War rages in new ‘Planet of the Apes’
Latest addition to franchise filled with conflict, challenges
The battle is on between evolved simians and their human foes in the sci-fi film War for the Planet of the Apes, with a confrontation looming between each force’s charismatic leader.
On one side is Caesar, the revolutionary alpha ape with enhanced intelligence again played through motion-capture performance by Andy Serkis. His opponent: the vicious Colonel (Woody Harrelson), a man determined to hunt down Caesar and deliver a fatal blow to enemy morale.
“Caesar, who has had a love for human beings, is now tested beyond measure,” Serkis says about
War (in theaters July 14), the third film in the rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise based on the movie series from the 1960s and ’70s. “The losses of the apes on his side drive him to a really dark place.”
The new movie picks up two years after the end of 2014’s Dawn of the
Planet of the Apes, in which Caesar had just killed his traitorous human-hating lieutenant Koba (Toby Kebbell). The apes have retreated into the Muir Woods near San Francisco and are trying to hold off an army.
There have been massive human casualties as well, but Caesar’s followers have suffered incredibly at the hands of this merciless Colonel and his military, says producer Dylan Clark. So Caesar goes on “this quest of revenge to right things — the victor gets the planet.”
Caesar is also carrying huge guilt from Koba’s death and begins to understand the human oppression and brutality he faced. “He doesn’t know anymore where his loyalties lie,” Serkis says. “He’s in a very deeply conflicted period of his life.”
Brandishing a shaved head and wild eyes, Harrelson’s Colonel emerges as the main War villain, though he’s a product of an extreme world that yearns to go back to its pre-ape days.
The Colonel is willing to go to great lengths “to create a world where things can be gentle again,” says returning Dawn director Matt Reeves. “But the journey he takes you on is chilling.”
He and Caesar ultimately face off, yet “there’s also bizarrely a kind of respect and understanding from both sides,” Serkis adds. “It’s understanding the condition of the other person, what they’re having to suffer through and what they’re trying to protect.”
As Caesar, there were emotional levels “I had to get to that connotes insanity,” Serkis says.
He also faced new challenges performing in his Lycra mo-cap suit in the snow: “We had wetsuits on underneath, but the night shoots were brutal. You would literally have to run up and down a hill to keep your body functioning.”
But the suffering is a testament to how much Serkis loves the
Apes films. “They’re about something important: The metaphor, the allegory, the story, the characters. It is a very rare and extraordinary situation you don’t get that often.”