WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES
WAR FoR THe pLAneT oF THe ApeS i Matt Reeves channels David Lean for the latest entry in the simian saga.
On-set with those diva apes: “Anyone needs me, I’ll be on my tyre swing!”
Ooh yeah, I’d love a cup of tea,” says Andy Serkis, visibly shivering as he accepts a Styrofoam cup. “Welcome to sunny Vancouver!” On a brass monkey-cold October afternoon, the actor’s suffering for his art, standing in a Canadian forest as his skintight suit soaks up the rain that’s bucketing down – less Weta, more wetter. “I think we’re looking into rethinking the undergarments,” Serkis confides, as the roof of the press tent sags under the weight of pooling water.
The performance-capture expert is otherwise quite happy with his lot. War For The Planet Of The Apes marks his third outing as Caesar, the superintelligent chimp who grew up among humans but rose to lead an ape
community after a virus devastated mankind. Now the character’s getting on a bit – and is wracked with guilt after the events of 2014’s Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, in which he terminated rebel ape Koba.
“What he carries with him throughout the story is that Koba was a brother, in a sense,” Serkis explains. “He would be the equivalent of mid-fifties now, in ape years, and the strain of being leader has taken its toll. He’s very grave and furrow-browed; he’s been beaten down. He’s always tried to keep the peace, but it’s getting more difficult, and as events unfold he has a radical shift of thinking, because he’s caught up with his own emotions.”
Ah, yes – that titular war. As director Matt Reeves explains, a lot has
transpired since the credits rolled on the previous instalment.
“There was a distress call that the colonists sent out when Koba attacked the colony in San Francisco,” Reeves explains, “And the call was received by a military base in the north where all that’s left of the US military had gathered. So they send down a hardened battalion, led by a former special ops colonel.”
The bloody battle that opens the film follows. Woody Harrelson plays the Colonel, who – in a fascinating twist – now has some of the “traitor apes” that backed Koba’s rebellion working for him. By all accounts he’s an utterly ruthless character – but one that Reeves was keen not to paint as black and white.
“It was my desire that we never villain-ise him,” the director says. “Without an understanding of where he’s coming from he seems exceptionally cruel. Then when you come to understand why he’s doing what he’s doing, you realise it’s about survival itself, and what would you do? You’d like to think you wouldn’t do those things, yet the provocative questions are asked.”
A face-to-face confrontation between chimp and soldier is inevitable, and eventually it’s Caesar who takes the initiative.
“Caesar decides that he’s going to go after the Colonel personally,” Reeves explains. “He’s followed by his closest confidantes, and they’re making this kind of mythic journey to try and find the Colonel. It’s almost like an Apocalypse Now journey up the river – but we’re not going up the river, we’re moving from the Muir Woods into the snowy Sierras.”
That journey brings in the kind of widescreen vistas we’ve not witnessed in these films before, opening out the franchise to lend it a mythic dimension.
“I wanted it to be like an epic,” Reeves explains. “Almost like a David Lean movie, or Sergio Leone. I wanted to see these apes making this mythic journey against grand landscapes. From the beginning of my involvement, what I’ve found exciting is this collision of the classical with cutting-edge technology; telling epic, mythic stories and doing it with the most advanced visual effects technology – but not getting caught up in the idea of what you can do in the CG world. So I tried to do it as if we were shooting an old Lean film: do it in a classicist way, yet use the technology in service of it. Connecting those two things, so that it feels mythic and at the same time is grounded in something very strange, which is the fact that you’re identifying emotionally with these CG characters.”
As well as drawing inspiration from the likes of Lean and Leone, Reeves and co-writer Mark Bomback also sat down, early on, and watched a battalion of classic war movies.
“With the ones we liked the most, it was always about the struggle within the characters,” Reeves notes. “We wanted to take Caesar and put him to his greatest test yet. The great thing about Andy is he’s ‘all in’ – when it comes to going through great personal agony, Andy goes there. So I really wanted to tell a story that would take advantage of that. This is the most searing performance from Andy yet, and the test is very mythic and dramatic.”
Barring unexpected box-office disaster, the Apes franchise will surely continue – but is it sayonara for Caesar? Serkis is not giving anything away, though as he looks back, he does strike a faintly valedictory note.
“I’ve played him all the way through from an infant, and lived this accelerated life,” the actor says, “and I’ve learnt from him. Caesar has such a lot of dignity and control, and there’s a real goodness about the character. His approach is very fair and non-judgemental, and I think it’s good to be reminded about that. It’s been an amazing character to play – I’ve never played a character right through his life. It’s a bit like Boyhood, in a way, for me – Apehood!”
‘i Wanted it to be like an epiC – almost like a david lean movie, or sergio leone’ Matt Reeves