Director Rupert Wyatt Interview For ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’

An origin story in the true sense of the word, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ is set in present day San Francisco. The film is a reality-based cautionary tale – a science fiction/science-fact blend where mankind’s hubris leads to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy. Oscar(R)-winning visual effects house WETA Digital -employing certain of the groundbreaking technologies developed for ‘Avatar’ – will render, for the first time ever in the film series, photo-realistic apes rather than costumed actors.

Directed by Rupert Wyatt, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ arrives in cinemas August 5th in the US and August 11th in the UK. The film stars the likes of James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Tom Felton, Tyler Labine, Brian Cox and Andy Serkis. Check out what Wyatt had to say about the film below.

How difficult is it to adapt the prequel to the classics?

Rupert Wyatt: It’s always a challenge. It’s a challenge to make any film, certainly, and it’s a challenge to make a film of this ambition. It’s never, from my point of view as a director coming onto the film, it’s never my intention to be a slave to the franchise as it were. The writers presented us with the script that is very, very respectful and very, very…..in a way subtly kind of acknowledging the mythology. But it’s very much an origin story in the real sense of the word and ironically so, bearing in mind we’re talking about an origin of the species here. So that in itself sets it apart from other films in the franchise, and it’s a real first in that respect. And it’s set in the modern day, doesn’t deal with humanoid apes, it deals with apes that are of our world, and so we sort of set out to tell that first and foremost. The very fact we’re laying the groundwork for ‘The Planet of the Apes’ in a way is just, I guess, the icing on the cake as it were.

We’ve got a lot of characters in our film that are apes. We’ve got a gorilla, his name is Buck, and we have an orangutan named Maurice who’s from the circus. These are really fully formed, very resonant sort of main characters of the movie of a real scale which is pretty unusual because they’re animals. But at the same time the way we approached it and the way Andy and I talked about it, and the other actors, we thought, “what if 3,000 years from now there is a civilization where the alpha of that world are apes? They will look back on these characters and they will think of them as the heroes of the day. They will build statues to Buck.“ And that’s the way we wanted to tell this story, very much a Bible story or a story like any great myth with real broad resonance, I guess.

Caesar really drives the story.

Rupert Wyatt: Yes. It’s about an outsider. A chimpanzee that grows up in our world. This is a world where in many ways we’re going to hell in a hand basket, this about our civilization reaching a point of no return. Within that civilization there is this outsider, this individual, who sees the world what it can be, sees the world in Technicolor, sees what we as a species are capable of, all the positive things we can do – art, reason, good judgement, all of those things that he witnesses at a very young age. And then he begins to see the dark side, which is what we are also capable of – oppression, bigotry, the ostracisation of those that we don’t trust and those that we don’t understand. That really harks back to the original stories, the original mythology of ‘The Planet of the Apes.’

As a character, how does Caesar evolve?

Rupert Wyatt: Well, his surrogate father is a scientist, he’s a vivisectionist, he’s a man who’s using live apes as part of his research to find a certain cure. And without giving too much away, Caesar’s sort of the product of that in many ways. And so he’s unlike other chimpanzees, in terms of the fact that first of all from a practical point of view and a physical point of view, he grows up in a human environment. Now, that’s obviously not unique; there are other chimpanzees who have done that. The documentary that’s out now, Project Nim, is a good example of that. But in it’s own way, he’s a very interesting experiment as to how does the chimpanzee develop human traits and human characteristics if he’s surrounded by humans as he grows up, and at what stage does he become more human than ape?

Caesar has an intelligence. He’s inherited the genes of the mother and he has an intelligence far evolved from other apes, so he’s always learning. He’s always evolving, but fundamentally he starts to believe in himself as a human being. That’s how he perceives himself even though he’s in the body of an ape. And that’s what ultimately is his undoing because that’s what sets him apart from his other ape brethren. And then, obviously, for humans he’s a freak, so he’s neither here nor there. That’s kind of where the revolution is born. It’s the idea of this Frankenstein-esque creature sort of ending up in a place where he’s shunned by our society and he’s shunned also by his own kind. And therefore certain decisions that he has to make are what set him on the path to kind of leading this sort of Che Guevara-like revolution.

What do you think makes this film different to the other ‘The Planet of the Apes’ films?

Rupert Wyatt: We are a real world story. We’re a story that is told in the here and now – it’s contemporary. Our approach has been always to make it as plausible as possible. I think if you look at the original Planet of the Apes, that iconic moment when you see an ape on horseback for the first time – we as a species watch that and think…..there’s something inside of us, at the base, something very animalistic that actually turns our stomach, it’s very interesting what that is. We want to get to that same place with this story. I think the way to do it is to make the audience believe.

What was it like having Andy Serkis play Caesar?

Andy Serkis: Andy’s Charlie Chaplin, he’s one of the few performers I think around – and this is testament to the reason why I think he’s so desired in terms of motion capture technology – he’s one of those actors that has embraced the technology because he understands the potential of what it can achieve. I think some actors are quite intimidated by it because they think it’s separating their performance from the actual reality of the film. He’s one of those actors that really understands that every nuance he gives on camera, not only our camera but also with the motion capture camera, is conveyed onto the screen. He’s a mime artists as a result of that, just fantastic.