Gary Oldman Reveals Major Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Details

Warning: Potential spoilers for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Details have been light on 20th Century Fox’s upcoming Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. What little we did know is that it picks up a decade after 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes and once again features enhanced apes at odds against people. In a recent interview with MTV, however, Gary Oldman dropped some new details about both his character and the plot of the film which you can check out below. Once again, potential spoiler warning.

“He’s the sort of designated leader if you will of this community of those that were lucky enough to survive the simian flu, the disease, and then the ensuing social uprising from it….So they’re sort of survivors, and he was a police officer, so he’s more of the kind of elected leader of this (group). And they need power and there’s a power station and some of my people go out to see if it’s operational, if it’s still out there, and then they discover that there’s a whole community of apes living there. We believed they were all completely fire-bombed and wiped out…He’s experienced a great loss, personally, and there’s only one answer for him and that’s to wipe them out. I see him as a sort of the hero of the piece.”

Oldman also revealed that director Matt Reeves wanted to further explore the human dynamic of the film before bringing the focus fully to the apes, which we could see in the already planned follow-up to “Dawn.”

“Matt Reeves was more interested in not just keeping the franchise alive but he wanted to make it more of a human story, he wanted to explore what had happened and keep it more focused to the human side of it before the story becomes the ‘Planet of the Apes’ as we know it from the first one, from the original.”

In Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, a growing nation of genetically evolved apes led by Caesar is threatened by a band of human survivors of the devastating virus unleashed a decade earlier. They reach a fragile peace, but it proves short-lived, as both sides are brought to the brink of a war that will determine who will emerge as Earth’s dominant species.

Also starring Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Enrique Murciano, Kirk Acevedo and Judy Greer, the film is set to be released July 11.