20th Century Fox and director Matt Reeves revealed the first trailer for War for the Planet of Apes today, the third film in the rebooted series starring Andy Serkis as Caesar, leader of the apes. As a lifelong Apes fanatic, I was thrilled to sit down with Reeves this week to break down the details of the trailer beat by beat.
Watch our War for the Planet of the Apes trailer commentary with Reeves above, or read on for his full unedited quotes about the plot of the film, what was going on behind the scenes, and much more…
(And check out our full report from the set of War here.)
The humans hunt for Caesar in War for the Planet of the Apes.
"Caesar has been fighting, as we begin the story, for two years just trying to survive a war that he never wanted. And he and the apes retreated from the city into the woods and they are finding a way to survive there as he leads the war, from the apes’ perspective, from a hidden command base. The humans have been searching for Caesar. He's taken on almost legendary status because somehow -- though the army is armed with all kinds of weaponry from the armory, the apes of course only have scavenged weapons, they have weapons that they've made -- yet they're surviving in the woods and part of that is because of Caesar's intelligent command. And they believe that if they could find him, the apes would fall."
Evoking the end of the original Planet of the Apes
"In the opening of the trailer, this first shot was shot on Tofino -- beautiful location on Vancouver Island -- and of course it's evocative of the beach at the end of the original Planet of the Apes, but it's in quite a different context here because it's a war story. As the violence escalates, it becomes more and more personal for Caesar because he sees his apes being exterminated and he decides that he is going to go after Woody Harrelson, the Colonel himself, and he sets off on a kind of mythic journey. And his partners, his closest sort of allies -- Maurice the orangutan and Rocket and Luca -- they don't want him to go because they think that could be a suicide mission.
"They set off as a posse to go find the Colonel and as they make their way on that journey, the world gets bigger and bigger. They make their way from the Muir Woods, they move along the coast of California, which is what this is meant to be though we shot it in Vancouver. They cross terrain into the Sierras. One of the things that they discover along the way, they think they found a place where the humans might be. They're looking for the human camp which is always moving and they're looking for Woody Harrelson. Instead, they find this deserter and he pulls a gun on them and Caesar, in way we've never seen before, just kills him. And it's a haunting scene because you realize that Caesar has lost all empathy for humans.
"But very shortly after that, inside the structure that's right there, they hear more noises and they go in and find this girl. And Maurice the orangutan is struck because she can't seem to speak. And Caesar is like, well, we have to go. And she's like -- I say she because she is Karin [Konoval], who plays Maurice -- but of course Maurice is a male ape. He says, well, she won't make it out here alone, the girl. And we have to take her. And Caesar ends up not really so much agreeing but not stopping Maurice. What you're seeing here on the beach is that very unlikely posse. Here they are on this giant war revenge mission and they have this little girl hugging the back of an orangutan and Caesar is looking at Maurice, like, what are you doing to me?"
Maurice and the girl
“One of the things that was thrilling for me on Dawn was to see [Karin] interact with Kodi Smit-McPhee. Their few interactions were some of the best scenes in the film, because behaviorally, the way that she reacts to Kodi and the way he related to her was so beautiful. [Co-writer] Mark Bomback and I, when we were setting out to write the new story, we knew we really wanted to tap into that vein because that was one of the really emotional and almost mystical places -- this connection between humans and apes that the films could explore. And this is an even larger part of this story. Amiah Miller, who plays the girl, she's a critical part of the story. She's part of a giant mystery but she's part of the emotional core. In the film, it's not just a war between humans and apes. It's a war within Caesar's heart for his own sense of humanity, for lack of a better term. It's really about him losing empathy. As he's driven to a darker and darker place, the presence of this little girl keeps that flicker of humanity somewhere alive in the back of his heart. And so she's a very, very important part of the story.
“One of the things that Maurice discovers when they find this girl is that she can't speak. And he doesn't know what that means. She not only is this part of the story that keeps Caesar's empathy alive, she's also part of a grand mystery that starts to unfold. Because as they're going on this revenge mission, they start finding clues to things that are going on with the humans that are enormous, and also they find clues as we get deeper into the film.
“Caesar, his posse, and the girl discover what they initially think is a human deserter but it's actually another ape who is hiding. A little hermit ape played by Steve Zahn. He takes on the name Bad Ape. He is evidence of a larger world of apes because he's not one of them. He can speak. Basically what has happened is as the virus spread among the humans, it actually spread to other apes. Here is an ape from the Sierra Zoo who has learned how to speak. Caesar is stunned because this implies that there are apes out there all over the world that might be gaining intelligence. And yet they weren't raised as part of his community and so weren't instilled with Caesar's values, and so the implications are enormous. And Bad Ape as he calls himself -- and the reason he calls himself Bad Ape is because he was kept in a zoo and as he suddenly gained the ability to understand and to be able to speak, he listened to the humans to learn and they were constantly chiding him and saying ‘bad ape’ -- he's a really funny but heartbreaking character as Steve plays him. He refers to himself as Bad Ape because that's what his captors referred to him as.”
Caesar faces human... and ape enemies.
“As the film begins, we're in the Muir Woods. We actually start the film from the human point of view and we're moving up the mountain through the woods looking for Caesar, who is rumored to be commanding the war from some hidden command base. And they spot an ape trench … and they basically set out a giant attack.
“We discover that there's a small group of apes who are working alongside the humans. They are turncoats. It's a small number but they've taken on these names from the humans that are very demeaning. They refer to them as the Kong, like King Kong and Donkey Kong, and in fact, the apes that are with them, they bring along with them because they can reveal ape strategy -- might help to give an advantage -- but also because they're like pack mules. And from Donkey Kong, they call them in short, Donkeys. It's a very demeaning term.”
Caesar has inherited a war he did not want thanks to Koba.
“Basically because it's a war movie it's very much about survival and what you would do to survive. It's revealed at the end of that scene there's Gabriel Chavarria, who's a wonderful young actor who is one of the young soldiers. He's captured at the end of this battle and he faces down Caesar and it's revealed to him that the reason these apes -- the small band of apes on the human side -- is because they were the followers of Koba [from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes], and they couldn't imagine that Caesar would ever allow them back into the fold. Just in order to survive, they're willing to prostrate themselves and it's a pretty cool part of the story.
“Koba's presence is huge in the film. He really haunts Caesar. In Dawn … Caesar was the bridge between humans and apes. He was both in a way because he was raised by humans but also clearly an ape. But he was also neither because he never quite fit in with either community. But he was the bridge that could have led to peace. Koba was treated so horrendously by humans that he could never find any empathy for them. Caesar, as this story begins, is haunted by the fact that this war began and he feels like it [his] blindspot in not being able to anticipate exactly how darkly Koba felt about humans, and that if he had done that, that maybe this war could have been avoided. He really feels guilty. As the story continues, he starts to understand -- because the war is so dark and seeing the apes take so many losses and all of the tragedies that the apes go through -- he starts to lose his empathy for humans and in a way starts to become Koba. So Caesar's arc starts to become Koba's arc. … You're seeing in real time as Caesar loses any ability to empathize with humans and starts to hate them. And so Koba haunts him and we have some presence of Koba actually in this film in many ways, like these turncoats and in these glimpses of him that Caesar has because the war is not between humans and apes alone, but it's also within Caesar's heart. It's about [whether he can] hold onto any sense of his empathy and his humanity, for lack of a better term.”
Continues
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