James Franco Interview For ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’

‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ combines fantastic storytelling with the next leap in Visual Effects for an emotional and action-packed motion picture experience unlike any other. Man’s arrogance sets off a chain of events that leads to intelligence in apes and a challenge to our place as the dominant species on the planet. Caesar, the first intelligent ape, is betrayed by humans and rises up to lead his species’ spectacular race to freedom and the ultimate showdown with Man. In Caesar, WETA – the Oscar-winning visual effects team behind Avatar – have created a CGI ape that delivers a dramatic performance of unprecedented emotion and intelligence.

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, David Oyelowo, Brian Cox and Andy Serkis. Check out what James Franco had to say about the film below.

Can you tell us a little bit about your character and the ethical dilemmas he faces in the film?

James Franco: My character is a man named Will Rodman, he’s a scientist who’s looking for a cure to Alzheimer’s. He’s very set on finding this cure – partly because he has a personal stake in this discovery, because his father has Alzheimer’s. Ethically he does some questionable things. He brings his work home. Because he is emotionally wrapped up in this search for a cure he does a couple things that are a little rash. I guess it goes back to the old rule that a surgeon shouldn’t operate on a family member because you are emotionally wrapped up in the out come. My character Will does get wrapped up emotionally with his Fathers recovery so he does a couple ethically questionable things.

Caesar and Will’s relationship has an interesting arc and dynamic.

James Franco: Yeah. When Caesar comes to live with Will, at first it’s like a Kramer vs Kramer kind of situation – where a young man is forced into a parental role, not knowing anything about being a parent. But in addition to that, because Caesar is so smart, Will is also examining him as an example of the drug in action. So he’s both raising Caesar as his son and a positive example of the drugs effects. As the movie progresses I think the Father/Son relationship takes over, Will becomes even more humane and less of a scientist, he starts to care a lot more about Caesar than he does of his drug.

What was it like working with Andy Serkis as Caesar?

James Franco: Working with Andy Serkis was an amazing experience, it was one of the reasons I signed on to do this film. I do like new kinds of acting experiences. Because I heard so much, and watched so many interviews of behind-the-scenes videos of the performance capture process on the Lord of the Rings films, King Kong, Avatar, I wanted to try it and see what it’s like. I was overjoyed that I got to do it with Andy Serkis – who is the master of this kind of work. In the end it felt just like acting opposite a normal actor. It’s just that there is one more step. Andy and I could act opposite each other and generate these scenes that were emotionally grounded and connected. Then there’s that next step where the computer graphics guys come in and paint over Andy’s performance, but underneath it’s still Andy’s very grounded, very real, and very emotional performance. It was a great thing to be apart of.

Andy Serkis has created this new kind of performance in a way. He fell into it, he was cast as Gollum just because of his voice, then I guess Peter Jackson realized what a great physical performance he can give, he should try to capture that in some way. Andy kind of fell into this performance capture world, he’s really pioneered it. While we were acting he was not in a Ape suit, he was in this grey pyjamas looking thing with sensors all over his body, and dots on his face that will help the effects team read his expressions on the computer – so everything Andy was doing was captured. From the first scene we had together it was actually easy, because Andy is so good at the behaviour, he’s so connected to what he’s doing and the other actors, he lets my imagination takeover so that I can really treat him as though he’s a Chimpanzee.

Do you have a particular favourite scene or sequence?

James Franco: I think the sequence on the Golden Gate Bridge is incredible. One of the images that stands out the most from the original film was when the Ape appears on Horseback. This film does its own version of that, it was an incredibly striking image. I thought that was great, it was a great development of a very impressive image from the original.