War For The Planet of the Apes

Andy Serkis’ Caesar has mainly had to go up against humankind so far in the new ‘Planet of the Apes’ films but Matt Reeves has revealed that the dynamic is going to shift in ‘War For the Planet of the Apes‘! There is a new character in the movie specially referred to as Bad Ape who is played by Steve Zahn, and he is going to set the tone for the future films. Bad Ape “is a former zoo chimpanzee who gained sentience and the power of voice in isolation from Caesar’s tribe” so is not part of their world.

In fact, we’ll be seeing Caesar on his way through the mountains to meet with Woody Harrelson’s Colonel Woody when he first meets Bad Ape. Zahn’s new character is hiding out in these mountains in isolation and this idea of more intelligent primates who are out there in the wild which will drive the franchise moving forward.

According to Reeves:

“In this story we see that the idea is that the world is revealed to be much larger than the apes ever imagined.”

“There are apes who grew up without the benefit of Caesar’s leadership, and they might not just be pockets of one or two, there might be actually colonies, and might that be where future conflicts come for Caesar’s apes? They have the benefit of the integrity that he’s instilled in them, so what’s going to happen when they encounter others who didn’t have that?”

This is slowly starting to set up the world which will be seen in the 1968 original release of ‘Planet of the Apes’ though the two franchises are extremely far apart at this time. In fact, without skipping generations, it is unlikely that we would see the films actually sync up:

“You realize that evolution — 5000 years of evolution — after the humans have destroyed themselves, have allowed the apes to take over the planet. That’s accelerated and changed dramatically through the ALZ-113 in Rise (the manmade virus that decimated humans), so they’ll never meet up, but what it does is it tells the end of the story in a way that is taking all of these stories and removing the question of ‘what happened?’ and instead focussing it on the ‘how?’ So this ends up getting to be a blockbuster that’s all about character and all about the sort of thematic, of us holding the mirror up to ourselves.”

That isn’t to say that we won’t see huge time jumps occur, but I wouldn’t count on it happening too quickly.

Is the idea of Ape v Ape what you’d like to see in the next installment of the movies? Do you want the future of the ‘Planet of the Apes’ films to keep a focus on Caesar or further watch future generations on how the Apes expand and humanity falls? Share your thoughts below!

The world will suffer the ‘War for the Planet of the Apes’ on July 14th, 2017!

Source: Yahoo UK