Nature and its elements are key to “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.” The fourth installment in the modern reboot of the classic 1968 film leaves the events of 2017’s “War for the Planet of the Apes” far, far behind. The dystopian world it depicts is all but devoid of humans now.
For director Wes Ball (“The Maze Runner”), this adventure film set in lush jungles and harsh beaches was a chance to imagine a fresh take on this long-running franchise.
“Obviously, we had awesome, massive shoes to fill from the previous trilogy,” Ball tells The Envelope. “But where we started was asking, ‘How do we differentiate ourselves from those movies while at the same time, story-wise, conceptually, visually tie into them?’”
Even before the production team landed on shooting on location in Australia, Ball’s first instinct was to get out of the dreary, overcast Vancouver landscapes from those previous films.
“This is a story about a new day,” Ball remembers thinking. “Let’s get into some sunlight.”
And so, with Caesar (played in the earlier films by Andy Serkis) now dead, “Kingdom” thrusts us several generations into the future. There we meet Noa (Owen Teague), a wide-eyed young ape whose fearless climbing while scavenging for an eagle egg allows audiences to witness a cityscape ravaged by nature and time. All in an 11-minute sequence that’s fully computer-generated, give or take a shot or two.
“From a storytelling standpoint, one of the things that really drew me to the project was the opportunities for the world-building side of things in this bright, sunny landscape,” says Erik Winquist, the film’s visual effects director (an Oscar nominee for 2014’s “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”). “We’ve fast-forwarded a couple hundred years. There isn’t a place we can go and shoot that’s going to give us everything we need.”
This meant that Wētā FX‘s cutting-edge technology (including its advanced motion-capture tools) would once more be leveraged to create fully fleshed-out ape performances, all while delivering several high-octane action set pieces that punctuate Noa’s quest. As Noa searches for his tribe after a violent attack on his village in the name of an ape called Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand), the film’s visuals — in harsh sunlight and shot in widescreen anamorphic — hark to the franchise’s roots.
“It all lends itself to this idea that we were a movie that was straddling both the previous trilogy that we came from and the 1968 Charlton Heston movie that started everything,” Ball says. “If you look at the movie, you can see this interesting thing where it kind of feels like both movies.”
The goal throughout was to use visual effects in service of telling a story about needing to pummel one’s way through grief to find the strength to carry on.
“We tried very hard to make sure that we felt very authentic and real,” Ball adds. “We didn’t want it to feel over-polished. We wanted it to feel spontaneous. That’s what I’d done in ‘The Maze Runner’ movies, where you feel like we’re sort of making it up on the spot. The camerawork is very dynamic and kind of active.”
Achieving that look of spontaneity required meticulous planning. That’s nowhere clearer than in the climactic final confrontation between Noa and Proximus Caesar’s brute in command, an imposing gorilla named Sylva (Eka Darville), which takes place within a gargantuan armory that’s flooding quickly around them.
1
2
3
4
1. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” FX WETNESS 2. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” FX WATER SURFACE 3. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” FX WATER FLOW 4. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” – FX BUBBLES (20th Century Studios)
The finished scene.
(20th Century Studios)
“The tricky thing with that flood sequence in particular was the way that it had to dance with the camera,” Winquist notes. “Because one of [Ball’s] amazing strengths is in camera, and blocking, and working this stuff through in a way where the cut just flows beautifully from shot to shot.”
What helped was letting go of the idea of actually shooting the scene on location, or on a built set, or in water tanks. Instead, Teague and Darville were tasked with running through a jungle gym-like course (with 20-pound sandbags on their feet to mimic the weight of running water) as they acted out the clash between Noa and Sylva. Every ounce of water onscreen during that chase was simulated.
Winquist, who had just worked on “Avatar: The Way of Water,” knew this would be a different kind of challenge. “The work that was done there was this pristine coral reef, a lot of underwater stuff that was crystal clear. Here we’re almost always above the surface. And it was really about the terrifying, turbulent, grungy, scummy rapids we were having to deal with here.”
In the finished sequence, there’s a fluidity to watching Noa swing and climb, duck and swim as he fends off Sylva’s attacks.
“The thing with these films is that — and this is the terrible truth of it all — if we do our jobs correctly, people will stop thinking, ‘Oh, man, these visual effects are great,’” Winquist says.
What thrills him most is hearing how many people come out of the film acknowledging just how moved they are not by the effects or the actors themselves but by the sum of their parts. “You just sat through 1,500 shots of character performance that you were completely engrossed in,” Winquist says. “I’ve heard so many variations of comments like, ‘I can’t believe I’m feeling something for these apes.’”
“Yeah, it’s definitely a miracle that even works,” Ball adds.
