That night he encounters a human (Freya Allan) for the first time. The 'echoes' as his clan call them are almost never seen in the valley.
No good will come of this.
This perhaps the second most reliable franchise in history. Other things have made more money but for sheer longevity Planet of the Apes must be up there with Bond and I can't think of much else in Western cinema with this staying power. The Fast and The Furious is prolific but this franchise is now over 50 years old and still going.
Aside from the Tim Burton helmed instalment nobody talks about they've all had something to recommend them. I know, I watched them all a while back.
This is a soft reboot of the recent trilogy, skipping forward in time while keeping much the same tone and setting. It doesn't go for the moral/allegorical material present in the 70s incarnation it's straight action adventure but it does it solidly. I'd watch more.
With humanity's dominance almost totally forgotten this has a whiff of "Mad Max on horses" with scrappy settlements built around what structures are left standing that they all assume were built by apes in the time of Caesar.
The motion capture work is astonishingly well done, you simply tune in to the overwhelming majority of characters being apes and there's very little uncanny valley. They're just there, onscreen, being talking, expressive apes, seamlessly.
It's long but doesn't drag, shamelessly just part one of a new series but also complete enough by itself. A solid bit of action adventure entertainment 7/10. Not going to surprise you but also not going to disappoint you.