages, which again seems to make them doubt the goodness of humans.
On their way out of the bunker, the group find a major spanner in the works: Proximus is standing at the entrance, and he soon takes Noa's friend Soona captive and threatens to kill her unless he is told where the weapons are.
Instead of obliging, Mae sets of the explosives they had earlier planted and runs away, which leads to major flooding and a tricky escape for the apes. Both Noa and Proximus make their way out and the latter attacks the former – whose prospects of escape do not look very good.
But just as things appear completely desperate, Noa masters a song that his late father used to sing, which has the power of summoning a group of eagles. The birds arrive on the scene almost instantly and attack Proximus – who falls to his death as a result.
With his clan now safe, Noa departs to rebuild their old settlement, while Mae returns to say goodbye. Together, they discuss whether humans and apes really can live side by side, and it appears that Noa is having a few doubts about this.
As the film ends, we see Mae making her way to a satellite base, where it turns out there are dozens more surviving humans working together.
She hands someone the device she had retrieved from the bunker and it is plugged into a computer, which appears to re-activate the satellites at the base and allows them to make contact with other humans around the world – undoubtedly setting up a more epic film next time around.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is now showing in UK cinemas.
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