20th Century Fox provided us with the opportunity for an exclusive interview with War for the Planet of the Apes director Matt Reeves, producer Dylan Clark and star Andy Serkis ahead of its stellar New York Comic Con event last night!
After our interview, we previewed footage from the film at the Regal E-Walk Theater on 42nd Street, which included a behind-the-scenes featurette about the motion-capture process for Caesar and the other apes, a trailer and a seven-minute-long scene in rough cut form. The scene featured Caesar leading his ragtag group of apes to a remote beachside shack, with Caesar coldly killing an armed human assailant with no mercy, showing that his attitude towards humans has changed significantly. Inside the shack, Maurice (Karin Konoval) discovers a human child, and convinces Caesar to reluctantly take the orphaned girl on their journey. The scene played beautifully despite only having a few shots fully rendered, with many of the shots simply containing Serkis & co. in their mocap suits. All the emotions rang true, and the scene proved to be quite moving.
The trailer itself shows the larger scope of the film, including Caesar’s sneak attack on Woody Harrelson’s Colonel and his troops, some snowy winter footage of the apes on horseback, and other battle footage. It ends with Harrelson in full-on Colonel Kurtz/Apocalypse Now-mode putting a gun to Caesar’s head. Hopefully the trailer, which we jokingly dubbed “Apepocalypse Now,” will debut online very soon.
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.
ComingSoon.net: I’m a big fan of the original… is it “fiveilogy”? Is that what we call it?
Dylan Clark: Right now you can say that, but before you came in “fiveilogy” was not acceptable.
CS: If I could make parallels I would say “Rise” was plotwise a lot like “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” and “Dawn” was comparable to “Battle for the Planet of the Apes.” Does “War for the Planet of the Apes” have a point of comparison within the original saga?
Matt Reeves: It’s so funny, we were just talking about this. Here’s what’s funny about that, here’s the truth. On “Dawn” when I came in there was a story but not the story that I wanted to tell, so I thought, “I’m not gonna be the right guy for this because I know they have a schedule.” Dylan actually said, “No no no no no, what is it you wanna do?” and I said, “You guys did this amazing thing in “Rise” where it seems like it’s a human story and the secret is it’s actually an ape story.” That’s what’s genius about this reboot, you’re entering a universe you know but it’s from a perspective you’ve never had and you’re empathizing with the apes, specifically the most human character Caesar. I said you’ve gotta continue that, and we literally dove in and worked on all this stuff, and afterwards everyone was saying, “Oh, you guys were doing ‘Battle!’ That’s so cool you were doing ‘Battle.'” And I was like, “Were we doing ‘Battle?'” We had no idea! So at the beginning of this film Mark and I went back and watched all of the films…
Clark: The fiveilogy.
Reeves: The fiveilogy, yes. And we were struck by the narrative similarities to “Battle.” I was like, “Can you believe this?” I haven’t seen this movie since I was a kid, so if it got in there through that it’s pure coincidence. Mark was saying, “I dunno if I’ve ever seen the movie. This is bizarre.” All of which to say, there’s never really been an intention to repeat the stories. For me what’s so exciting about this particular series is what “Rise” did is it re-entered the universe and yet it’s a new perspective. We already know the end of the story, we know it becomes “Planet of the Apes” not “Planet of the Apes and Humans.” We moved in that direction, specifically with Caesar’s journey. It was never, “How can we find a way to tell that story again but from Caesar’s perspective?” That’s not really what we’re doing. This one, having watched the fiveilogy…
Clark: You say that now, but one of these guys is gonna say…
Reeves: “You’re doing ‘Conquest of the…!'” No, it’s truly different than any of them. It’s trying to fulfill this idea of this arc with Caesar that started in “Rise.” His humble beginnings, rises to become a revolutionary, is challenged to become a leader in difficult times in “Dawn” and in this one he’s thrust into a world he never wanted. The test of his character makes him the Ape Moses. It’s a biblical epic. “Ben-Hur” is really the movie to compare it to.
CS: When the last one came out, you guys were talking in the press about how you don’t see this as just a trilogy, you see it as going on and on and on?
Reeves: For sure! This is not the end of the story, absolutely.
Clark: We see these stories through, “What is Caesar grappling with now? What are the circumstances for the apes to navigate their survival through Caesar?”
CS: In terms of Caesar and your relationship with him, in the originals, Roddy McDowell obviously played Cornelius and then he played Caesar. Could you see handing yourself the baton and taking on a new character after Caesar wears out his narrative usefulness?
Andy Serkis: I suppose that’s completely possible. It sounds like a good idea! Yeah, we could work towards that, maybe.
Clark: Andy is one of the best actors that Matt and I have ever worked with. Watching him do the things he can do with this character is a real pleasure and the audience picks up on that. He could do any character he wants! We are the leaders of the Andy Serkis fanclub, so should he want to play a human, should he want to play an orangutan… We have a woman named Karin Konoval who plays Maurice that’s incredible.
CS: Do you see the franchise as Caesar-centric or do you think it could go off and cover other characters?
Reeves: I think it totally could!
Serkis: There’s thousands of years before it becomes a planet of apes.
Reeves: And we know that Caesar’s apes aren’t like the apes in the ’68 film, so how do you get from there to there. Caesar’s not in that world, but yeah at some point the baton will be passed. It will always be about empathy and struggling with that point of view and struggling between the conflict between the ape and human arcs.
Clark: It’s been fascinating to watch these other characters start to develop their arcs in the story. I referenced Maurice. Watching Maurice from “Rise”… “Why cookie rocket?” is something we reference to each other all the time, we love that. Watching his relationship with Caesar is a big foundation of these movies.
Reeves: And in “War,” Maurice has his best story yet. It’s really cool the places that he gets pushed to. He’s sort of Caesar’s conscience and his emotional ally. We’re doing these giant battles and it’s an epic war story, but really — as in the best war stories — we were trying to tell the intimate stories against that. There are things that happen in this war and in the journey that Caesar is on. Take these old friends and put them in conflict with each other and that becomes really exciting as well.
CS: This is very much a tribute to the work you and the cast put into it, but when I saw “Dawn” for some reason the copy I had did not have subtitles on it. I watched the whole thing and I understood every moment.
Reeves: That is so cool! The number of times I’ve seen that on Twitter, they’re an hour in and only then did they realize there’s supposed to be subtitles. But they still got into the movie! The weird thing is on the Blu-ray you have to actually choose subtitles for the subtitles to go on. But it works!
CS: Is that still an aspect of it or is the language element evolving in this movie?
Serkis: Well that’s very interesting, because the level of detail all the different characters have gone into in terms of their evolution physically, emotionally and linguistically. That’s been a big part and a real challenge and an excitement. For the writing, for Matt and Mark to get together and get to grips with. We’re doing it now, we’re refining it in post. To cut a long story short, in “Dawn” Matt was very interested in seeing the birth of a language, ape vocalizations gradually forming into very basic prototype human speech, but at the same time using sign language and ape vocalizations combined. We found that all the different characters, depending on how they were effected by the ALZ drug, have different levels of evolution linguistically. On “Dawn” I was wearing a mouth guard that prevented me from articulating too strongly, and we decided that we wouldn’t do that in “War” and Caesar can put together a lot more complex thought processes and explain using human language. There is always that tipping point — which we’re finding now in post — where it just goes too far and becomes a little too casual. “Hey man, how are you doing?”
Reeves: It becomes a little too colloquial!
Serkis: Then we have to sort of pull it back. So it’s a very intricate and fascinating part of the process.
Reeves: And sign language continues!
Clark: The hope is that if you did happen to watch this with the sound off and without subtitles, that through the behavior and acting that emotion would still feel ape-like. That ape connection to ape behavior is something that Matt works on with the actors constantly. There is gonna be an evolution and an ability to articulate better, especially with Caesar, but still you want to get the ape inside of that.
Serkis: Physically too. It gets to a point where it is literally man in ape suit, and that looks not good.
Reeves: It’s true. Like what he’s talking about with the things that sound a little too casual, there’s got to be some obstacle to those human things so they can hold on also to this essence that is ape. If you abandon it too much the shot itself, though totally photoreal, does not look real. There are certain things where we go, (*snaps finger*) “Oh! Crossed the line! That doesn’t look real anymore.”
CS: It crosses into the Uncanny Valley.
Reeves: Yeah but it’s funny because I’ve spent years now doing these movies. By the time this one comes out I’ll have spent five years staring at these apes. The interesting thing that hit me not long ago that breaks the illusion is that if the behavior is too human — nothing wrong with what WETA is doing, the hair, the lighting looks photoreal — but if just the physicality is wrong it’s like Andy said: It looks like a guy in the best apes suit you’ve ever seen.
CS: Going off of that, do you see the series eventually going to a place where the differentiation between the apes and humans is truly blurred? Perhaps not like it was in the Charlton Heston movie, but much more than it is now?
Reeves: All those possibilities are there. Even now there’s a kind of co-existence even in the ape world with humans and all kinds of stuff that has begun, and where that goes… I think that there will always be an ape essence. I think that will be necessary, but I think that the lines would necessarily become more blurred. That’s interesting.
Clark: We know where this ends. We love watching them go through it. The “how,” as Matt likes to say, is the most important part. The more specificity and detail we can get into that evolution and really be engaged by it emotionally the better.
Reeves: Without giving anything away there are ape characters we meet in this one that are very surprising and I think their background and the way they act comes out in a way that makes them different from Caesar.
War for the Planet of the Apes opens nationwide on July 14, 2017.
