HoustonPus thinks that the new Planet of the Apes movie is timely with its Earth would better off with no more humsns message. The critic is gleeful
IMHO, that critic's analysis is pretty superficial and missed the movie's bigger point, particularly in the context of the prior two films. Saying that the POA movies were about how much better the world would be if humans are gone is as shallow a conclusion as saying the Narnia films were about how much better we'd all be if we just worshipped a lion.
There were a lot of themes and symbols incorporated across the last three POA films, but most were IMHO, didactic in intent.
The first movie was in many ways catching the Prometheus Unbound/Frankenstein story. The geneticist who was experimenting with the simian virus was doing so obsessively with the very best of intentions: to cure his father's descent into Alzheimer's. Even after his lab shut down his efforts, he continued them in secret, hiding Caesar in his home and furtively conducting experiments on his father when the virus escaped into the wild. As with Shelly's Frankenstein, the lesson is one of unintended consequences and even if something seems like a good idea backed by noble intent, one should temper ambition with caution. The respective stories may have been told by a cadaverous monster in one instance, and a genius level chimpanzee in the other, but they are no less about humanity that Aesop's fables involving tortoises, hares and foxes.
Yes, the Houston Press critic did catch Harrelson's channeling of Brando and the whole Heart of Darkness thing, but seems to entirely missed the entire retelling of the Exodus story in which Harrelson was every bit the shaved-headed Pharaoh figure and Caesar led his "people" to the promised land, only to himself, die before entering it. If there are any doubts, one need only go back to the 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes. In one scene, a night watchman has a TV on in the background and the movie playing is, "The Ten Commandments." Obviously this was a hat tip to Heston's role in the original 1968 Planet of the Apes film, but of all of Heston's filmography the filmmakers could have chosen from, the choice of the Mosaic role appears rather deliberate given the closing scene of the most recent film. Again, the filmmakers used apes as symbols (akin to CS Lewis's use of a lion), but retelling the Exodus story is not one of a hatred for humanity, but in fact, one of promise.
Finally the reboot was intended to set the stage for the 1968 film where Heston reaches the POA to find the only humans are mute chattel, and the latest film explains how that came to be (via the mutated simian virus), and where Caesar was the stuff of ancient legend among the apes.
In my mind, the POA movies were not about "humans need to go." They were about good and evil in all hearts and which we choose to follow.
JMHO