“It’s a war story within Caesar’s heart,” director Matt Reeves said about the narrative of the upcoming “War For The Planet Of The Apes” while sitting inside New York’s Walter Reade theater during yesterday’s 20th Century Fox 2017 movie preview. “And one of the central questions is, will Caesar lose his empathy?” Press were encouraged to share their thoughts over social media, but Reeves, still working with unfinished footage said, “By the way, that thing you said about the tweeting opinions? That’s not a good idea. That’s a bad idea,” he joked nervously.
READ MORE: The Battle Begins In First Trailer For ‘War For The Planet Of The Apes’
Indeed, the first words he uttered as he hit the stage were, “This is horrifying.” Showing unfinished footage to anyone outside the process is a risk, especially for a movie like “War For The Planet Of The Apes,” a special-effects-driven tentpole that hinges completely on its motion capture performances and incredibly photo-real CGI. But it’s a gamble that paid off for Reeves and Fox as “War For The Planet Of The Apes,” unfinished or otherwise, looked tremendous, and went over big with the audience, with the material looking like a direct continuation of the intense and morally gray drama that brewed within “Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes.”
Always the bridge between human and apes, Reeves says the lead ape wrestles with his darker instincts in this film. “Caesar [Andy Serkis] finds himself pushed into an extreme place, and so the story is not just a story about the war between humans and apes,” Reeves explained. “Caesar starts to lose his empathy. He starts to, in a way, become Koba [Toby Kebbell, the villain from the last movie]. And, so, what ends up happening is, things get so bad for the apes, that Caesar decides he’s going to go and find the [human] Colonel [Woody Harrelson]. The Colonel and his men respond with true cruelty. He’s really, really brutal.”
Reeves warned press what they were about to see was, in parts, unfinished, and in some instances, completely unfinished. But by rolling back the curtain of his mo-cap magic, Reeves impressed even further, awing the audience with side-by-side footage of mo-cap-suited actors in one frame and fully rendered, photorealistic apes in another. To see how these performances could be shot, captured and rendered to look so real, dimensional and full of tactile soul was astonishing.
“War For The Planet Of The Apes” isn’t kidding about its title. This is a war movie and one of the first images teased in the approximately 20 minutes of footage press was shown harkened back to Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.” The foreboding opening shot of ‘War’ details a troop of soldiers quietly moving their way up a hill in the deep redwood forests of California. As they silently crawled their way upwards, we see “born to kill”-like slogans — “ape killer,” “endangered species,” “Bedtime for Bonzo” (a reference to the 1951, ape-featuring comedy) — scrawled in chalk on their helmets to essentially boast their status as primate killers.
The soldiers press on in a sneak attack at an ape stronghold that soon becomes an all-out bloody assault full of hundreds of casualties. Largely unfinished on an effects level, this immense battle sequence was nevertheless deftly shot and choreographed; no lack of finished VFX detracted from communicating what a punishing assault this is, one that takes the lives of many on both sides. Perhaps most intriguing, this elaborate assault sequence also features rogue apes working with the humans as scouts — climbing up trees and acting as spotters for the soldiers. It appears that there are defectors everywhere, but to what gain or end is unknown.
As Reeves explained, as ‘War’ picks up from ‘Dawn’, the movie fast forwards two years into a full scale war that is still brewing. Humans are rallying and rather than fighting them on their own turf in the burned down cities, the apes have retreated to fight the war on home advantage in the woods. But what initially is a war movie soon morphs into a different genre hinged on revenge.
“Caesar goes on this mythic, almost ‘Apocalypse Now‘-like journey where he’s gonna go up the river. But in our case, he’s going to go up into the Sierras. And it’s snowing,” Reeves said. “So, the movie starts, and it’s a straight ahead war movie, but when Caesar decides he’s going to go on personal vendetta against the Colonel, it becomes almost like a western. Because he’s going to go on his own, and he feels like it’s too dangerous for the apes. [His ape companions] basically see that as a suicide mission.”
While not name checked by Reeves specifically, the latest ‘Planet Of The Apes’ movies appears to be indebted to same movies that Gareth Edwards recently cited as influences on “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” including “Saving Private Ryan,” “Black Hawk Down,” the aforementioned Francis Ford Coppola movie and more.
But as much as Fox showcased action, two additional scenes focused much more on the hearts and souls of the characters.
“The movie is filled with action and all kinds of spectacle,” Reeves said. “But it’s [these scenes] to me that is the most exciting to do— in the forefront of any good war movie is the drama of the interpersonal relationships. And the scenes that we’re showing are really about the characters we’re excited about.”