More sanguine is Malcolm (Jason Clarke), who spearheads a project to recover the city’s electricity by regaining control of the O’Shaughnessy Dam. That entails encroaching on the forested domain of the neighboring ape community, still ruled with a firm but hairy hand by Caesar with relations between man and ape already fragile, this violation throws fuel on the flames of civil unrest. Its few residents are led by Dreyfus (Gary Oldman), a former military man bent on revenge against the apes for the loss of his family to the virus. San Francisco - or the post-ape-ocalyptic remainder of it, at least - is once more the setting, brilliantly realized by production designer James Chinlund as a gangrenous wasteland of vegetation-swamped slumhouses, the city’s erstwhile landmarks glumly clothed in rust and moss. With all government functions suspended and nuclear power critically depleted, any remaining bands of survivors exist in spartan, unlit isolation if the flu doesn’t get to them first, the lack of basic resources will. It’s a slight red herring of an introduction, given that the virus is no longer the most immediate threat to man’s day-to-day existence. The action begins approximately a decade after “Rise” left off, with a pre-credits montage of global news reports filling in the subsequent drastic developments: The ALZ-113 virus (or simian flu) unleashed at the end of the prior film has wiped out most of the world’s human population, with a survival rate of less than one in 500. beast, and battle scenes to do Weta Digital godfather Peter Jackson proud. Instead, Reeves and returning writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (joined by “The Wolverine” scribe Mark Bomback) have taken a different tonal tack, fashioning the new installment as an out-and-out war drama, with surprising subdivisions in its central conflict of man vs. Credibility restored, then, it’d have been easy to get complacent, recycling the “Rise’s” most impressive setpieces and welding them to a hasty resuscitation of its movie-science narrative.
The sequel is set to be Wyatt’s next film, but no production start date has been announced.Following the robust performance of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” - which garnered warm reviews, more than $480 million worldwide and an Oscar nomination for its stunning effects work - “Cloverfield” director Reeves inherits the Pierre Boulle-originated franchise in considerably better condition than Wyatt did, considering the almighty whiff of Tim Burton’s 2001 “Planet of the Apes” remake. Whatever the case, I’m really looking forward to seeing what the crew comes up with for the follow-up.
SEQUEL TO RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES FULL
My guess is we’ll be seeing that apes begin to speak in this first sequel, but not developing full speech until the end of the film. would want to carefully work out exactly when speech enters the apes’ repertoire. It’s no secret that the apes eventually learn to talk (and we saw the beginnings of that with Caesar in Rise), but it makes sense that Wyatt and Co. In the end I think it was a good challenge for us.
SEQUEL TO RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES HOW TO
“We’re working on the sequel right now, to the prequel, and so the excitement is – I’m not gonna tell you, but – are they gonna talk or not? Part of the challenge was how to get across what was happening between the apes without words. Appearing on the Q&A podcast with Jeff Goldsmith (via Bleeding Cool), Jaffa and Silver said one of the key questions they’ve had to confront is whether or not the apes will talk in the sequel: Wyatt himself ruminated on the possibility of picking up eight years after Rise and moving the apes into human environments. It’s already been confirmed that Fox is planning not one, but multiple sequels to Rise (which is a very good thing if Wyatt stays involved), but how far the story would be advancing for the next film has been one of the primary questions.