Monkey Business

The saga of the apes continues in War for the Planet of the Apes, with Caesar taking centrestage again

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After all, Reeves had been in this position before, having crafted the story of the previous film with writer Mark Bomback. In Dawn, Caesar faced challenges from within and without, as his ape community, thriving in Muir Woods outside San Francisco, encountered the desperate human survivors of the Simian Flu, who were trying to rebuild their devastated society. Tempers flared, Caesar misjudged how deep hatred of humans burned in the heart of one of his most trusted lieutenants, Koba, a badly scarred former test subject who eventually forced Caesar to violate the cardinal sin of Ape society – “ape not kill ape” – and the war between humans and Apes was sparked, a result that was as tragic as it was inevitable.

Audiences responded to the emotional journey and Dawn was a huge success. After taking only a month offto recharge, Reeves and Bomback started designing the next chapter in Caesar’s mythic story. After asking for and receiving substantial time to work out the next film, the co-writers indulged in what many a screenwriter might think of as a fantasy scenario: “We got a theatre at Fox and a big part of our work was, we’d spend part of the day talking and then spend another part of the day watching movies. And we watched The Bridge On The River Kwai, we watched Apocalypse Now, we watched The Outlaw Josey Wales, we watched Unforgiven, we watched all the Planet Of The Apes movies, we watched The Empire Strikes Back,” Reeves explains. “It was incredibly fun but it was also very rejuvenating. And we were searching for what this war movie should feel like. Because the one thing that was clear was that’s what the movie was going to be, that was what the apes were on the precipice of at the end of Dawn – war.”