In the future, the earth can no longer support so many people, so it is necessary to go to the universe to find other habitable planets. On the way to find a suitable planet, humans began to train orangutans to complete some simple tasks on behalf of humans. During a flight mission, the spacecraft driven by the orangutan of astronaut Leo (Mark Wahlberg) encountered a cosmic storm and lost contact with the space station. In order to rescue his partner, Leo drove the spacecraft to the center of the storm alone despite the obstruction. However, the spacecraft eventually crashed on a strange planet. When Leo woke up, he was captured by a group of apes. After careful observation, it was found that on this planet, apes have extremely high wisdom and dominate the planet, while real humans have become slaves of apes. In order to get rid of his predicament, Leo was helped by the female ape Iri (Helena Bonham Carter) to start his escape. During the escape, the signal receiver carried by Leo gradually received the signal from the mother ship. When everyone followed the guidance of the signal, they found that the destination was the place where the ancestors of the apes were originally born, and Leo recognized that this was the original mother ship. What exactly happened?