(CNN) Those prone to lament the creative trajectory of movie franchises can take heart in "War For the Planet of the Apes" -- a stirring, soulful conclusion to a trilogy that has brilliantly evolved from its original source, claiming the admittedly not-very-competitive crown as the summer's best sequel. 
 
 Reprising his directing role after "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," Matt Reeves (who wrote the script with Mark Bomback) has cleverly synthesized old and new, providing graceful callbacks to the kitsch-y "Apes" films that began in the 1960s while carving out the movie's own rich mythology. 
 
 Perhaps foremost, at a time when reliance on computer-generated characters to carry the action often produces mixed results, the chimp leader Caesar (performed and voiced by Andy Serkis) and his posse quickly overcome those obstacles, drawing the audience into a story whose resonance and references extend from internment camps to the biblical. 
 
 Picking up not long after the last movie ended, Caesar is leading his community of intelligent apes, hoping to peacefully coexist with the remaining human population. An attack on their forest home by military forces under a renegade leader, the Colonel (Woody Harrelson, at his wild-eyed best), quickly obliterates those plans, prompting Caesar to pursue vengeance, to the chagrin of his more levelheaded orangutan pal Maurice (Karin Konoval). 
 
 The apes are eventually captured, moving the film from a war footing to something on the order of "The Great Escape." There is also ample brutality inflicted by the humans toward their simian prisoners, with the saving grace for humanity coming in the form of a young girl (Amiah Miller) who the apes rather grudgingly take in. 
 
 Read More ||||| War is hell, and so is humankind, in this darkest chapter of the “Planet of the Apes” prequels. The last in the trilogy and the first told solely from the apes’ perspective, it follows simian ruler Caesar (the endlessly talented Andy Serkis) on a rage-fueled revenge mission that threatens his standing as the apes’ diplomatic leader. 
 
 Apologies to Charlton Heston loyalists, but “War for the Planet of the Apes” is a good example of how today’s movies sometimes beat the hell out of the oldies. The sophisticated characters and wrenching emotions created with motion-capture technology so eclipse those rubber ape masks in the originals that it seems wrong to even group them in the same franchise. That said, director Matt Reeves (“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”) certainly pays homage to a number of classic war films here; look no further than the opening scene for a hint of “Apocalypse Now.” 
 
 The film begins as soldiers with slogan-painted helmets — “Monkey Killer,” “Bedtime for Bonzo” — wend their way through thick and ominous greenery. Their commander, Colonel McCullough (Woody Harrelson), is essentially the film’s Kurtz. He’s on a “purity” quest to rid the world of both apes and virus-infected people who’ve lost the power of speech, in the latest iteration of the simian flu that killed off most of the human population. But his army isn’t above using renegade gorillas, followers of Caesar’s late enemy Koba, as grunts: The humans call them “donkeys” and make them do the heavy lifting. 
 
 Following a tragic battle in the apes’ habitat, Caesar sets off to confront the Colonel at his military base, accompanied by a few comrades. They include Maurice (Karin Konoval), the orangutan whose wide, gentle face was so memorable in the last two films, and whose power of speech is apparently still developing. Along the way, they pick up two additional travelers: a mute, orphaned little girl (Amiah Miller), adopted as a daughter figure by the group, and a timorous chimp (Steve Zahn) who calls himself “Bad Ape” from his years living in a zoo. Bad Ape is the closest the film comes to lightheartedness: He’s a childlike soul who looks comical in the human clothes he favors, but he’s also deeply traumatized: “Humans got sick. Apes got smart. Humans kill apes,” he says, watery-eyed. 
 
 Once Caesar reaches the military base and realizes his tribe has been captured and imprisoned there, it’s an epic and heartbreaking second half that broadly references the Holocaust, internment camps, refugees and even the Bible: At one point, Caesar is strung up on crisscrossed wooden planks and left for dead. Reeves also works in more topical commentary with a hulking structure the Colonel has the apes laboring to build: “His wall is madness,” one chimp observes. “It won’t save him.” Yes, the imagery and the nonstop horror are a little too heavy-handed. Also, the film’s basically devoid of any sympathetic humans within the base. It’s not as if we don’t know who we’re rooting for here, but would it have killed them to give a single soldier a moment of pause before gunning down a row of fleeing chimpanzees? He might as well have subtitled the thing: “Who are the real savages here?” 
 
 At one point, the Colonel and Caesar have a riveting one-on-one discussion about the enduring conflict and its possible outcomes. “You’re impressive,” the Colonel keeps saying, as if unable to grasp that Caesar is really sentient. Relatedly, there were some in my screening audience who giggled throughout the entire thing, as if seeing chimps riding horses, or wearing manacles and breaking rocks with pickaxs, was simply a series of zany animal-show stunts. They couldn’t have done a better job of proving the film’s point: People can be willfully blind to the humanity in any species but their own. ||||| In War for the Planet of the Apes, the third chapter of the critically acclaimed blockbuster franchise, Caesar and his apes are forced into a deadly conflict with an army of humans led by a ruthless Colonel. After the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind. As the journey finally brings them face to face, Caesar and the Colonel are pitted against each other in an epic battle that will determine the fate of both their species and the future of the planet. ||||| Even when it threatens to turn into Apocalypse Now in a wobbly stretch near the end, War for the Planet of the Apes never ceases to be a movie, never turns into a product. That’s to say that the filmmakers have conceived it as a dramatic and emotional experience and not just the scheme of a studio marketing department, the craven and transparent impulse that hobbles so many big summer movies. In fact, they have made a consistently intelligent, morally thoughtful and often beautiful picture. 
 
 Matt Reeves, who helmed the second film in the franchise, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, directed and co-wrote the script with Mark Bomback. Together they have created a story that is coherent and credible, and with character motivation fully thought out. Equally impressive, the physical action remains clear; in small skirmishes and big battles, there isn’t a moment where you can’t tell where the warring factions—or the characters within those factions—are in physical relation to each other. The editing is steady rather than manic, and since this is a movie unafraid of scenes of characters talking to one another, special effects are used to support the story rather than supplant it. 
 
 In what appears to be the concluding entry of this trilogy, Koba, the rebel ape who started a war against humans in the second film, has been killed by Caesar (Andy Serkis)—the super-intelligent chimp who got this party started in 2011, with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and is now the spiritual and strategic leader of the simians. While the humans are still dealing with the aftereffects of a virus that nearly wiped them out, the apes are hiding in the forest. When they have a chance to escape to new territory, Caesar sends them off, remaining with a small army to hunt down the sadistic renegade army colonel (Woody Harrelson) who has caused him a tragic loss. 
 
 Caesar is the classic leader figure caught between his nobler instincts and his desire for revenge, and that conflict, so easily the stuff of silent-man clichés, instead gives the movie weight. In a scene in which he must kill an old friend turned traitor, there is no triumph in the moment. The violence in this film is never just a thrill, the effects of brutal acts are always taken seriously, and war is not ennobling. 
 
 If the movie is morally sure-footed, politically it can veer into stridency. Every scene with Harrelson’s madman colonel—he’s building a wall to keep out his enemies (get it?)—feels strained, not least because this usually terrific actor has been saddled with one of the film’s few caricatures. It doesn’t do the movie in, though, and there are lovely touches, like the huge ape Luca adorning a little girl’s hair with a sprig of cherry blossoms (and her later return of the favor), or the poignancy in the performance of Steve Zahn, who plays a former zoo ape that has lived in isolation. And the climax has true emotional sweep. 
 
 War for the Planet of the Apes is one franchise blockbuster that treats you like an adult. What’s more, you can walk out feeling like a moviegoer rather than a mark.
– The most recent Planet of the Apes trilogy started with a bang. It's going out the same way. Critics are raving about War for the Planet of the Apes, directed and co-written by Matt Reeves; it currently has an impressive 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Here's what they're saying: It's a "consistently intelligent, morally thoughtful and often beautiful picture" with a "coherent and credible" story that's just as impressive as the action, writes Charles Taylor at Newsweek. He adds the "special effects are used to support the story rather than supplant it." One downside: each scene featuring Woody Harrelson's colonel "feels strained, not least because this usually terrific actor has been saddled with one of the film's few caricatures." But Brian Lowry says Harrelson "is at his wild-eyed best" in what he calls "the summer's best sequel," and "a stirring, soulful conclusion to a trilogy that has brilliantly evolved from its original source." This is "one of those rare instances of a movie billed as a 'climactic chapter' that actually possesses the feeling and majesty of one," he writes at CNN, also commending Andy Serkis' intense portrayal of the ape Caesar. Serkis is not only "brilliant" but his appearance is "so lifelike that you forget you're looking at a visual-effects triumph," writes Chris Klimek at NPR. The film itself, wrapping up a "shockingly good series of prequels," is "suspenseful, mournful, grand," with "gravitas and commitment" that give it "a place of pride in our current apocalyptic renaissance," Klimek adds. Sara Stewart feels "the imagery and the nonstop horror are a little too heavy-handed." But the flick still shines with "an epic and heartbreaking second half that broadly references the Holocaust, internment camps, refugees and even the Bible," she writes at the New York Post. "Apologies to Charlton Heston loyalists, but War for the Planet of the Apes is a good example of how today's movies sometimes beat the hell out of the oldies," she adds. "It seems wrong to even group them in the same franchise."