Given that Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is really nearing release, it was no surprise that they brought quite a substantial amount of footage to Comic-Con this year. Director Rupert Wyatt and simian star Andy Serkis were both on hand to talk us through the film, with the help of a bunch of clips.
First up was a production style clip-reel showing Serkis' performance on set, contrasted with the finished look of Caesar the chimp, just to emphasise how much his performance shows through into the film. That was followed by a cut-together sequence showing Caesar's days at home with James Franco's research scientist and his Alzheimers-affected father (John Lithgow). With the latter sliding downhill and getting into an altercation with a neighbour after damaging his car, Caesar springs to the rescue - but gets into trouble when he reacts to a perceived threat to his family in too violent a manner.
Finally, we saw a few clips of the ape rising itself, with hundreds of apes letting loose all over San Francisco. The Golden Gate Bridge, the trams and even the suburbs all come under attack from the ape army, and frankly it looks pretty mental. A few of the ape effects are still not 100% but generally it looks pretty exciting.
Said Andy Serkis, "Caesar is given these intelligence-enhancing drugs, brought up and loved by humans only to discover that he’s not one of them, he’s a freak. Then he’s sort of thrown in a hard-core ape prison, and escapes and leads his fellows in a revolution. Oh, and by the way he’s an ape. Performance capture is not a genre, it’s a tool. The only limit is the imagination. Gollum was a psychologically challenging individual. Kong was physically massive, whereas Gollum was a three and a half foot ring junkie. But Caesar was a whole other challenge."
Director Rupert Wyatt said, "It’s never been possible to tell this story technologically. We wanted to tell our story without using live apes, for a number of reasons but including the irony of using live apes to tell a story of exploitation. But capturing not just one character but 150 apes and doing so in a believable way, this is quite a first. It was a big risk, and a very expensive risk, so when we met with Weta we decided to take that leap together. I think now, 12 months after shooting the film, I’ve breathed a huge sigh of relief."
Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is out on August 12 in the UK.