‘War for the Planet of the Apes’ backstory detailed, time jump confirmed
War for the Planet of the Apes details emerge, set two years later and the battle is well under way.
“This one is two years, so we’re in the battle,” director Matt Reeves told the New York Comic-Con audience, confirming another time jump between films, prompting this from producer Dylan Clark.
“We end on Caesar in Dawn in a very specific place. He’s just broken one of his main ape tendencies: “Ape shall not kill ape,” and he’s been told that a force from the North—a real proper army—is coming down to start a war, so when we pick up inWar, the war has begun, a war that Caesar did not start.”
Both Reeves and Clark detail the development process, refining the story: “What I thought in Rise that was so cool was that you thought you were seeing a human based movie, in which there were apes, which was sort of the Heston movie, right? It turns out that it’s a Caesar story, and the most human character in the story is an ape, played by this genius right here. The thing about it is that when I first got involved with Dawn—and there was a clock ticking—the outline they presented me with was not really totally ape-based. Caesar, of course, was in it, but it wasn’t totally his story, and the first thing I said was, ‘Guys, you earned the right. The amazing thing about Rise is that it’s an ape point of view film, and this one should be even moreso.'”
“…what was exciting to us was the idea that Caesar is the seminal in Ape history, he’s sort of like the ‘Ape Moses,’ and he starts in the first film sort of from humble beginnings, this very rejected sole that as Andy described it—it really moved me—was “He’s an ape and a human and also neither. That he has a foot in both worlds, but an outsider in both.” What I thought was exciting in Dawn was that you take him from this revolutionary who frees the apes from their bondage and then in Dawn, you have this one moment where they could be peace, and he was this unique character in that he had a foot in both those worlds. That’s the story we tried to tell in Dawn, but we also know from the ’68 film that it doesn’t become ‘Planet of the Humans and Apes,’ it becomes ‘Planet of the Apes,’ so that attempt at peace fails, and this film is very much about how Caesar’s challenge to become that mythic figure. The challenge in this story is more dramatic—and they’ve been dramatic in each of them—but this is the most dramatic Caesar story yet.”
Andy Serkis was also on hand and the fans got a real treat and inside take on the new film. Collider has a more detailed account from the panel, check it out HERE
