Bro. Might be my favourite Apes film. This franchise is so much more lucancore than I thought.
As a lot of films around this time did, this exposes the activities + rituals of the elite and whether that final act is Hollywood just doing it in front of our faces or rather the film villainizing and exposing it it's still informing us either way.
A secret society who 'only speak when needed' that pray to a nuclear weapon (get it?) in masonic lodges and cathedrals covered in symbols (symbols rule the world) including the upside-down cross who "don't kill their enemy but get the enemy to kill each other" and the rest of the planet's inhabitants are literally primates. I mean c'mon guys. Not to mention the blood magic imagery dotted throughout.

Such an impressive sequel in that it makes you think about the first one differently and completely expands the world and lore like you'd never believe yet the people of today want to see the original as standalone so bad :(
Just the right amount of camp for the premise too - the original fell a little too serious and stale for me.

Note: The scene where the burning 'crosses' is done by just filling the entire frame with a digital fire foreground is actually really creative and something I want to homage in one of my movies eventually. People will really just say the effects are bad and leave it at that yet if a high budget film of today did that everybody would be calling the director a genius. Just because it's done out of necessity, in this case a lack of technology and possibly money too, it does not take any creativity out of it.