Are you guys ready for war?
For the Planet of the Apes?
Even if you're not, you did click on this video, which I assume means
you're at least ready for some things about Planet of the Apes, which we have.
Here are seven more things you didn't know about Planet of the Apes, probably.
- (Sound) Go!
- It's undeniable that the special effects in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes improved
on the effects we saw in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
As technology continues to improve, so
does CGI and motion-capture-based animation.
In fact, the technology improved so
much that when Caesar is watching this old footage, they had to fake the ape.
The footage does use Andy Serkis' and James Franco's original performances from
a scene that wasn't used in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
But by the time they were making Dawn, they developed better technology, and
they rebuilt all of the apes.
If they'd used the original ape from Rise, it wouldn't have looked as good.
And would've been inconsistent with the apes in Dawn,
so they had to re-render the whole thing.
And that's just one of many,
several, really a lot of do-overs that went down when making this film.
Hot damn!
My segue game is bananas.
Next thing.
(Noise) Remember this shot with Koba taking over the tank?
It's just one long shot with a series of vignettes that build a pretty boss
sequence.
What you didn't know is, this one shot went through well over 1,000 drafts at
Weta Digital before they got it to the version that we see in the final film.
There were so many man hours of visual effects and
animations going into the shot, it took nine months to complete it.
Once director Matt Reeves finally approved of the shot, the guys at Weta popped
a bottle of champagne to celebrate finally being done with it.
Of course, they're much more well-natured than I am.
I would have gone ape (Bleep) by the time he asked for draft 697.
Moving on.
(Sound) Here's another major revision you probably didn't know about.
As we mentioned, the apes look a bit different from Rise to Dawn,
due to innovations in technology.
And we're not just talking about Caesar.
Koba also looks pretty different in the two films.
But you may not have known that it's because there's a different guy playing
him in the two films.
In Rise, Koba was played by Christopher Gordon, who's primarily a stunt performer.
But with Koba having a much bigger role in Dawn, they recast, and
Toby Kebbell took over the role.
You know that guy from that episode of Black Mirror?
Or you may also remember him from Kong: Skull Island.
Although you probably didn't realize that he didn't only play Chapman in
Skull Island, he also played Kong, boom.
Bonus thing you didn't know, except it's a bit more complicated than that,
which brings us to our next thing.
(Sound) Okay, okay, so
Toby Kebbell does have street cred in the mo-cap ape game after playing Koba.
But he learned it all from Terry Notary,
the movement choreographer on the recent Apes films and the guy who plays Rocket.
Notary literally took all of the mo-cap performers in Rise, Dawn, and
War to ape school to teach them all how to do ape stuff.
Interestingly enough, Toby Kebbell and
Terry Notary both played Kong in Skull Island.
Kebbell provided facial references,
while Notary did most of the heavy lifting on the physical performance.
In another Planet of the Apes-King Kong crossover coincidence,
Andy Serkis also played Kong, but he did it in Peter Jackson's King Kong from 2005.
Because there's a handful of you out there who are already typing a complaint right
now about how this thing is more about King Kong than it is about Planet
of the Apes, here's a quick bonus thing.
Terry Notary, Andy Serkis, and Karin Konoval, who played Maurice,
are actually some of the only motion capture performers to reprise
their roles from Rise of the Planet of the Apes in the prequel's sequel.
We already covered the Koba switcheroo, but stunt performer Devyn Dalton, who
played Cornelia, was replaced with Judy Greer in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
And, quick bonus on a bonus,
Devyn Dalton also did some mo cap work on Rise as Caesar.
She would often double for Andy Serkis since Serkis is 5'8" and
Caesar is only supposed to be 5'3".
The animators needed a smaller person to use as a reference and
that's where Devyn came in, until she was fired and replaced.
(Cough) Moving on.
(Sound) - Home.
Come on, we're really going.
- Let's talk about a pivotal moment in Rise.
This moment when Caesar decides to stay in the ape jail rather than go home.
Well, this moment really only works as well as it does because of the shot of
the leash.
Which cements the symbol of him going back to being a pet if he goes with Rodman
rather than an ape with free will.
And more importantly an ape with a chance at freedom.
In a shocking turn of events,
the insert shot of the leash came at the suggestion of a studio exec.
That's right, the suits that we lambast on this show for
having relentlessly terrible notes, finally got one.
Good on you, Fox executive whose name name we could never possibly know, good on you.
(Sound) - For yesterday.
- Maurice is a fan favorite in the recent Apes films.
And most of the credit for
that goes to Karin Konoval who plays him, and she really commits to the role.
She spends time with orangutans to observe their mannerisms and
paints with them and junk.
The point is, she puts in the research and it shows.
Rises's director, Rupert Wyatt, was so
impressed with her as an actress that he also put her in the film as a human.
That's her, right there, giving James Franco a hard time.
- 90 days, sir, be thankful you're talking about court dates.
You're lucky they didn't put that animal down.
- And just when I thought I couldn't love Maurice any more.
Okay, last thing.
(Sound) We've talked a good deal about all the fancy shmancy
special effects in Rise and Dawn.
But this, this fire right here, this is them literally burning their set down.
Usually, with a fire of this scale,
a production would just do the fire as a visual effect in post.
But they went for the real thing and
straight up set their production designer's hard work ablaze.
Obviously, this created a lot of safety issues during the shoot, and
it's also the type of thing you only get one shot at doing.
But they pulled it off, and Beavis would certainly approve.
- (Laugh) Fire.
- By now, you are hopefully seven or more things smarter about Planet of the Apes.
Thanks for watching, and subscribe to Cinefix for more true-ish things about
movies and sometimes ape (Bleep) right here on Things You Didn't Know.
(Sound)