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Planet of the Humans: Reviewing the Film and its Reviews

By Eduardo Sasso , originally published by Resilience.org

May 7, 2020

If you haven’t seen the latest (and arguably the most contentious) documentary on renewable energy, be prepared for an aftertaste of mixed feelings.

Joining hands with the controversial Michael Moore, environmentalist and filmmaker Jeff Gibbs has sent an eerie message that is now somewhat dividing the climate movement—in many ways for the worse, but, in a few others, for the better.

So, at least, one could argue is the case of Planet of the Humans . After engaging briefly with some of the well-deserved criticisms the film has received thus far, there are nevertheless some important aspects brought to our attention by the movie.

Specifically, at one point in the documentary, Gibbs touches upon the religious and existential dimensions underlying our ecological hot waters—aspects that, for what it seems, many of his critics have left unaddressed. Hence the focus towards the end of this review will fall on the cosmic role of religion (or cosmology, if we will) in helping us engage with “the great scheme of things”, to use the phrase of one of the scholars interviewed in the documentary.

But first a sketch of the film and its criticism.

What is the Central Claim of Planet of the Humans?

Drawing implicitly on the legacy of renowned environmentalist Rachel Carson , in essence, Planet of the Humans calls into question the solutions proposed by so-called renewable technologies. Such solutions, Gibbs argues, are to a degree or another an extension-in-disguise of the same problems created by our technological society. For one, solar panels and wind towers still burn fuels to be produced; for another, they rely on copious amounts of minerals and rare earth metals. More worryingly, what Gibbs calls “the narrow solution of green technology” keeps feeding the pockets of a smaller few at the expense of the greater rest, leaving underlying societal problems unattended.

Overall, the documentary thus aims to show how the creation of these panels and towers, as well as the burning of biofuels and biomass, are also problematic, albeit in different ways if compared with the fossil fuels they aim to displace. Old wine in new wineskins, in short.

“Is it possible” thus asks Gibbs, “for machines made by industrial civilization to save us from industrial civilization?” ( 17:10 )

Even if he argues for an unnerving “no”, some of the film’s reviewers are ready to claim the opposite.

(Well-Deserved) Hot-Blooded Reactions

To begin with, Gibbs’s critics are quick to signal how the film’s downplaying of renewables is outdated. The dismissal of solar panels ( 14:45 , a scene whose panels arguably date from 2008), for instance, is done on the ground of their inefficiency.

However, as leading environmental activist Bill McKibben answers back, engineers have done their job since in vastly improving this technology, making solar the cheapest way of generating energy today. According to McKibben, since a panel now lasts (up to) three decades—taking four years to compensate for the energy it took to build it—90 percent of the power it then produces is carbon-emissions-free. Moreover, others point out how the overall impacts across the lifecycle (to mine materials, build, transport, install, and uninstall) both solar PVs and wind towers is between 3 and 28 times lower than using, say, liquified natural gas for electricity production (natural gas is one of the less polluting forms of fossil fuels).

The Guardian , too, implicitly takes sides with furious scientists calling to take down the movie—not least because fact-checks are revealing the film’s slim evidence to back up some claims.

Getting Rid of the Mud-water, but Keeping the Baby

Besides valid reasons like the above, what struck me as most troubling was the grim and rather accusatory tone of the documentary. It’s also (to a considerable extent) polarizing, at times dismissing perhaps too easily the honest intentions of some well-meaning folk. (Sad but true; especially in an age of ecological breakdown when we need to unite despite our differences.)

Still, could the film’s field-splitting call to choose sides, be the method to its madness? Could its polarizing stance somehow serve Gibb’s insistence to untangle the ecological cause from the story of unceasing economic growth—even of so-called ‘green’ economic growth—that continues to dictate the north of our industrialized societies?

Senior Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute and author of Afterburn: Societies Beyond Fossil Fuels , Richard Heinberg , agrees with the filmmakers in admitting how the belief that with ‘green’ investments and political will we’ll ultimately be able to build a green future is “an illusion that deserves shattering.” According to Heinberg, “the only realistic way to make the transition in industrial countries like the US is to begin reducing overall energy usage substantially [solar-/wind-powered or otherwise], eventually running the economy on a quarter, a fifth, or maybe even a tenth of current energy.” (Italics mine.)

Read: Renewables? To an extent, yes; but far beyond: lifestyle change, and cutbacks—something that some environmentalists shy away from championing, admittedly for the tactical communication purpose of not losing their audience.

And yet, as Heinberg notes, “it’s a mistake to let marketing consultants sort truth from fiction for us”—a chief reason why Planet of the Humans doesn’t have space for such bargaining.

Just Give Me (One More) Fact

On a similar vein, world-renowned Professor Emeritus of Community Planning at the University of British Columbia, William Rees, has recently shown the limitations of renewables and remains a pessimist facing what he labels as a “superficial support for the notion that green tech is our savior.” To back his claim, Rees points out how building just one typical wind turbine requires 817 energy-intensive tonnes of steel, 2,270 tonnes of concrete, and 41 tonnes of non-recyclable plastic.

In turn, solar power also demands large quantities of cement, steel, and glass—let alone rare earth metals. Aside from their compromised mining and refining processes, world demand for such metals of so-called renewable energy would rise 300 percent to 1,000 percent by 2050 just to meet the Paris goals. “Ironically,” Rees remarks, “the mining, transportation, refining and manufacturing of material inputs to the green energy solution would be powered mainly by fossil fuels.”

For all we’d like them to, towers and panels don’t simply drop from heaven. So, too, more or less argues the film.

An Old Story in New Garments?

Fact-checking and physical limitations aside, a deeper and more fundamental issue that Planet of the Humans unveils is that of the societal story that we continue to tell ourselves, in one shape or another—be it green, orange, right, left, or center. And it’s the 300-year-old, now-taken-for-granted story of our increasingly urbanized, Techno-Industrial Age: namely, that we are the captains of our souls and the masters of our fates, and that we attain that fate through technology, production, and consumption.

In short, this societal narrative (including many ‘green’ versions of such narrative) has made us believe that we are above, front-and-center, while everything else is below, in the backstage. Under this worldview, ‘nature’ is not a ‘Home’ but a ‘resource’; we are not earthly humans but technological ‘citizens’ (and now virtual ‘Internauts’); countries are not made of communities of earth-dwellers but of abstract ‘markets’ of X or Y number of ‘consumers’. And thus our very language betrays us.

Scholars call this ‘anthropocentrism’ blended with ‘economism’. Others label it ‘speciesism’ and ‘ technopoly ’, even as one corporation praised it by making us sing “You got the whole world in your hands, with Mastercard at your command.”

As materialist historian Yuval Noah Harari has shown in the sixteenth chapter of Sapiens , this story championed by today’s economic system has become so pervasive that it now has all the elements of religion—however secular its scope. It tells us what to believe (economic growth will lead to the benefit of all), how to behave (rational and disciplined at the workplace, unrestrained and narcissistic at the shopping mall), and what to value (“Life is Now ”, as Visa trumpeted rather conveniently, and dogmatically).

Hence to culture and religion we now turn—and to their characteristic interest in “the great scheme of things”.

Remixed Echoes of an Even-Older Story

In one of the most existential sections of the documentary ( 49:04 ), the director asks whether our inability to come to terms with our mortality misinforms most of our societal decisions. He also asks rhetorically whether his side (the environmental side) has an unspoken religion, even as the Right has Christianity and a belief in infinite fossil fuels.

I would nuance this second claim—at least pertaining to the so-called religion of (many) of the Right. And that because such a belief system is often in fact Deist. (Deism is a modern distortion of ancient Christianity, presenting us with a deity that’s detached from the world, which is then purportedly left for us to control as we discover and master its immutable laws.)

It is not my aim here to make a case for believing in a transcendental Agent , but simply to acknowledge how director Jeff Gibbs might be unknowingly inviting us to shed the same tears of the God testified to and experienced by the descendants of the ancient Hebrews. In contrast to the absent deity of Deism, the sixth chapter of the Book of Genesis, for instance, speaks of the Most High becoming “regretful” considering the evil doings of humankind—something that “grieved God to his heart”. According to the Book of Jeremiah, the Eternal One recoiled and was immersed in swirls of grief as people became strangers in their own land. In fact, in and through the cry of that young Hebrew prophet, God wept (Jer 14).

A Prophet in the Making?

Could this be, perhaps, one of the film’s greatest contributions: its invitation to mourn, to leave us with discomfort towards superficial solutions, to invite us to feel and experience grief? However somberly and imperfectly, Gibbs may as well be helping us to traverse an unavoidable but ultimately necessary dark valley—one where we are reminded of how, before any blink of light, we must first confess and turn away from our pathological complicity with the decimation of our sacred Home. Genuine tears are the only cradle of authentic beginnings.

Even if commonly dismissed by large strands of the scientific and humanist communities in our scientific age , here lays one of the fundamental insights of what we call ‘religion’ or ‘spirituality’; namely, their ability to disclose the ultimate horizons that should inform and inspire our lives.

Such horizons have been barred by the smokescreens created by the Industrial Revolution, tempting us not to see anywhere beyond. (Who needs to pray for rain for crops when one is a click away from a Caesar’s salad or a Papa John’s pizza?) For numerous reasons, for the past three centuries we’ve increasingly come to believe that there’s no ultimate purpose or ‘goal’ to life. Instead, all we’ve been left with is an unrestrained desire to impose our will upon others and upon the living world, as it’s now tragically evident. When ultimate purposes vanish out of sight, we strive to become gods.

Recovering Forgotten Horizons

Intentionally or not, the film’s sorrowful approach begins to dismantle this very ‘scheme of things’; one that has made us believe that we are alone, at the center, in control of an inert universe without ultimate meaning.

In contrast, the forgotten grand-view cracked open by ancient spiritual traditions summon us to acknowledge ourselves as guests in a world that precedes us and that is not our own. The spotlight falls elsewhere. At least according to the Judeo-Christian tradition that now unspokenly undergirds pretty much all of today’s secularized Western cultures , we are mortal tenants and fragile earthlings; accountable, dependent, small. We are animated by sacred breath, even as we are made from the very dust to which we will return. But, precisely as such, we are nevertheless invited into an extravagant feast hosted by the Ultimate Source of completeness, gladness, and joy—the very Source who also cries and grieves.

Is such plenitude the hidden treasure that we are most searching for today—left, right, or center? Far beyond any technical glitch that we can muster, isn’t such plenitude the very ‘something’ which we know in our bones to be ultimately missing?

Those, of course, are questions for another occasion. And they may seem trivial should we continue to dismiss the divine and the transcendental as sheer social constructions that our human ancestors invented back in yesteryear to soothe our consciousness. But then we must ask, how far will the dogmas of Materialism continue to take us? As posed by one of the film’s social scientists: “If we’re to make progress (whatever that word means). . . we’re going to radically overhaul our basic conception of who and what we are and what it is that we value.”

Or to borrow the words from Albert Einstein: “A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe’; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. . . . Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Not unlike Einstein’s summons, Planet of the Humans is at least spot on about the need to turn away from our technocentric story and all its delusions that have claimed to give us full control. Then, and only then, will any light shine like the dawn. And perhaps then, and only then, will we humans realize ourselves as transient guests on a planet that is certainly not of our own making.

Our tears will not be in vain.

Eduardo Sasso

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Michael Moore produced a film about climate change that’s a gift to Big Oil

Planet of the Humans deceives viewers about clean energy and climate activists.

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Share All sharing options for: Michael Moore produced a film about climate change that’s a gift to Big Oil

Last week marked the 50th anniversary of Earth Day . To celebrate the occasion, filmmaker Michael Moore dropped a new movie he produced, Planet of the Humans . In less than a week, it has racked up over 3 million views on YouTube .

But the film, directed by Jeff Gibbs, a long-time Moore collaborator, is not the climate message we’ve all been waiting for — it’s a nihilistic take, riddled with errors about clean energy and climate activism. With very little evidence, it claims that renewables are disastrous and that environmental groups are corrupt.

What’s more, it has nothing to say about fossil fuel corporations, who have pushed climate denial and blocked progress on climate policy for decades . Given the film’s loose relationship to facts, I’m not even sure it should be classified as a documentary.

There are real tradeoffs in the clean energy transition. As a scholar, I’ve done my fair share of research and writing on those exact issues over the past decade. Renewables have downsides. As do biomass, nuclear, hydropower, batteries, and transmission. There is no perfect solution to our energy challenges.

But this film does not grapple with these thorny questions; it peddles falsehoods. Films for Action, an online library of free progressive films, agrees with me. It briefly pulled the movie from its site, after documentary filmmaker Josh Fox wrote an open letter , co-signed by climate scientists and energy experts.

“We are disheartened and dismayed to report that the film is full of misinformation — so much so that for half a day we removed the film from the site,” Films for Action’s April 25 statement reads. “Ultimately, we decided to put it back up because we believe media literacy, critique and debate is the best solution to misinformation.”

Here, I will lay out the case for why this film should have stayed on the cutting room floor.

The film has several factual errors about clean energy

It’s not surprising that the film gets basic energy facts wrong and that information included is out of date: There are hardly any climate or energy experts featured.

Early in the film, Gibbs goes to see an electric vehicle demonstration. He concludes they are dirty because they probably run on coal.

Except it’s not true. Two years ago , electric vehicles already had lower emissions than new gas-powered cars across the country. This is because the US electricity system has been slowly getting cleaner over the past decade.

The film’s wind and solar facts are also old . It quotes efficiency for solar PV from more than a decade ago . And it doesn’t mention the fact that solar costs have plummeted since then, and that we’ve learned how to get more wind and solar onto the grid. The film instead acts like this is impossible to do.

The largest share of the movie’s scorn goes to biomass — generally, burning wood — which supplied less than 2 percent of the US electricity mix last year. But the filmmakers obscure that fact, showing graphs that imply biomass is leading to forest destruction across the US.

When Gibbs questions environmental activists about biomass, they tell him it’s complicated. Because, well, it is.

When we burn wood for electricity, we are using carbon that is already moving between our air, oceans, and land. By contrast, when we dig up and burn fossil fuels, we’re bringing carbon up from underground. That is how we got increasing carbon levels in our atmosphere and oceans. Burning fossil fuels, not wood, is the main cause of climate change. It’s a basic fact I teach to my undergraduates. But the filmmakers neglected to learn it.

That said, biomass can be — and often is — done poorly, with significant environmental harms. Scientists have raised concerns over the European Union’s incentives for renewables leading to wood being shipped from North America. Environmental groups, including the ones pilloried in the film, have criticized the industry. But you wouldn’t learn any of these facts from watching Planet of the Humans .

A biased take on the environmental movement

There are critiques that can be made of environmental NGOs. But the way activists are portrayed in this film is inaccurate. One of the film’s main theses is that the climate movement is captured by corporations. As Gibbs puts it, environmentalists are “leading us off the cliff.”

The evidence for this assertion? The Union of Concerned Scientists’ support for electric vehicles. And Sierra Club’s promotion of solar. And the fact that 350.org has received funding from environmental foundations. I fail to see how any of these facts are problematic.

The most egregious attack is made against Bill McKibben, a dedicated and kind environmental leader. As he has said, he has never taken any money for his environmental activism with 350.org. Watching this film, you might mistake him for a robber baron.

McKibben wrote to the filmmakers, to clarify his views. They did not write back. As he put it : “That seems like bad journalism, and bad faith.”

Unlike the uninformed contrarians behind this film, McKibben spent his Earth Day talking with young activists, and pushing banks to stop funding fossil fuels. On April 23, one of those banks, Morgan Stanley committed to not provide financing for drilling in the Arctic refuge. For a “corporate hack,” Bill McKibben sure spends a lot of time taking on corporations. And those corporations in turn spend a lot of time harassing him.

If the corporate capture of the environmental movement is the problem, it’s puzzling why the film has almost nothing to say about corporations themselves. You know, the fossil fuel companies and electric utilities that lied about climate science for 30 years? The climate denial campaign is not mentioned.

Instead, the film denigrates the crucial work of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Led by Mary Anne Hitt, this program helped stop the construction of 200 coal plants, and successfully pushed for the retirement of 300 others.

Rather than recognizing the Sierra Club’s achievement, the filmmakers falsely attribute the growth in natural gas to Beyond Coal. Alas, environmental groups are not in charge of planning new power plants: if they were, we would have a lot less fossil electricity. Utilities propose power plants to regulators, who approve them. Over the past decade, electric utilities have proposed an enormous amount of new gas facilities, which groups like the Sierra Club have opposed .

Perhaps the most insulting thing is that this film comes at a time when the youth climate movement is finally gaining momentum. Young women like Greta Thunberg and Varshini Prakash have helped climate change break into the mainstream. Rather than bolster the work of the Sunrise Movement, Fridays for Future, or Zero Hour, it undermines these activists’ achievements by sowing confusion and doubt.

Why is Michael Moore promoting misinformation on climate change?

Throughout, the filmmakers twist basic facts, misleading the public about who is responsible for the climate crisis. We are used to climate science misinformation campaigns from fossil fuel corporations. But from progressive filmmakers? That’s new.

It’s difficult to understand Michael Moore’s motivations for blaming clean energy and environmental groups instead of fossil fuel companies or electric utilities. His previous films— like Roger & Me , Sicko , and Bowling for Columbine —were centered on holding corporations accountable. More recently, he endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders at the same rally as climate champion Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Sanders campaign centered on an ambitious 100 percent renewable energy goal .

Yet, the film Moore backed concludes that population control, not clean energy, is the answer. This is a highly questionable solution, which has more in common with anti-immigration hate groups than the progressive movement.

The fact is that wealthy people in the developed world have the largest environmental footprints — and they also have the lowest birthrates. When this message is promoted, it’s implying that poor, people of color should have fewer children.

Not to mention the fact that pushing population control is completely disrespectful of women’s reproductive autonomy. Notably, almost all the “experts” featured in the film are white men.

It is sad to think of the world we are leaving for children. Yet, if we embraced clean energy, then they would not have to grow up in a world tied to dirty fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, many people are taking this film seriously. It got 4 out of 5 stars from The Guardian , normally a paragon of climate reporting. And The Late Show with Stephen Colbert gave Moore precious air time to promote it on Earth Day. I would have rather seen Colbert interview a young climate activist. She would have known more about the subject.

We have already warmed the planet by more than 1°C, and we are running out of time to scale up clean energy. Planet of the Humans has sowed confusion at a time when we need clarity on the climate crisis.

My only hope is that this film will be buried, and few will watch it or remember it. Much like fossil fuels, it would be best left underground.

Leah C. Stokes is an assistant professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. Her new book, Short Circuiting Policy , examines electric utilities’ role in holding back progress on clean energy and climate policy.

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‘planet of the humans’: film review.

Michael Moore serves as executive producer for 'Planet of the Humans,' Jeff Gibbs' documentary detailing the many damaging structural flaws and corporate ties of the environmental movement.

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

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“How long do you think we humans have?” asks filmmaker Jeff Gibbs to a series of random people at the beginning of his environmental-themed documentary, Planet of the Humans . That the question has since taken on a particularly sinister edge in the wake of COVID-19 is but one of the many ironies of the film made available for free on YouTube for 30 days, courtesy of executive producer Michael Moore.

Release date: Apr 21, 2020

Although its release was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, Planet of the Humans delivers a dystopian view of the environmental movement that the film posits has been taken over by corporate interests.

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Another irony is that the recent global shutdown has already made major, albeit temporary, changes to the planet, including dramatically reduced pollution levels. Animals are discovering newfound freedoms, brazenly encroaching on suburban and urban areas. (Or, in the case of those previously chaste zoo pandas, suddenly discovering their sexual mojo.) Toward the end of the documentary, which traffics far more in criticisms than possible solutions, Gibbs declares, “Less must be the new more,” and recent events have perversely proved him right.

Early on, the film includes a clip from The Unchained Goddess , a 1958 documentary produced and co-written by Frank Capra (yes, that Frank Capra), warning of the dangers of climate change. It provides a vivid reminder that this is a problem for which the alarm has been sounded for decades. Gibbs then provides a brief validation of his environmental credentials as a self-described “tree hugger” who practices sustainable living.

The doc essentially makes a feature-length argument that green energy isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, and that its supposed heroes are made of clay. The problems, we’re informed, are legion, and widespread perceptions about green solutions are sadly misinformed. You may feel good about yourself if you drive an electric car, but don’t forget that it’s recharged by energy from a power company that uses coal or natural gas. And that the battery was manufactured by a company using fossil fuels. Solar panels are great, but they mostly don’t last more than a decade or so. Renewable energy sources such as wind turbines are intermittent, leading to power outages unless they’re backed up by power generated by fossil fuels. Indeed, there are no business entities running one hundred percent on solar and wind alone.

At one point in the proceedings, Gibbs goes backstage at a massive Earth Day concert, only to discover that its energy is being provided almost entirely by conventional diesel generators rather than the solar panels so prominently on display.

Nobody gets off easily in the film — including such environmental movement heroes as Al Gore, who is shown coming under fire for, among other things, selling his television network in 2013 to Al-Jazeera, funded by the major oil-exporting country of Qatar, or Bill McKibben, author of such books as The End of Nature , who is described as being in bed with corporate interests and sharply criticized for his advocacy of biomass, which involves the mass cutting down of trees. Among the other prominent figures skewered are Richard Branson, Michael Bloomberg and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Similarly, such organizations as the Sierra Club, The Nature Conservatory and the Union of Concerned Scientists are lambasted for such offenses as having investments in non-green companies. “The merger of environmentalism and capitalism is now complete,” intones Gibbs.

Planet of the Humans certainly makes many important and illuminating points, especially about the co-opting of environmental causes by corporate interests who use it mainly for positive branding purposes. But its despairing tone and overall atmosphere of purity testing may have the counterproductive effect of making you want to throw up your hands and ignore the environmental movement’s significant progress in recent decades. The loosely structured assemblage of damning information eventually proves more numbing than illuminating.

“Now, I know this all might seem overwhelming,” Gibbs tells us near the end of the film, and he’s right. His ultimate solution to what he describes as a “human-caused apocalypse” is to stem population growth. Presumably, a global pandemic isn’t what he had in mind.

Production company: Huron Mountain Films Distributor: Rumble Media ( available on YouTube ) Director-screenwriter: Jeff Gibbs Producers: Jeff Gibbs, Ozzie Zehner Executive producer: Michael Moore Directors of photography: Jeff Gibbs, Ozzie Zehner, Christopher Henze Editors: Jeff Gibbs, Angela Vargos

100 minutes

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Planet of the Humans Reviews

Ultimately, it leaves us unsettled, with a marked sense of instability and doom. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Apr 12, 2023

The film plays out like a tale being told. The Italian director dares the audience to believe it is real.

Full Review | Aug 14, 2021

In taking on the shadow aspects of the environmental movement, the filmmakers have their hearts in the right place. Not sure about the corporate environmentalists.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 31, 2021

The film's broad-based approach can be uneven. Gibbs isn't nearly as compelling a figure as some of the activists he interviews and portrays...

Full Review | May 24, 2021

The Malthusian impulse comes to the fore, and one feels Gibbs is not beyond his own brand of moralism. But Planet of the Humans makes some valuable steps towards an actual reckoning of specious dogma.

Full Review | Jun 18, 2020

Launched in time for Earth Day, the message is lost in the medium.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | May 24, 2020

A vital, eye-opening inquiry into American energy consumption.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 16, 2020

A film that challenges the paradigm of growth, especially the illusion that alternative energy can allow us to consume resources as if they were inexhaustible.

Full Review | May 9, 2020

Planet of the Humans trades in the worst form of purity-test liberalism, where green-energy enthusiasts are hypocrites and anyone who supports them is really just in deep denial about the endemic intransigence of the fossil-fuel industry.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | May 8, 2020

All the noise got my attention.

Full Review | Original Score: B | May 8, 2020

A feature-length made by an avowed environmentalist in 2020 could arm the public with information to work toward a better place along that spectrum...Gibbs doesn't have such critical democratic engagement in mind.

Full Review | May 7, 2020

This cri de coeur from... Gibbs may lack balance and counterarguments, but it convincingly makes the case that "less must be the new more" if humankind is to have any chance of not being wiped out due to overpopulation and overconsumption,

Full Review | May 4, 2020

I was absolutely educated by Planet of the Humans, but I was not entertained. I was not emotionally moved. I was not inspired to fight for change, and I was not shown any feasible solutions to the problems presented.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | May 3, 2020

Planet of the Humans is wildly unscientific, outdated, full of falsehoods, and benefits fossil fuel industry promoters and climate deniers.

Full Review | May 1, 2020

[U]nlike Moore, Gibbs is an understated and somewhat flat narrator.

Full Review | Apr 28, 2020

Gibbs certainly knows his subject and he cares. But his delivery needed more energy to keep the audience engaged. Gibbs does not deliver the visuals and the information like Moore does, with humor and sarcasm.

Full Review | Apr 27, 2020

This may be just the sort of disillusioning we need if we want to rescue ourselves, but brace yourself.

Full Review | Apr 24, 2020

Bleak docu dispels clean energy beliefs; disturbing images.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 23, 2020

From the warnings of the 1950s to the 21st-century corporate takeover of green energy, a grim look at humanity's fate as the planet heats up. Is there any hope? This feels like only half the story.

The loosely structured assemblage of damning information eventually proves more numbing than illuminating.

Full Review | Apr 23, 2020

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Planet of the humans, common sense media reviewers.

Bleak docu dispels clean energy beliefs; disturbing images.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Reverses what was believed to be a positive approa

The filmmakers allow their curiosity, intelligence

The film is about a major threat to human existenc

"F--k" is used twice.

Parents need to know that Planet of the Humans is a critical examination of the green energy movement. It's directed by environmental journalist/activist Jeff Gibbs, who co-produced Fahrenheit 911 and Bowling for Columbine . It's surprising that this documentary is executive-produced by…

Positive Messages

Reverses what was believed to be a positive approach to climate change, leaving viewers with a sense of hopelessness. But it also has themes of curiosity and perseverance.

Positive Role Models

The filmmakers allow their curiosity, intelligence, and study of science to guide them toward probing authority to get real answers, even when it means shattering their own world views.

Violence & Scariness

The film is about a major threat to human existence and is therefore quite bleak. Scenes of nature blowing up. Disturbing shot of a cow and horse thrown into an enormous grinder (unclear whether they're alive or dead going in). Orangutans shown in serious distress after their habitat is destroyed.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Planet of the Humans is a critical examination of the green energy movement. It's directed by environmental journalist/activist Jeff Gibbs, who co-produced Fahrenheit 911 and Bowling for Columbine . It's surprising that this documentary is executive-produced by Michael Moore , since it upends and even vilifies the liberal heroes of clean energy efforts, essentially taking viewers step by step through the argument that green energy doesn't really work. While curiosity and perseverance are clear themes, the ultimate (and awfully bleak) message is that it's too late to undo climate change and that effective solutions will take centuries to put into place. The film is here to smack us into reality -- and hopefully, the next generation will be open to that wake-up call. Expect to see some unsettling images involving animals toward the end, including a cow and a horse being thrown into a machine to grind them up. "F--k" is used a couple of times. Note: Controversy after the film's release ultimately led to four seconds of footage being removed. This review was written before that change was made. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 2 parent reviews

Grossly outdated (and misleading) information about wind and solar energy but an important statement about overpopulation

True environmentalism, what's the story.

In PLANET OF THE HUMANS, environmentalist Jeff Gibbs takes a critical look at green energy: the path that's being aggressively touted to help reverse climate change. He reveals how well-intentioned leaders have taken us down the wrong path. The result? According to the film, clean energy has created an even dirtier environment, and the real solutions haven't even been part of the conversation.

Is It Any Good?

Jeff Gibbs is here to tell you that your life is a lie -- and if this bleak documentary didn't have Michael Moore' s name on it, you might not believe it. According to Planet of the Humans , the green, clean energy we've been chasing for years doesn't really exist. In some cases, the film says, it's worse than coal or natural gas. As executive producer/distributor, Moore's involvement lends the information in the film credence -- he's as liberal as it gets -- and Gibbs often writes on pressing ecological issues for environmental publications. So when these two cast aspersions on the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, and climate change saint Al Gore, it's jarring -- can no one be trusted? If An Inconvenient Truth was a wake-up, Planet of the Humans is a shake-up.

While liberals will need to watch the film with their most critical and independent thinking hats on, it certainly doesn't give conservatives a free pass (Gibbs isn't suggesting that we toss up our hands and turn up the fracking). It turns out that the real solutions are going to be much tougher to implement, and getting a very late start on them could put us in the "it's too late" space. This film isn't about the light at the end of the tunnel; it's more like the light of the train coming at us: It shows us, step by step, how we're doomed. It argues that the leaders who've spent countless hours trying to reverse climate change were actually barking up the wrong tree (especially when they started removing the trees to solve the problem, aka "biomass energy"). What feels particularly unpleasant is the finger pointing at those whose hearts were likely in the right place, even if their efforts were misguided. Gibbs also uses some (Moore inspired?) manipulations: Footage shows him ambushing some of his targets at an event while viewers see disturbing images with a tenuous connection to the issue in order to get a strong emotional response. Frankly, the biggest detriment to getting this essential message out is that Gibbs falls short as a narrator. Removing the charismatic but polarizing Moore from the film might allow PIanet of the Humans to be better/more widely received, but Gibbs' passion for his subject matter is muted by his not-expressive-enough voice. Here's hoping that his delivery doesn't lead to young adults checking out.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the causes of climate change. Why is it happening? What role can and does the media play in helping make people aware of it?

Documentaries are often intended to convince viewers to join the filmmaker's point of view -- i.e., they have a bias. Is that OK? How does director Gibbs make his point in Planet of the Humans ? Does he convince you of his thesis?

How do Gibbs and Ozzie Zehner demonstrate curiosity and perseverance ? Why are these character strengths essential?

How does this documentary compare to others you've seen covering similar material?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 21, 2020
• On DVD or streaming : November 19, 2020
• Cast : Jeff Gibbs , Ozzie Zehner , Bill McKibben
• Director : Jeff Gibbs
• Studio : Rumble Media
• Genre : Documentary
• Topics : Activism , Science and Nature
• Character Strengths : Curiosity , Perseverance
• Run time : 108 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : March 31, 2022

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‘Planet of the Humans’ Film Review: Michael Moore-Produced Doc Takes Shots at Environmentalists on Earth Day

The documentary, directed by Jeff Gibbs and executive produced by Moore, is an attack on the current state of the green energy movement

Michael Moore dropped a surprise for 2020’s Earth Day, putting the Jeff Gibbs-directed movie “Planet of the Humans” on YouTube in its entirety on Tuesday and heading to Stephen Colbert’s show to talk about it on the eve of the 50th annual environmental celebration.

But the film, on which Moore served as executive producer, is not the kind of thing that environmentalists may be expecting from the famously liberal firebrand or his longtime colleague Gibbs, who has served as a co-producer and composer on several of Moore’s documentaries. In fact, it may get a rocky reception in some green circles, because the points that “Planet of the Humans” makes include:

• Solar and wind energy are not feasible replacements for fossil fuels because they’re intermittent energy sources that need to be supplemented by nonrenewable sources, and because the manufacture of solar panels and windmills is environmentally destructive.

• Biomass fuel is even worse, destroying nature at a far faster rate than it can be replenished.

• Electric cars are bad because they’re charged through the existing power grid, and because they’re made of materials that take a lot of energy to produce.

• The green energy movement is full of hypocrites, many of whom are in bed with big corporations and even with the Koch brothers.

• And even Earth Day itself is a fraud, since it has corporate sponsors and its founder, Dennis Hayes, claimed that its 2015 concert event was powered by solar energy when it actually had diesel generators backstage.

Yes, the issues are more complicated and the film is more nuanced than that list may suggest. But in a way, “Planet of the Humans” is an Earth Day attack on the current state of environmentalism, one that sometimes seems to play into the right’s complaints about environmentalists and at other times echoes the “you may be liberal, but you’re not liberal enough” litmus tests thrown at candidates on the left.

Still, you can think of the film as an equal-opportunity offender, because conservatives won’t be happy with it, either, as much as they might be tickled by the idea of a movie with Moore’s name on it calling out things like solar power and wind energy.

The film, which premiered at Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival last summer, is Gibbs’ first as a director, and he’s clearly been studying how Moore does this kind of thing. He’s not only the director but the narrator, and he’s often seen on screen as well, playing up a faux naivete as he explores the green energy movement. As the movie tells it, he had a moment of revelation when he went to a green festival in Vermont that was supposed to be powered by solar energy — but when it rained, they switched to biodiesel and then ended up plugging into the electrical grid.

From there, he explores the various promises of renewal energy, finding drawbacks at every turn. He looks at the huge windmills being constructed for a wind farm and wonders, “Is it possible for machines made by industrial civilization to save us from industrial civilization?” He hangs out with Ozzie Zehner, who wrote the book “Green Illusions” and served as producer on this film, and learns that solar panels are made of quartz and coal in a process that is anything but energy-efficient.

“Everywhere I encountered green energy, it wasn’t what it seemed,” Gibbs says at one point. “It was enough to make my head explode.” He says this quietly, though — unlike Moore, Gibbs is an understated and somewhat flat narrator.

The first half of the film focuses on the problems with solar and wind energy, calling them “desperate measures not to save a planet, but to save our way of life” and concluding, “humans are experiencing the planet’s limits.” Then it wades back into biomass, the use of plant or animal material as a renewable energy course — but here, Gibbs finds corruption, deforestation and the big-money fingerprint of the timber industry everywhere. “The takeover of the environmental movement by capitalism is now complete,” he says.

While the film sometimes seems to be stretching to find problems in every corner of the environmental movement (apparently, no company that claims to be green can also plug into the power grid), it does a brutally effective job of suggesting that a dream of endless renewable energy may be unattainable.

This is a terrifying thought, albeit one that gets a little wearying as Gibbs finds new ways to say it for the first 90 minutes. At the end, he claims to find reason for hope — not in green energy, but in less energy.

“I truly believe that the path to change comes from awareness,” he says, and then ticks off a sobering prescription: “Infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide … Billionaires are not our friends … Less must be the new more … It’s not the carbon dioxide molecule destroying the planet, it’s us … If we get ourselves under control, all things are possible.”

But does the film actually believe that we can get ourselves under control and reduce both population and consumption? A final bit of footage suggests that no, it doesn’t.

Happy Earth Day, everybody.

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Planet of the Humans Review: Shining a Light on the Energy Black Box

| May 6, 2020 | Leave a Comment

Author(s): Megan Seibert

As its filmmakers anticipated, the new movie Planet of the Humans is generating quite the controversy. Push-back from the mainstream environmental community was to be expected, but what perhaps wasn’t – with some exceptions – is the hostility and lack of nuanced, substantive response that’s sadly become a staple of societal discourse. In their reactionary attempts to hurl divisive labels and empty punches, many reviews seem to be missing the key underlying point of the film. 

Several key responses seem to be emerging:

• The information is outdated / solar panel efficiency and life span continue to increase
• Solar and wind are still less environmentally impactful than fossil fuels
• We can innovate our way out of material and manufacturing conundrums 
• There’s no reason electric cars can’t be charged entirely by solar and wind
• We can recycle solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries in a closed-loop system
• The filmmakers didn’t interview credible scientists, engineers, or experts

These critiques miss one of the two underlying points of the movie, which is that solar panels, high-tech wind turbines, and batteries are not sustainable. They can’t be sustained without fossil fuels, which subsidize their entire life cycle. And they’re not sustainable from a materials, ecological degradation, and waste perspective.

Many of the reviews claim that, sure, fossil fuels currently subsidize solar, wind, batteries, and electric cars, but that need not be the case in the future because these energy technologies can power our entire grid, as well as their own production, if only we make the full transition. This is precisely the point of the movie: these technologies are impossible to make without fossil fuels. They simply can’t power their own regeneration, and even if they could, gigatons of metals would still have to be mined and transported; manufacturing processes are still highly toxic; and there’s still the problem of all the waste generated when the panels, turbines, and batteries reach the end of their lives. 

Why are these technologies impossible to make without fossil fuels? The key limiting factor is manufacturing. All modern manufacturing processes rely on thermal energy that produces extremely high temperatures. Solar panels, for example, require temperatures of around 2,700 º to 3,600 º F (1,500 º to 2,000 º C) in order to transform silicon dioxide into metallurgical grade silicon. The steel that modern, high-tech wind turbines are made out of require temperatures of around 1,800 º F (1,000 º C) to produce metallurgical coal, one of steel’s key ingredients. Combining the coal with iron ore then requires temperatures of 3,100 º F (1,700 º C). Concrete, another key ingredient for modern wind turbines (which affixes the massive structures to the ground), is made in kilns that reach temperatures up to 2,700 º F (1,500 º C). These temperatures can’t be reached using electricity generated from solar panels or wind turbines, whether directly or from their stored energy in batteries. The closest to doing so is via concentrated solar thermal collectors, which cost around $1 billion per facility, only operate effectively in hot climates, and, as the movie points out, still rely on back-up fossil energy.

Widening the lens beyond manufacturing, the problem of fossil fuel subsidy expands and starts to intertwine with unsustainable ecological and even social impacts. Go on Google Images and take a look at any mining operation today if you’re skeptical about what the movie shows. Take your pick of material. The ecological destruction is unambiguous. You’ll also see lots of large, fossil-fueled machinery, most or all of which can’t run on batteries (which themselves would require gigatons of materials). Remove this heavy machinery from the equation and we’re left with, largely, a return to human labor. Cargo ships can’t run on batteries, so we’re left with diminished quantities and longer transportation timelines by returning to a sailing fleet. Then there’s the problem of getting the materials to the ports from the mining sites and then from the ports to the manufacturing sites. As Alice Friedemann lays out in her book When Trucks Stop Running , ubiquitous electric rail looks improbable if not impossible. More manufacturing problems exist beyond the thermal heat barrier. The production of solar panels releases greenhouse gases that are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide. Almost two tons of CO2 are generated for every ton of steel, and every ton of concrete generates a ton of CO2. One ton of radioactive waste is produced for every ton of mined rare earth metals, which are now essential components in the latest generation of wind turbines. These high-tech turbines – whose various components range in weight from around 2,500 pounds to 22,000 pounds – are installed with huge fossil-fueled cranes, which, like the mining machinery, can’t be powered by batteries (which, as mentioned earlier, have their own life cycle problems). Then there’s the problem of end-of-life waste. The aluminum frame from a solar panel can be recycled, but the rest is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to recycle, not to mention that recycling requires its own energetic and material intakes. While the steel towers from a wind turbine can be recycled (the problem of deconstructing it notwithstanding), its composite blades can’t be. And the list goes on.

It’s these high-level, big picture, bottleneck constraints that the movie – however imperfectly or incompletely – highlights, or at least prompts us to start thinking about. Quibbling about whether a solar panel lasts 10 years or 30, or is 8% or 20% efficient, is irrelevant within this larger context. Disturbingly, many reviewers have glossed over these larger problems, as if the filmmakers are being melodramatic or silly. Yes, is takes stuff to make stuff, they say – so what, we all know that! We’ll innovate and become more efficient. We’ll just make manufacturing less toxic. We’ll just recycle everything and close the loop. Easy as that, problem solved. It’s not that easy by a long shot.

The second main point of the movie is that continual growth on a finite planet is impossible. While this basic ecological truism should be undisputed, it still remarkably receives push-back even within the environmental community (not to mention outside it), which is evident in many of the reviews. Kudos to the filmmakers for covering overpopulation, the most taboo yet important of the degrowth variables. Unsurprisingly, this has been the most attacked aspect of the movie’s degrowth message, with the familiar fearmongering outcries of ecofascism. The movie’s nod to curbing consumption has been more positively received, which is also unsurprising since it’s the most socially palatable aspect of degrowth. And kudos for covering the final variable in the degrowth equation, capitalism and its co-opting of environmentalism. While I agree with Richard Heinberg that the treatment of Jeremy Grantham was misleadingly monolithic, the central point desperately needed exposure.

As to the final critique of other reviewers about the lack of inclusion of scientists, engineers, or other experts, this is a legitimate point to raise, but like other topics in the movie, it’s tricky. As someone working within the space of renewable energy and sustainability, I know first-hand that many scientists and researchers don’t take a critical stance towards renewable energy. An overly narrow perspective has been adopted whereby solar, wind, and batteries are taken for granted, evaluated as if they’ve come out of a black box, either ignoring their up and downstream holistic contexts or treating them insufficiently. There are a handful of researchers who view renewable energy and sustainability within a more holistic framework, but they’re hard time to find. I’m not sure whether the filmmakers didn’t know of any or chose not to include them. Regardless, it’s intrepid investigative researchers like Ozzie Zehner and Alice Friedemann, who aren’t cranking out tons of peer-reviewed papers, that have done a lot of important work in this space. Even those in academia who are aware of renewable energy limitations are oftentimes afraid to speak out because, as this movie shows, challenging sacred cows is not for the faint of heart.

My primary critique of the movie is its treatment of biomass. While biomass used at the  rate and scale  it is today isn’t sustainable by any means, the fact remains that it’s our central source of renewable energy and material, as it was for all of time up until the Industrial Age. That being said, addressing this point would have delved into the implications arena, which clearly wasn’t within the scope of the movie.

Does Planet of the Humans do an exemplary job of covering every issue it raises? No, but then again, few movies do. Does it offer solutions to the problems it raises? No, but that clearly wasn’t its goal. Does it rely on some well-placed sensationalism? Sure. But what Planet of the Humans does do is open a door into critically important territory that’s been all but neglected in the public sphere. It shines a light into the black box of energy that our future depends upon, asking us to widen our lens, examine every possible angle, and start coming to terms with what life after fossil fuels will really look like.

By Megan Seibert, The REAL Green New Deal Project  https://www.realgnd.org .

3 times Michael Moore’s film Planet of the Humans gets the facts wrong (and 3 times it gets them right)

Emeritus Professor, School of Science, Griffith University

Disclosure statement

Ian Lowe received funding from the National Energy Research, Development and Demonstration Council for a study of Australia's energy needs from 1980 to 2030. He was president of the Australian Conservation Foundation from 2004 to 2014, and is a patron of Sustainable Population Australia.

Griffith University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Documentary maker Michael Moore’s latest offering, Planet of the Humans , rightly argues that infinite growth on a finite planet is “suicide”. But the film’s bogus claims threaten to overshadow that message.

Planet of the Humans is directed and narrated by longtime Moore collaborator Jeff Gibbs. It makes particularly contentious claims about solar, wind and biomass (organic material which can be burnt for energy). Some claims are valid. Some are out of date, and some are just wrong.

The film triggered a storm after its free release on YouTube late last month. At the time of writing, it had been watched 6.5 million times. Climate sceptics here and abroad reacted with glee. Environmentalists say the film has caused untold damage when climate action has never been more urgent.

For 50 years, I have studied and written about energy supply and use, and its environmental consequences. So let’s take a look at how Planet of the Humans is flawed, and where it gets things right.

Where the film goes wrong

Critics have compiled a long list of questionable claims made in the film. I will examine three relating to renewable energy.

1. Solar panels take more energy to produce than they generate

It’s true that some energy is required to build solar panels. The same can be said of coal-fired power stations, oil refineries and gas pipelines.

But the claim that solar panels generate less energy in their lifetime than that taken to manufacture them has long been disproved . It would not be true even if, as the film says, solar panels converted just 8% of the energy they receive into electricity.

But that 8% figure is at least 20 years old. The solar panels now installed on more than two million Australian roofs typically operate at at 15-20% efficiency .

2. Renewables can’t replace fossil fuels

The film claims green energy is not replacing fossil fuels, and that coal plants cannot be replaced by renewables.

To disprove this claim we need look no further than Australia, where wind turbines and solar panels have significantly reduced our dependence on coal.

In South Australia, for example, the expansion of solar and wind has led to the closure of all coal-fired power stations.

The state now gets most of its power from solar and wind, exporting its surplus to Victoria when its old coal-fired power stations prove unreliable on hot summer days.

What’s more, a report released this week by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) said with the right regulations, renewables could at times supply 75% of electricity in the national electricity market by 2025.

3. Solar and wind need fossil fuel back-up

Some renewables systems use gas turbines to fill the gap when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. However renewable energy storage is a cleaner option and is fast becoming cheaper and more widely used.

AEMO forecasts battery storage installations will rise from a low base today to reach 5.6 gigawatts by 2036–37. The costs of storage are also projected to fall faster than previously expected.

South Australia’s famous grid-scale Tesla battery is being expanded . And the New South Wales government’s pumped hydro plan shows how by 2040, the state could get 89% of its power from solar and wind, backed by pumped hydro storage.

Read more: How an Aussie invention could soon cut 5% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions

In Australia on Easter Saturday this year, renewables supplied 50% of the national electricity market, which serves the vast majority of the population.

Countries such as New Zealand and Iceland essentially get all their power from renewables, backed up by storage (predominantly hydro).

And putting aside the federal government’s problematic Snowy 2.0 project, Australia could get all its energy from renewables with small-scale storage .

What does the film get right?

Planet of the Humans makes several entirely valid points. Here are a few:

1. We need to deal with population growth

The film observes that population growth is the elephant in the room when it comes to climate change. It says politicians are reluctant to talk about limits to population growth “because that would be bad for business”.

As one observer in the film says, the people in charge aren’t nervous enough. I agree.

An increasing population means increasing demand for energy and other resources, accelerating climate change.

2. Biomass energy does more harm than good

While the film unfairly criticises the environmental benefits of solar energy, it’s true that some so-called clean technologies are not green at all.

As the film asserts, destroying forests for biomass energy does more harm than good – due to loss of habitat, damage to water systems, and the time taken for some forests to recover from the removal of wood.

Most advocates of cleaner energy systems recognise the limitations of biomass as an energy source.

3. Infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide

The film calculates the sum total of human demands on natural systems as about 1,000 times what it was 200 years ago. It says there are ten times as many people now, each using 100 times the resources, on average.

Experts have repeatedly warned that human demand for resources is damaging the natural systems that all life depends on.

For large parts of the world , the consequences could be catastrophic.

Get the message

Several other aspects of the film have been savaged by critics – not least its claims about emissions produced by electric cars, which had previously been debunked .

Personal attacks on two prominent US clean energy advocates, Bill McKibben and Al Gore, also detract from the film’s impact.

It’s clear renewable energy has an important role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and slowing climate change. But it won’t solve the fundamental problem: that humans must live within Earth’s natural limits.

Those cheering the film’s criticism of renewables would do well to consider its overriding message.

Read more: Australia is in the box seat to power the world

Correction: A previous version of this article said the claim that solar panels produce less energy than they generate in their lifetime has long been disproved. This has been amended.

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Movie Review: The Planet of the Humans

Planet of the Humans is a climate change documentary presented by Michael Moore. The prolific Bowling for Columbine and Sicko documentarian served as executive producer on this environmental documentary that attempts to blow the lid on the hypocrisies of the green technology movement. For decades, going green and supporting initiatives transitioning towards renewable energy by way of wind, solar and biomass have been praised. As writer, producer, director and devil’s advocate Jeff Gibbs asserts, it’s largely an illusion propagated by billionaires, politicians and corporate agenda.

A collaborator of Moore’s, Gibbs has been an active documentarian and as his credits on Planet of the Humans suggest a versatile, self-made film-maker. His latest film is a passion project with the film-maker in full control over almost every aspect of Planet of the Humans , including editing even crafting several musical compositions. Leaning on his baseball cap buddy for advice and support, his latest film has already amassed over 3 million views since it was released for free on YouTube. Gibbs may be the driving force behind this documentary but it’s coasted on Moore’s name, which is quite surprising when you consider Moore’s political slant and commitment to exposing corporate America.

While the sentiment of revealing hypocrisy and following the money trail is in keeping with Moore’s documentaries, Planet of the Humans undercuts the green technology revolution without contrasting the devastation of corporate fossil fuel giants. The main impetus of his argument is that green initiatives are overly reliant on traditional fossil fuel to be created, installed and seen as sustainable. Attacking wealthy businessmen and key proponents of the movement, who are driving renewable energy projects for sheer profit, Gibbs suggests their efforts are insidious and ineffective.

Planet of the Humans is an attempt to point out the emperor has no clothes. The documentary leans heavily on the research of author and producer Ozzie Zehner’s book, ‘Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism’. It’s a dangerous and controversial viewpoint that relies on old data and the testimony of small town professors, anthropologists, authors and candid interviews with locals and media representatives.

“I burn wood at home, so I can’t comment.”

Gibbs takes on solar energy by grappling with the construction and material of the panels, arguing that they’re not nearly as effective or long-lasting as manufacturers would have you believe. He visits a solar farm “ghost town”, undercuts the Ivanpah solar thermal project and goes behind-the-scenes at environmental music festivals to see what’s really powering them. When it comes to wind energy, he visits windmill sites to imply the cost of creating the giant mills in terms of raw materials outweighs the long-term benefit. Gibbs identifies that many coal plants are simply replaced by natural gas plants, which while cleaner are still working against the environment. He scouts biomass production facilities to argue that trees aren’t growing quickly enough to continue wood chip demand.

While Gibbs tries to offer a holistic vantage point, citing his own belief in green technology before being dumbfounded, he maintains his narrative of hypocrisy at all costs. Skimming over the clean energy projects that he can’t dig up enough dirt on, he doesn’t unpack the complexities of the situation. Failing to interview energy experts, doggedly pushing his stick-it-to-the-inside-man agenda and hauling a circus tent over the entire matter, Planet of the Humans doesn’t try to understand the nuances of the situation. There isn’t a perfect renewable energy system, yet as well-balanced climate change documentaries like Ice on Fire point out… by making green energy profitable it will eventually win over the fossil fuel industries.

It’s a time-consuming process. Given that the earth is running out of natural resources, we don’t have much time to keep calm and carry on as Greta Thurnberg would illustrate more forcefully. Planet of the Humans is such a stir of misinformation that it almost makes you wonder how the documentary was funded. Surprisingly, there’s no mention of the Trump administration’s policies or full investigation into the current and continued exploitation of fossil fuels beyond a playful montage.

Based on its composite nature, fielding footage from a multitude of platforms, it comes across as a low budget venture, a springboard for its producers. Thom Yorke agreed to have a track from Radiohead included in the soundtrack and Planet of the Humans definitely plays into the same arena as eye-opening documentaries like Earthlings . However, its attempt at being earnest is simply to cover up gaping holes in contemporary data and leading expert testimony with emotion.

Gibbs is intent on “winning” the argument with emotion. He targets this storytelling device – starting with people explaining how long they think humanity has left, panning across dilapidated houses in a failed solar farm town, poking fun at the efforts of renewable energy projects with his key interviewee/producer and leveraging heartrending footage of orangutans affected by Indonesia’s palm oil deforestation without even addressing that issue. Primarily concerned with America with a few scattered international pot shots – Planet of the Humans isn’t the global green technology conspiracy revolution it pretends to be. Maintaining that population growth is the single biggest issue affecting us, Gibbs doesn’t venture into any real solutions.

Planet of the Humans is a fascinating diversion. While the documentary is dangerous in the way it twists the truth, there are some positive spin-offs. The film does bring climate change, agencies and figures into greater public awareness. The documentary demonstrates that big business is getting behind what appears to be lucrative green initiatives showing that renewable energy can be and is profitable. Planet of the Humans also makes it clear that agencies purporting to be green aren’t beyond reproach and will be held to account.

While Gibbs doesn’t offer much optimism or hope in the way of solutions, it’s clear that the climate change issue is much more complicated than we think. While it may make you want to throw your hands up, what we can take away is that the depletion of natural resources and migration to cleaner energy can be improved through better planning and reducing our personal energy consumption.

The bottom line: Slanted

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Michael Moore’s ‘Planet of the Humans’ documentary peddles dangerous climate denial

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Environmentalists and renewable energy advocates have long been allies in the fight to keep unchecked industrial growth from irreversibly ruining Earth’s climate and threatening the future of human civilization. In their new YouTube documentary “Planet of the Humans,” director Jeff Gibbs and producer Michael Moore argue for splitting the two sides. Their misleading, outdated, and scientifically sophomoric dismissal of renewable energy is perhaps the most dangerous form of climate denial , eroding support for renewable energy as a critical climate solution.

“Planet of the Humans” by the end of April had more than 4.7 million views and fairly high scores at the movie critic review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes . The documentary has received glowing reviews from numerous climate “deniers” whose names are familiar to those in the climate community, including Steve Milloy, Marc Morano, and James Delingpole. Some environmentalists who have seen the movie are beginning to oppose wind and solar projects that are absolutely necessary to slow climate change.

The film by these two “progressive” filmmakers may succeed where Fox News and right-wing talk radio have failed: to undermine humanity’s last best hope for positive change. As energy journalist Ketan Joshi wrote , the film is “selling far-right, climate-denier myths from nearly a decade ago to left-wing environmentalists in the 2020s.”

The film follows Gibbs as he visits various green technology sites in the United States and ostensibly learns that each one is just as bad as the fossil fuel infrastructure that it would replace. Unfortunately, the movie is littered with misleading, skewed, and outdated scenes.

“Planet of the Humans”‘ approach is fundamentally flawed – Gibbs focuses almost exclusively on the imperfections of technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, biomass, and electric cars without considering their ability to reduce carbon and other pollutants. The film suggests that because no source of energy is perfect, all are bad, thus implying that the very existence of human civilization is the problem while offering little in the way of alternative solutions.

A badly outdated portrait of solar and wind

In an interview with Reuters, Michael Moore summarized the premise of the film: “I assumed solar panels would last forever. I didn’t know what went into the making of them.”

It’s true. Solar panels and wind turbines don’t last forever (though they do last several decades), and like every other industrial product, they require mining and manufacturing of raw materials. Sadly, that’s about as deep as the film delves into quantifying the environmental impacts of renewable energy versus fossil fuels. In fact, the misinformation in the film is at times much worse than ignorance.

In one scene, author and film co-producer Ozzie Zehner falsely asserts, “You use more fossil fuels [manufacturing renewables infrastructure] than you’re getting benefit from. You would have been better off burning the fossil fuels in the first place instead of playing pretend.”

That’s monumentally wrong. A 2017 study in Nature Energy found that when accounting for manufacturing and construction, the lifetime carbon footprints of solar, wind, and nuclear power are about one-twentieth of those of coal and natural gas, even when the latter include expensive carbon capture and storage technology. The energy produced during the operation of a solar panel and wind turbine is 26 and 44 times greater than the energy needed to build and install them, respectively. There are many life-cycle assessment studies arriving at similar conclusions.

The film’s case is akin to arguing that because fruit contains sugar, eating strawberries is no healthier than eating a cheesecake.

It’s true that the carbon footprint of renewable energy is not zero. But the film somehow fails to mention that it’s far lower than the fossil fuel alternatives, instead falsely suggesting (with zero supporting evidence) that renewables are just as bad. The closest defense of that argument comes when Zehner claims that wind and solar energy cannot displace coal, and instead retired coal power plants are being replaced by even larger natural gas plants.

In reality, annual coal power generation in the U.S. has declined by about half (over 1 trillion kilowatt-hours) over the past decade , and it’s true that natural gas has picked up about two-thirds of that slack (670 billion kWh). But growth in renewables has accounted for the other one-third (370 billion kWh).* As a result, power sector carbon emissions in the U.S. have fallen by one-third since 2008 and continue to decline steadily. In fact, electricity is the only major sector in the U.S. that’s achieving significant emissions reductions.

It’s true that natural gas is a fossil fuel. To reach zero emissions, it must be replaced by renewables with storage and smart grids. But thus far the path to grid decarbonization in the U.S. has been a success story that the film somehow portrays as a failure. Moreover, that decarbonization could be accelerated through policies like pricing carbon pollution, but the film does not once put a single second of thought into policy solutions.

In perhaps its most absurd scene, Gibbs and Zehner visit a former solar facility in Daggett, California, built in the mid-1980s and replaced 30 years later. Gazing upon the sand-covered landscape of the former facility, Gibbs declares in an ominous tone, “It suddenly dawned on me what we were looking at: a solar dead zone.”

Daggett is located in the Mojave Desert. Sand is the natural landscape. Solar farms don’t create dead zones; in fact, some plants thrive under the shade provided by solar panels.

It suddenly dawned on me how hard the film was trying to portray clean energy in a negative light.

A shallow dismissal of electric vehicles

In another scene, Gibbs travels to a General Motors facility in Lansing, Michigan, circa 2010, as GM showcased its then-new Chevy Volt plug-in electric hybrid vehicle. Gibbs interviews a representative from the local municipal electric utility provider, who notes that they generate 95% of their supply by burning coal, and that the power to charge the GM facility’s EVs will not come from renewables in the near future.

That is the full extent of the discussion of EVs in the film. Viewers are left to assume that because these cars are charged by burning coal, they’re just greenwashing . In reality, because of the high efficiency of electric motors, an electric car charged entirely by burning coal still produces less carbon pollution than an internal combustion engine car (though more than a hybrid). The U.S. Department of Energy has a useful tool for comparing carbon emissions between EVs, plug-in hybrids, conventional hybrids, and gasoline-powered cars for each state. In Michigan, on average, EVs are the cleanest option of all, as is the case for the national average power grid. In West Virginia, with over 90% electricity generated from coal, hybrids are the cleanest option, but EVs are still cleaner than gasoline cars.

In short, EVs are an improvement over gasoline-powered cars everywhere, and their carbon footprints will continue to shrink as renewables expand to supply more of the power grid.

A valid critique of wood biomass

The film devotes a half hour to the practice of burning trees for energy. That’s one form of biomass, which also includes burning wood waste, garbage, and biofuels. Last year, 1% of U.S. electricity was generated by burning wood, but it accounted for 30% of the film run time.

In fairness, Europe is a different story, where wood biomass accounts for around 5% of electricity generation, and which imports a lot of wood chips from America. It’s incentivized because the European Union considers burning wood to be carbon neutral, and it can thus be used to meet climate targets. That’s because new trees can be planted to replace those removed, and the EU assumes the wood being burned would have decayed and released its stored carbon anyway.

There are numerous problems with those assumptions, one of which is unavoidable: time. Burning trees is close to carbon neutral once a replacement tree grows to sufficient maturity to recapture the lost carbon, but that takes many decades. In the meantime, the carbon released into the atmosphere accelerates the climate crisis at a time when slashing emissions is increasingly urgent. That’s why climate scientists are increasingly calling on policymakers to stop expanding this practice. So has 350.org founder Bill McKibben since 2016, despite his depiction in the film as a villainous proponent of clearcutting forests to burn for energy.

It’s complicated, but the carbon footprint of biomass depends on where the wood comes from . Burning waste (including waste wood) as biomass that would decay anyway is justifiable, but also generally only practical at a relatively small scale. A more detailed investigation of the wood biomass industry could make for a worthwhile documentary. It’s still a small-time player, but it does need to stay that way.

The bottom line

Gibbs asks, “Is it possible for machines made by industrial civilization to save us from industrial civilization?”

Why not? Industrial civilization has a non-zero climate and environmental footprint, but the impact of green technologies like EVs, wind turbines, and solar panels is much smaller than the alternatives. They represent humanity’s best chance to avoid a climate catastrophe.

The filmmakers call for an end to limitless economic growth and consumption. It’s difficult to envision that goal being achieved anytime soon, but even if it is, human civilization will continue to exist and require energy. To avert a climate crisis, that energy must be supplied by the clean renewable technologies pilloried in the film. To expand on the earlier analogy, the filmmakers seem to believe we should improve nutrition not by eating healthier foods like strawberries, but rather by eating a bit less cheesecake.

Like Fox News and other propaganda vehicles, the film presents one biased perspective via carefully chosen voices, virtually all of whom are comfortable white men. It applies an environmental purity test that can seem convincing for viewers lacking expertise in the topic. Any imperfect technology – which is every technology – is deemed bad. It’s a clear example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. In reality, this movie is the enemy of humanity’s last best chance to save itself and countless other species from unchecked climate change through a transition to cleaner technologies.

*Editor’s note: Edited May 2 to clarify kWh units.

Dana Nuccitelli

Dana Nuccitelli, research coordinator for the nonprofit Citizens' Climate Lobby, is an environmental scientist, writer, and author of 'Climatology versus Pseudoscience,' published in 2015. He has published... More by Dana Nuccitelli

'Planet of the Humans' Movie Review: Harrowing Eco-Documentary Full Of Hits – And Misses

‘Planet of the Humans’ Movie Review: Harrowing Eco-Documentary Full Of Hits – And Misses

If you’re looking for good news, look elsewhere. The debate around documentarian Jeff Gibbs ‘s first feature  Planet of the Humans is a strong one, and both sides are rightfully preaching more than a little doom. There have been a glut of documentaries since 2006’s  An Inconvenient Truth  about mankind’s disregard for and desecration of the environment, and  Planet of the Humans  pulls no punches about the damage people are doing to the ecosystems that support them.

Collapse of the natural world is not Gibbs’s primary concern, however, and it’s when he wades away from this subject that his claims get especially contentious. The primary thesis of  Planet of the Humans is that the once-grassroots environmental movement has since been fully co-opted by corporate powers, and anti-climate change campaigners the world over now sit snugly in the pockets of fossil fuel titans like the Koch brothers.

It’s pretty hot stuff, and I applaud Gibbs for being willing to call out what can often seem like the one movement capable of saving life on Earth. The film does indeed expose some distressing truths, particularly in regards to how “renewable” energy sources such as biofuel really are. Supposed saviors of the natural world such as Bill McKibben and Al Gore come out of  Planet of the Humans looking more than a little worse for the wear.

Far too often, though, Gibbs focuses his lens on the inefficiency and inviability of popular renewable sources such as wind and solar energy. While the efficacy and capabilities of these sources have historically been up for debate, Gibbs willfully cherry picks out-of-date data in order to drive home his point. They’re unfortunate missteps in what would otherwise be a must-watch for the next generation of environmentalists.

What truly holds the film back isn’t even its occasional peddling in misinformation as much as it is the lack of alternatives being offered. Gibbs’s interviewees (and Gibbs himself) often despair at how questions of consumption and population levels are left out of the discussion — a valid concern — without at all elucidating what solutions to those issues may look like. Enforced veganism? Mandatory sterilization? Genocide?

Gibbs offers no answer, ending the film with a truly traumatizing sequence of deforestation and habitat destruction. Harrowing? Sure, but because the film is devoid entirely of explicit solutions, it’s impossible to walk away from  Planet of the Humans with anything other than abject despair. In the absence of a real alternative, the film’s point is moot — surely some mitigation of climate change is better than the solution-less future offered by Gibbs.

The film itself found an executive producer in  Michael Moore , and the maestro’s influence on Gibbs is painfully obvious. Gibbs’s filmmaking talents have yet to fully bloom, and his deadpan narration is an emaciated imitation of Moore. The film is rhetorically effective simply because of the audacity of its message; both technically and scientifically,  Planet of the Humans  bubbles away under the light.

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Planet of the Humans-Documentary Review

The new Michael Moore documentary, “ Planet of the Humans ,” describes itself as a “frontal assault on the sacred cows of the U.S. environmental movement,” and has its sights set on blowing up the clean energy industry. Yet instead of offering a fact-based evaluation of clean energy technologies, the film uses outdated information to peddle a range of anti-clean energy talking points, and reaches dangerously misinformed conclusions. 

The film follows director Jeff Gibbs around the U.S., visiting various clean energy sites, from old wind turbines to deserted solar fields, as he ostensibly learns that these technologies, as well as biomass and electric vehicles, are just as bad as the fossil fuel infrastructure that they would replace. Exclusively focusing on the drawbacks of clean energy technologies without even considering their ability to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other pollutants, Gibbs concludes that since these technologies cannot possibly be the answer to limiting climate change, then curtailing population growth and consumption are the only answers. 

It is grossly inappropriate, morally and technically, to conclude that limiting economic growth is the only way out of climate change. Outdated and flat-out false attacks on technological solutions to climate change ignore the tremendous progress and potential of the clean energy sector, both domestically and in developing countries. Despite the film’s conclusions, human ingenuity has been central to the progress already made in the clean technology sector, and continuing to support these technologies is essential if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. 

An ancient and shallow critique of clean energy 

The lack of analytical rigor and reason-supported observations in the film is truly astonishing. As John Rogers and Leah Stokes point out in their critiques, listening to some of the so-called “facts” presented by Gibbs makes one think that this film was made a decade ago. the The arcane feel of the movie is on full display when Gibbs tours a solar farm in Lansing, Mich., where a member of the city’s Board of Water and Light mentions that those solar modules have an efficiency of “just under 8 percent.” Attempting to make a similar point, the director tours a solar trade show only to find out that “solar panels are built to last only 10 years.” Unless the director has not done a quick Google search on the solar power sector in the last 10 years, then the inclusion of these statements is purely made in bad faith. The majority of solar panels today have an efficiency rating of between 15 and 20 percent , with many residential solar panels breaking the 20 percent mark . As for the lifespan of solar panels, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory recently found that the median degradation rate , i.e., the reduction of solar panel output over time, is about 0.5 percent per year, which means that after 20 years the solar module could still produce approximately 90 percent of the electricity it produced in the year it was installed. Because of this, most solar systems come with warranties of at least 20 years . The list of poor and outdated information extends to the documentary’s treatment of electric vehicles. 

One scene filmed about a decade ago shows the rollout of the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid vehicle that began production in 2010. Although the vehicle itself may be electric, Gibbs points out that it is being charged by a local utility that runs almost completely on coal, and argues that because of this the environmental benefits of EVs are purely illusory. Researchers have actually analyzed this specific issue and have found that there is a clear emissions benefit to driving an EV over an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. As the Union of Concerned Scientists notes , even when accounting for emissions produced by charging the vehicles, EVs produce significantly lower GHG emissions than traditional ICE vehicles. This result  holds in areas of the U.S. that still heavily rely on fossil fuels for electric power. Even studies accounting for GHG emissions associated with the manufacturing of these vehicles find that EVs produce 50 percent fewer GHG emissions per kilometer traveled than ICE vehicles, ranging from 28 percent less in areas still reliant on fossil fuels, and up to 72 percent less in areas with high renewable energy penetration. The environmental benefit of EVs will only increase as utilities continue to reduce their emissions by increasing the share of renewable and other low-carbon power sources. But on the subject of utilities’ ability to reduce their emissions, the film’s ignorance is on full display. 

Perhaps the most blatant example of the misinformation contained in the documentary is an exchange with Ozzie Zehner, an author and the producer of the film, who claims, “You use more fossil fuels [manufacturing renewables infrastructure] than you’re getting benefit from. You would have been better off burning the fossil fuels in the first place instead of playing pretend.” This is just demonstrably false. This idea gets at the issue of life-cycle emissions of power plants, which takes into account the carbon emissions of every stage of a power plant, including upstream emissions from extraction and materials manufacturing. Study after study has found that the carbon footprint for wind, solar, and nuclear power is significantly smaller per unit of electricity than the carbon footprint of fossil fuel generating sources. Even when accounting for downstream emissions of power plants, including project decommissioning and part disposal/recycling, lifecycle emissions from a coal power plant are about 62 times per unit of electricity that of a wind plant, and 21 times that of a utility-scale solar plant. So while it is true that the carbon footprint of renewable energy is not zero, and that the manufacturing of these technologies requires mining and other industrial activities, it is not up for debate that renewable energy technologies produce significantly fewer GHG emissions over their lifetime than their fossil fuel counterparts. 

Zehner goes on to add that wind and solar cannot replace coal, and that retiring coal plants are being replaced by a massive build-out of natural gas. The film also presents the work of Richard York, a professor at the University of Oregon, whose 2012 paper argues that the addition of renewable energy has no impact on fossil fuel output. While it is true that natural gas has indeed expanded to fill in for lost coal generation, increasing shares of wind and solar power have played a pivotal role in decarbonizing the U.S. electricity sector. Electricity generation data from the Energy Information Administration shows that increased electricity generation from wind and solar power since 2008 replaced roughly one-third of the reduction in electricity from coal-fired power plants. While retired coal-fired power plants were primarily replaced by natural gas at the national level, a look at energy transitions in specific states demonstrates that renewables alone can replace electricity from retired coal plants, without expanding natural gas electricity generation. 

Below is a snapshot of how Kansas’ electricity mix changed over the last two decades. 

 Source: How Does Your State Make Electricity?, The New York Times 

And here’s the electricity generation mix from Iowa. 

  Source: How Does Your State Make Electricity?, The New York Times 

In both these states, reductions in coal-fired power were overwhelmingly replaced by increased electricity from renewable sources. Just from these two examples we can see how the assertion from Zehler and York that renewables are not the sources replacing coal-fired electricity is highly misguided, and ignores how the electricity sector has been able to reduce CO2 emissions 28 percent since 2005 , the only sector in the U.S. economy to have successfully reduced its emissions in the past decade. 

The film also spends a sizable amount of time discussing the practice of burning trees for energy, which, by the way, accounted for 1 percent of total U.S. electricity generation in 2019 and is making up a smaller share of total renewable energy each year. While there are valid concerns associated with this form of biomass, including land used to produce these feedstocks and the emissions related to the burning of this fuel, lumping this form of energy with wind and solar technology is an oversimplification. The main difference between these renewable energy sources is that biomass does release GHG emissions when it is burned whereas there are zero emissions associated with power generation from solar and wind resources, but the film neglects to mention this. 

There is no silver bullet to solving climate change. Mitigating the worst impacts of climate change is going to require a wide portfolio of clean energy technologies and strategies. We cannot simply rely on renewables to cost-effectively reduce emissions , and nuclear, geothermal, battery storage, etc. have an important role to play. That being said, renewable energy technologies provide the best way to reduce harmful GHG emissions today. Misrepresenting the progress of these technologies, or intentionally lying about these technologies, will only serve to move us backward and limit emissions reductions that can be achieved today. 

The perfect feedstock for the “do nothing” movement 

Although the film’s treatment of the limitations of clean energy technologies is remarkably shallow, its conclusion that people and industrial civilization itself are the problem is outright dangerous. It would be easy to dismiss these ideas as ineffective nonsense from documentarians, but a lot of the same skepticism of these new technologies is embedded with policymakers on the right. Tearing down strategies and technologies that are integral to building a more sustainable and resilient economy will set climate action back decades. Instead of looking to limit human creativity and ingenuity, we should be unleashing it. 

Dynamic economies and human ingenuity are what created these technologies. Human ingenuity is what has driven precipitous price drops in the renewable energy industry, what has made these technologies more efficient, and what has caused renewable resources to grow to almost 18 percent of U.S. electricity supply . Humanity’s capacity to innovate is what is revolutionizing our transportation sector, making EVs more affordable and effective . While transitioning our energy system is going to be difficult, and far from perfect, sustaining the progress we’ve made in clean energy technology is the first step in creating the conditions we need for comprehensive climate action. 

Photo by  Derek Liang  on  Unsplash

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Planet of the Humans

Planet of the Humans takes a harsh look at how the environmental movement has lost the battle through well-meaning but disastrous choices. Planet of the Humans takes a harsh look at how the environmental movement has lost the battle through well-meaning but disastrous choices. Planet of the Humans takes a harsh look at how the environmental movement has lost the battle through well-meaning but disastrous choices.

• Kristin Zimmerman
• 120 User reviews
• 30 Critic reviews
• 56 Metascore

• Self - Narrator

• Self - Board Chairman of CMS Energy

• Self - General Motors Spokesperson

• Self - Lansing Board of Water & Light

• Self - Michigan Environmental Council

• Self - Author, The End of Growth

• Self - Environmental Sociologist, University of Oregon

• Self - Anthropologist, Penn State University

• Self - Author, Green Illusions

• Self - Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner

• Self - Director, Beyond Coal

• Self - The Guardian

• Self - Electrical Engineer

• Self - Duke Energy

• Self - Ecologist, University of Montana

• Self - Anthropologist

• Self - Social Psychologist, Skidmore College
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia It was released for free for 30 days on YouTube on the 21st of April 2020 (Earth Day 2020).

Narrator : The takeover of the environmental movement by capitalism is now complete. Environmentalists are no longer resisting those with the profit motive, they're collaborating with them.

• Connections Featured in Outsiders: Episode #5.14 (2020)
• Soundtracks Chilled Cream Blank & Jones Interpreted by Blank & Jones Written by Piet Blank, jaspa Jones, Andy Kaufhold Published by Soundcolours Produced, arranged and mixed by Piet Blank, jaspa Jones, Andy Kaufhold (C) NightsHighNoon Studio, Germany for Soundcolours GmbH & Co. KG Licenced courtesy of Soundcolours GmbH & Co. KG, www.soundcolours.com ISRC: DEGE91300132

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• Runtime 1 hour 40 minutes

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Film uses gotcha journalism to tar well-known green leaders and argue that climate fight is not enough.

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If anyone was foolish enough to actually think that human technology had the planet's natural forces safely under our control, the disruptive effect of COVID-19 has been only the latest reminder that it doesn't.

A main message of the new environmental documentary  Planet of the Humans is that despite our powerful economic grip on the world — or more likely because of it — we have started a planetary tire fire that even our greenest leaders seem unable to cool.

To say the movie, backed by rabble-rousing filmmaker Michael Moore and made by his longtime associate Jeff Gibbs, is controversial is an understatement.

Offering it free on the internet during the COVID-19 lockdown has helped attract more than 4.6 million views since the film's Earth Day release last week.

But it has also attracted a wave of outraged criticism, not from the expected anti-environmental crowd, many of whom seem to quite like it, but from committed environmentalists themselves.

The film tars several well-known green leaders — including Al Gore, who helped bring climate change awareness to the people in the 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth  — as being in the pocket of big business.

Like many documentaries, especially those from Moore, this film is a polemic, using tendentious language and clips to make its argument stronger even at the expense of objectivity.

Rather than proving its claims with economically sound and up-to-date facts, it often feels like an attempt to manipulate viewers who just don't know any better — like Moore's anecdotal evidence about Canadians not locking their doors in his 2002 movie,  Bowling for Columbine.  

Anecdotes are a great tool to illustrate a point but only if the point is a truthful representation.

Displacing old tech takes trial and error

For instance, images of rusted, abandoned windmills in Hawaii are not representative of a wind energy industry that has been successfully operating around the world for decades. As with any technology, constant maintenance is essential. 

Pictures of a crumbling solar site make no mention of the fact that it was in the process of being replaced by a better one. The film uses footage and interviews referencing technology that is more than a decade old without revealing it.

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It fails to address the essential fact that any new technology must pass through many stages and have many failures while trying to challenge tried and true existing systems.

In its apparent effort to make the case that fighting climate change is not enough and that industrial capitalism continues to erode the earth's resources even when directed toward green projects, the film uses the tricks of gotcha journalism.

In one instance showing grainy found footage of an environmental leader who seems to avoid mentioning he has accepted money from the Rockefeller Foundation, which funds energy and development projects around the world, as if it implied business collusion, without ever presenting evidence of it.

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The movie has been justly criticized for using out-of-date information, such as misleading video clips of older models of solar panels to demonstrate the failures and inefficiencies of photovoltaic panels.

"It's like doing a documentary on the uselessness of mobile phones but only examining the [1990s] Motorola Ultrasleek," wrote infuriated technology writer Ketan Joshi.

Solar and wind getting cheaper

Many of the arguments used to condemn some green energy initiatives misrepresent their reliance on the carbon economy, including the idea that building green infrastructure creates more lifetime carbon than burning the energy equivalent in oil; that solar and wind energy projects need fossil fuel backup; and that battery-powered electric cars run on energy from coal-powered plants.

As green technologies have gone  mainstream and cheap , many for-profit alternative technologies are now operating without subsidies, which they could not do if they used more energy than they produced.

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Integrated power grids, where deficits in one area are supplemented with energy stored in  hydro dams or batteries  or from places where the wind is blowing or the sun shining mean that in many areas, emergency backup gas generators  are hardly used .

Fossil fuels are still required to manufacture electric cars and the batteries they run on, which have their own environmental impacts , and to feed the electricity grids that keep them running. But in some places, including parts of Ontario and B.C., they are charged to all intents and purposes virtually  carbon-free .  

One place to find modern answers to some of the film's arguments is a portion of the media empire owned by Michael Bloomberg, one of the business leaders condemned in the film. Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which keeps abreast of green developments from a hard financial perspective, just this week reported that solar and wind are now the cheapest sources of new power for two-thirds of the world's population.

Solar PV &amp; onshore wind are now the cheapest sources of new-build generation for at least two-thirds of the global population. Those two-thirds live in locations that comprise 71% of GDP &amp; 85% of energy generation. <a href="https://t.co/X53wfqgt93">https://t.co/X53wfqgt93</a> &mdash; @BloombergNEF

Biomass a green industry letdown

Refuting all of the film's economic arguments and the ways in which they're out of step with the fast-moving, capitalist green tech sector would take many columns and leave no time to address the few things this film gets right.

The movie has some core messages that are worth seeing.

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One is to open our eyes to the scale of industrial biomass plants that burn mostly trees but more loosely have used garbage and macerated tires to make electricity and that it is not the environment-friendly industry it was once thought to be.

Another valid lesson is the power money has to reset the green agenda, turning what was a grassroots action into a profit centre and subtly co-opting the movement's objectives. This is what capitalism does. It can't help itself.

But it is a reminder to environmental activists to keep governments and companies focused on moving that agenda forward.

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The final and most valid point the film makes is that as we use the power of capitalism to fight climate change with efficient windmills, sleek electric cars and better batteries, we must not lose sight of the fact that we only have one world, and we must share it.

As activist Greta Thunberg told the UN Climate Action Summit last year, the pursuit of endless economic growth is just not worth the money if it leads to mass extinction. Once we live in a world where only humans are left, it really doesn't matter how good our intentions were.

Follow Don on Twitter @don_pittis

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Business columnist

Based in Toronto, Don Pittis is a business columnist and senior producer for CBC News. Previously, he was a forest firefighter, and a ranger in Canada's High Arctic islands. After moving into journalism, he was principal business reporter for Radio Television Hong Kong before the handover to China. He has produced and reported for the CBC in Saskatchewan and Toronto and the BBC in London.

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'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' spoilers! Here's what the ending really means

Spoiler alert! We're discussing important plot points and the ending of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”  ( in theaters now ), so swing to another treetop if you haven’t seen it yet.

The original "Planet of the Apes" movie rocked audiences in 1968 with its combination of astounding makeup and shocking ending. Astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston), free of his ape tormentors and on a horseback trek along a beach, comes across the vestiges of the Statue of Liberty.

Thinking he had landed on a distant planet, Taylor suddenly is confronted with the grim reality that he's actually journeyed to a future Earth decimated by warmongering humans. "You maniacs!" he screams. "You blew it up!"

After eight follow-up films − including a recent reboot trilogy that wrapped in 2017 − comes "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes," with final scenes that seem poised to launch a new series.

Set generations after the death of Caesar, the simian leader in the rebooted trilogy, "Kingdom" features a brave but naive ape, Noa (Owen Teague), who befriends an intrepid human, Mae (Freya Allan). Their intertwined journeys culminate in an intriguing ending about which the actors and director Wes Ball offer cryptic comments.

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What happens in the ending of 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes'?

Noa lives in the blissful world of the Eagle Clan of chimps, who have made their home in overgrown utility pole towers. But that bliss comes to an end when his camp is overrun by aggressive apes from a nearby valley who like to hunt humans − who are now feral, nonverbal beasts − for sport.

In one such invasion, the apes capture both Noa and Mae, who we later learn has retained the ability to speak. The two of them are brought to a chimpanzee labor camp, where they learn to trust each other. Mae reveals that a cave the evil apes are trying to break into contains important technology that can help her reconnect with other sentient humans.

The duo succeeds in their mission, allowing Noa to rebuild his clan and Mae to deliver a critical computer cartridge to a group of humans who live in a bunker filled with satellite technology. In the final scene of the movie, Mae is with these scientists, all clearly survivors of the human-dominated Earth, who reboot radio telescopes and make voice contact with other humans. Noa meanwhile is shown taking his close friend Anaya to an abandoned telescope and she peers through the lens. What does Anaya see in space?

The screen suddenly fades to black.

Is the planet Noa and Anaya are looking at through the telescope Earth?

It's tempting to think that the twist here is that the apes no longer live on Earth and that the humans on this planet are using a radio telescope to connect with people back on our blue marble.

But no, the action takes place on Earth. The giveaways are found not just in the various overgrown buildings and streets seen in the film, but in the specificity of one shot that features the remnants of the parabolic arches that define the center of Los Angeles International Airport.

"Imagine that, if we weren't told (as actors) that we are all actually on Mars," Allan says with a laugh. "But no, my character has maps of towns." Addes Teague: "We're all in LA."

So what planet are the chimps looking at through the telescope at the end of 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes'?

Earlier in the movie, Noa comes across a huge abandoned telescope and peers through its small eyepiece and is startled by what he sees. But we don't know what it is. At the end of the movie, he feels compelled to bring his friend to see for herself.

The decision to fade to black instead of revealing what the two saw was an easy one for Ball. "I figured there is nothing I could show you that would be stronger than what the audience's imagination would conjure up," he says. "Sure, it might turn some people off, but some people will like it. I have ideas of what they're looking at."

Mars, maybe? Ball laughs. "Right, they're looking at (SpaceX founder) Elon Musk flying around on his Falcon 9 rocket," he says. "But I'll just say this. Space obviously is a key idea in all of these movies. So, maybe it's them looking to the future?"

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‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ Review: Hail, Caesar

The latest installment in an excellent series finds mythology turning into power.

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‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director wes ball narrates a sequence from his film..

I’m Wes Ball, director of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” This is a little sequence in the very beginning of the movie after our trio of apes here, Noa, Soona and Anaya, have just had a little adventure and they’re on their way back to their village, where we get to meet the life of Eagle Clan and where Noa and his family reside, this little isolated existence. And we get to see the way the apes live in this world with their eagles. And and how this ritual of collecting their egg, which they’re going to raise as companions, which is part of the way the Eagle Clan kind of works in their culture. And the goal was really just to set up a world that was wonderful, that was ultimately going to be forever changed when the course of events leads to Noa’s village being attacked for the most part, everything you see here was actually shot with the actors. We shoot it twice, we shoot it once with the actors and all of their little performance things and the camera movement and everything. So we are shooting a regular movie. It just happens to be that these guys are wearing these kind of strange suits along with the cameras and the dots on their face that captures all the performance. And then I have to go in and then re- duplicate those shots without the apes, which is where I choose. Whatever performance I choose now gets dropped into the scene itself. So this isn’t something where we just kind of animate the characters after the fact. We’re actually on location and they’re there in their digital costumes, essentially, acting out everything you see on camera, with the exception of, say, background action, there’s a group of apes in the background playing what we called monkey ball, and just we did that all on stage. So that’s kind of the beauty of the power of this process, is that we can populate this whole scene with hundreds of apes. But we only needed a handful of apes on set. This is Dar, Noa’s mother, who’s a fantastic character, played by Sara Wiseman, who did a great job. “I knew you would climb well.” “He waits.” And this character of Noa here, you kind start to see this relationship that he has with his father, which is an interesting kind of relationship that I imagine a lot of people could relate to. They don’t know quite how to communicate with each other, but there’s obviously still love there. It’s an interesting process where I can take all these different little elements and layer them all together and stack them into this — what you see is the end result here, this little idyllic community.

By Alissa Wilkinson

For a series with a goofy premise — what if talking apes overthrew humanity — the “Planet of the Apes” universe is uncommonly thoughtful, even insightful. If science fiction situates us in a universe that’s just different enough to slip daring questions past our mental barriers, then the “Apes” movies are among the best examples. That very premise, launched with talking actors in ape costumes in the 1968 film, has given storytellers a lot to chew on, contemplating racism, authoritarianism, police brutality and, in later installments, the upending of human society by a brutal, fast-moving virus. (Oops.)

Those later virus-ridden installments, a trilogy released between 2011 and 2017, are among the series’ best, and well worth revisiting. The newest film, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” picks up exactly where that trilogy left off: with the death of Caesar, the ultrasmart chimpanzee who has led the apes away from what’s left of humanity and into a paradise. (The scene was a direct quotation of the story of Moses leading the Israelites to the Promised Land, but dying before he could set foot there.) The apes honor his memory and vow to keep his teachings, especially the first dictum — “ape not kill ape.” Caesar preached a gospel of peacefulness, loyalty, generosity, nonaggression and care for the earth; unlike the humans, they intend to live in harmony.

The teachings of peaceful prophets, however, tend to be twisted by power-seekers, and apparently this isn’t just a human problem. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” directed by Wes Ball from a screenplay by Josh Friedman, leaps forward almost immediately by “many generations” (years matter less in this post-human world), and the inevitable has happened. The apes have fractured into tribes, while Caesar has passed from historical figure to mythic one, a figure venerated by some and forgotten by most.

That there even was a Caesar is unknown to Noa (Owen Teague), a young chimpanzee whose father, Koro (Neil Sandilands) is leader of his clan and an avid breeder of birds. That clan has its own laws, mostly having to do with how to treat birds’ nests, and that’s all that Noa and his friends Anaya (Travis Jeffery) and Soona (Lydia Peckham) have known.

But then one day tragedy strikes, in the form of an attack on the clan by the soldiers of Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), the leader of a clan of coastal apes. Noa finds himself alone, searching for his clan, who have been carted away. On his journey Noa meets a human (Freya Allen) who, like the other humans, doesn’t speak.

At this point in the evolution of the virus, mutations have rendered any surviving humanity speechless and dull-witted, living in roving bands and running from predators; to the apes it’s as preposterous to imagine a talking human as a talking ape is to us. But he also meets Raka (Peter Macon), who believes himself to be the last of the faithful followers of Caesar’s peaceful teachings, even wearing Caesar’s diamond-shaped symbol around his neck. (Eagle-eyed viewers will recall that the symbol echoes the shape of the window in the room in which Caesar was raised as a baby.) Noa learns from Raka. And when he finds what he’s looking for, he realizes he has an important job to do.

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is not quite as transporting as the previous trilogy, perhaps because the apes now act so much like humans that the fruitful dissonance in our minds has mostly been mitigated. It’s simpler to imagine the apes as just stand-in humans when they’re all talking, and thus easier to just imagine you’re watching, say, “The Lion King” or something.

But there’s still a tremendous amount to mull over here, like Proximus Caesar, who borrows the idea of Caesar to prop up his own version of leadership. The real Caesar was undoubtedly strong and brave, but Proximus Caesar has mutated this into swagger and shows of force, an aggression designed to keep his apes in line. He is not brutal, exactly; He is simply insistently powerful and more than a bit of a fascist. Every morning, he greets his subjects by proclaiming that it is a “wonderful day,” and that he is Caesar’s rightful heir, and that they must all work together as one to build their civilization ever stronger.

Visual cues indicate that Proximus Caesar’s kingdom is modeled partly on the Roman Empire, with its colonizing influence and its intention to sweep the riches of the ancient human world — its history, its labor, its technology — into its own coffers. By telling his version of Caesar’s legacy, Proximus Caesar makes the apes believe they are part of some mighty, unstoppable force of history.

But of course, history has a habit of repeating itself, whether it’s ancient Rome or Egypt, and in Proximus Caesar’s proclamations one detects a bit of Ozymandias : Look on his works, ye mighty, and despair! “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is set in the future, but like a lot of science fiction — “Dune,” for instance, or “Battlestar Galactica,” or Walter Miller’s “A Canticle for Leibowitz” — there’s a knowing sense that all this has happened before, and all this will happen again.

That’s what makes “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” powerful, in the end. It probes how the act of co-opting idealisms and converting them to dogmas has occurred many times over. What’s more, it points directly at the immense danger of romanticizing the past, imagining that if we could only reclaim and reframe and resurrect history, our present problems would be solved. Golden ages were rarely actually golden, but history is littered with leaders who tried to make people believe they were anyhow. It’s a great way to make people do their bidding.

There are some hints near the end of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” of what might be next for the franchise, should it be fated to continue. But the uneasy fun of the series is we already know what happens, eventually; it was right there in the first movie, and the warning it poses remains bleak.

At the start of the 1968 film, the star Charlton Heston explains, “I can’t help thinking somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man.” You might have expected, from a movie like this, that “better” species would be these apes. But it turns out we might have to keep looking.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Rated PG-13, for scenes of peril and woe and a couple of funny, mild swear words. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. In theaters.

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes takes the series in a different direction

Civilisation has crumbled, culture has been lost, and humans have been reduced to feral, slow-witted creatures who can no longer form intelligible words. What better place to film it all than Australia?

Shot at Disney Studios in Sydney and on location in the wilds of New South Wales, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a sequel to the 2011–2017 simian trilogy, set many generations after the reign of the legendary chimpan-A, Caesar (Andy Serkis, taking a well-deserved break from this latest instalment).

Earth is now overrun with apes who've formed themselves into regional clans. Primitive villages — not unlike those of the original 1968 movie — have sprung up across the land. The ruins of human cities, meanwhile, have been largely reclaimed by nature, their history and technology now a distant memory to all but the oldest apes — keepers of a secret knowledge that could threaten the newly dominant species.

What humans remain have been driven into hiding, mute scavengers left to scrape by in the shadows. The apes call them — in a neat, poetic touch — "the echo."

It's not exactly a utopia. The movie's new chimp hero, Noa (Owen Teague), is spurred into action when his peaceful village is burned to the ground by a band of gorilla-led marauders, who murder his father and take the rest of his family captive.

Dressed in spooky masks and wielding cattle-prods, these guys don't monkey around: they're foot soldiers of the fearsome Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), a power-hungry chimpanzee hell-bent on consolidating the clans, ruling the planet and exterminating the remaining traces of humankind.

So begins a quest for revenge, with Noa roaming the forests and teaming up with the wise orangutan Raka (Peter Macon, giving the film's warmest, funniest performance), an ancient keeper of lore who yearns for peace between humans and apes — and bemoans the murders done in Caesar's name.

Also tagging along is a stray human girl (Freya Allan, of TV's The Witcher), who appears to be thoroughly feral — or at least smells as such, much to Noa and Raka's amusing displeasure.

"We shall call her Nova," says Raka. "We call them all Nova. I do not know why."

It's one of the few moments of genuine levity in this grim, rather earnest movie — spontaneity being hard to come by in a $165-million blockbuster whose motion-capture precision means scenes are mapped out months in advance of the shoot. (As always, Weta FX's mo-cap work here is exquisite, though the absence of Serkis — and his robust, energising performance — is a hole the new movie struggles to fill.)

Despite some pretty anonymous direction by Wes Ball (The Maze Runner trilogy), Kingdom does rouse itself in its gladiatorial final third, when our heroes are captured and delivered to the stronghold of Proximus — a shipwreck in which the great ape has enslaved his kin in a desperate bit to unlock a hidden fortress of human technology. (William H. Macy is also there, for some reason, as a human who's sold his services to the apes; I hope he had a nice holiday.)

His methods might be lousy, but you can't exactly fault Proximus on his ambitions, given the memory of humanity's cruelty. What they eventually uncover won't do too much to sway his conviction.

Still, these revelations are snoozers for a series that began with pop cinema's greatest-ever twist ending, one whose tangled mythology forced its filmmakers into ever-greater quantum leaps of loopy invention: blowing up the planet; sending ape-astronauts back through time; having humanity accelerate its own demise by enslaving the descendants of those time travellers.

Those early films also pulled no punches in painting mankind as the monsters — and made sure they got what the deserved, in often hilariously bleak ways.

By comparison, this newer series has crawled along a more familiar, linear trajectory — four movies in and they've inched to a place the audience is already many steps ahead of — while the original films' brutal analogies for man's cruelty have been replaced by a more standard hero's journey.

Realism, too, has robbed the series of its strange delight; there's something infinitely more pleasurable about seeing hammy actors in ape costumes — it somehow enhanced the sense of play, of the uncanny.

One of the issues seems to be that Kingdom, like its predecessors, can't seem to let go of its sympathy for humanity — despite all the evidence of its hubris — resulting in yet another movie that tries to play both sides, to cultivate a hope for co-existence that feels disingenuous to the series.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes has its moments, but its insistence on playing things down the middle feels like a betrayal of the series' bitter, satirical origins.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is showing in cinemas now.

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review – thrilling addition to the series

Wes Ball brings fresh blood, new ideas and superb motion capture to this top-quality summer blockbuster

W ith this muscular instalment of the consistently impressive rebooted Apes franchise, director Wes Ball, previously best known for the propulsive but somewhat generic YA dystopian Maze Runner series, graduates, with honours, to the big league of Hollywood helmers. This is a top-quality summer blockbuster, bringing fresh blood and new ideas into the series while staying recognisably within the worlds so meticulously created in the previous three movies.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is set many generations in the future, long after the events of War for the Planet of the Apes and the conclusion of the story of Caesar, who is now regarded as a Moses-like legendary figure. But the thing about legends is that they get appropriated and twisted to fit the current narrative. Wise old orangutan scholar Raka (Peter Macon) follows the word of Caesar to the letter; Proximus (Kevin Durand) cherrypicks the primate unity theme but disregards the bit about ape not killing ape. And youngster Noa (Owen Teague), son of the leader of a chimp clan that trains and hunts with eagles, hasn’t even heard of Caesar.

It’s Noa that we follow, after his father is murdered and his clan enslaved. He joins forces with a young human, Mae (Freya Allan), who, unlike most of her species (now grunting, grubby, non-verbal scavengers), can speak, reason and plot against the ape oppressors. The picture looks phenomenal, with nature aggressively reclaiming abandoned human spaces – tower blocks jutting like broken teeth, the decaying carcass of a container ship. But most impressive are the motion capture performances, which are among the finest I have seen. It’s a thrilling addition to a franchise that swings from strength to strength.

In UK and Irish cinemas now

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‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ Review: The Franchise Essentially Reboots with a Tale of Survival Set — At Last — in the Ape-Ruled Future

With Owen Teague as a young ape trapped in a cult kingdom, it may be the first film in the series to connect with the spirit of 'Planet of the Apes.'

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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“ Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes ” opens with Caesar lying in state, surrounding by a horde of mourning chimps, as his dead body is covered in flowers and ritually set on fire. The movie then cuts to the jungle, where a title informs us that it’s “many generations later.” In other words, the tale we’ve been watching in the last three “Apes” films — “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011), “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” (2014), and “War for the Planet of the Apes” (2017) — is now ancient franchise history. I’m in the minority of viewers who would greet that news by saying, “Thank God.”

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“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is, in effect, a reboot of its own franchise. I’m not sure that the film is going to be any more successful than the previous three installments (or even as successful). It’s essentially a two-and-a-half-hour chimp-in-the-wilderness adventure movie, directed by Wes Ball (the “Maze Runner” films) in the deliberately paced “classical” style of an episodic Hollywood saga from 50 years ago. It doesn’t have a cast of big-name stars. Yet the actors are abetted by the astonishingly organic facial expressions made possible by cutting-edge motion capture, and though the film is too long, I was more than gratified to sink into its relatively old-fashioned dramatic restraint.

Cut loose from his village, Noa meets a wise old orangutan named Raka (Peter Macon), with impish small eyes and a funny way of pursing his lips; he’s a relic who still believes in the teachings of Caesar. Noa also meets a human wild child (Freya Allan) who’s less innocent than she looks. As Noa, the gifted actor Owen Teague makes his presence felt. He displays not just cleverness and nobility but raw fear, an exciting quality to see in a hero.

The three characters team up, but Noa is eventually dragged to the ape kingdom, presided over by a fearsome cult leader named Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), who has stolen the authority — but not the morality — of his namesake. Proximus takes a special interest in Noa, who is essentially a prison-camp inmate, reunited with his mother and friends, who must defeat the empire from within. Here and there, we’re shown signs of the human civilization that’s been destroyed: the carcasses of buildings, escalators, and elevated train tracks, overgrown with shrubbery. Yet human technology is still the holy grail. The ape kingdom is built around a silo, with a closed vault of a door, that contains many wonders within (like weapons). That vault is Pandora’s Box, and Proximus wants to unlock it so desperately that he’ll sacrifice a handful of his apes every day to electroshock the door open.

Kevin Durand’s performance as Proximus, the leering bonobo monarch, is a piece of insinuating theater — he’s a leader who’s made the mistake of thinking everything is about him. And the rest of the cast makes its mark, from Sarah Wiseman as Noa’s heartstrong mother to Peter Macon as the whimsical seen-it-all Raka to William H. Macy as a scavenger who has carved out a place for himself in the ape kingdom like Dennis Hopper’s photographer in “Apocalypse Now.” “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” invites us to embrace the drama of apes fighting apes. By the end, though, in what is in effect a teaser for the next sequel, it looks as if the franchise’s blowhard version of the human race will be back after all. That could be enough to make you want to escape from the planet of the apes.

Reviewed at AMC 34th St., New York, May 7, 2024. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 145 MIN.

• Production: A 20th Century Studios release of a Jason T. Reed Productions, Oddball Entertainment production. Producers: Wes Ball, Joe Hartwick, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Jason Reed. Executive producers: Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping.
• Crew: Director: Wes Ball. Screenplay: Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Patrick Aison. Camera: Gyula Pados. Editor: Dan Zimmerman. Music: John Paesano.
• With: Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, William H. Macy, Travis Jeffery, Lydia Peckham, Neil Sandilands.

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