Summary

• Noa, a young Chimpanzee, seeks justice after his village is destroyed in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes honors Caesar's legacy while paving the way for a new hero.
• The VFX team created a detailed world with Easter eggs for fans to discover when the movie becomes available for streaming and home ownership in August.

Generations after the events of Caesar's Planet of the Apes trilogy, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes introduces a new hero. Noa, a young Chimpanzee, is searching for those responsible for decimating his village in the hopes of saving what remains of his friends and family. While on his journey, Noa meets Raka, a wise Orangutan who follows the teachings of Caesar, and Mae, a mysterious human named Mae different from any human he's come across before. When he finally confronts Proximus Caesar, the one responsible for his village being destroyed, Noa will be forced to reckon with his feelings about the future of Ape-kind.

Wes Ball honors Caesar's legacy with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes while paving the way for a new hero and foreshadowing what the world will become in the future. Owen Teague, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, and Freya Allan deliver stunning performances full of depth and complexity. The VFX team created a sweeping world with details and Easter eggs throughout the Planet of the Apes franchise. With the movie coming to Hulu for streaming and DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K for home ownership in August, fans of the films will have a greater opportunity to study the minutiae.

While at Planet of the Apes Easter egg in the airport mural.

Moving Kingdom Of The Planet of the Apes Into The Future While Honoring Its Past

Screen Rant: When I first saw the original footage at CinemaCon, I was blown away by some of these shots because some of these VFX shots looked so real to me. Can you talk to me about balancing the VFX and practical effects in this and taking new elements that we see in the Apes franchise?

Erik Winquist: As far as balance of the visual effects and the practical effects, it was a really great partnership that we had with those guys down in Australia. There are sections of this movie, if you think about the river or when they're walking along the cliff and getting doused by waves, that would've been not fun trying to do that stuff entirely digital. Having that physical water there to be interacting with Freya in those scenes was huge for us. They gave us the water aspect, they gave us the wind, they brought the smoke, they brought the fire.

It was really great working with them and that goes for the whole crew in a way. I don't think I've ever worked on a show that's had such a harmonious vibe within the entire shoot. I think everybody was really pulling [together] understanding that visual effects were such a key part of this movie, and if we didn't get what we needed, the whole thing was sunk for sure.

Dan Zimmerman: And it's always a good balance. When you have something real to balance a visual effect against, it actually makes them have to match it, right? It has to look real. The magic trick it that it has to look real, and the line is very fine.

You have a timeline in an edit bay that's just mocap, where it's characters in gray suits with dots and cameras all over their faces, and you see that for a year. Then you see it come to life as a realized ape, and you're like, "Oh my God, this actually has to undergo another section of trimming extensions and stuff like that." Because it just encapsulates you in a way that it can't when there's a camera right here in front of someone's face.

Yeah, it was an incredible, harmonies process all the way through. The collaboration between editorial, visual effects, and even just the previs and postvis teams - I'd never want any daylight between our departments because the moment that happens, it all can fall apart.

What were some of the integral steps of creating this role digitally that audiences may not spot, but are key elements to it?

Erik Winquist: The key part of it was the fact that we just found these amazing locations and shot in them. Our job from a visual effects standpoint is augmenting some of those environments. Sometimes it's just the tiniest little thing, like a little piece of rebar sticking out from the forest. Sometimes it's replacing almost entirely the entire piece of footage if we had a helicopter fly by or something.

But the whole point and mission there was just to continually remind audiences that this used to be the human's domain, but that was a long time ago.

Working on these past films, what did you take from Caesar's trilogy into the visual effects to harken back while showing that we've changed over the generations?

Dan Zimmerman: We took Caesar's corpse. [Laughs] But I think it is just a testament, right? Because when you start with Rise, it was just like, "Oh my gosh, nobody has ever seen anything like this." Then you watch Dawn and War, you just continually see the progression of how fantastic [Andy Serkis'] work is and how we're translating facial performance onto a full CG character. With this one, I think it's another pretty large step. To date, I truly believe it looks the most real.

Erik Winquist: My serious answer to that question is that it's been about 7 years since War for the Planet of the Apes came out, and there's some water under the bridge. There's been a lot of technology that has come into the mix that we've been able to put towards other characters on other franchises, let's say, that we can now apply to these Apes characters.

What that means for the ability of the facial animators to really get in there, and the nuance of what's going on in our faces, is you really see the before and after that's going to be on this 4K Blu-ray. You really spot all the nuance that was actually there on the day, and that we were just essentially translating into an ape.

Dan Zimmerman: I think another thing about this movie in particular that I noticed when we started working on it was that, in the previous ones, Caesar talked - and then that other ape in the third one talked, and that was it. But in this one, everybody's talking. It really is a different experience watching this one, with all that dialogue and all that mouth movement that Erik's team put together. It is just really impressive stuff.

Wes Ball’s Visual Effects Background Boosted Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes

I think Wes is such a phenomenal director and such a visionary, but he has a VFX background. How did that help the process of streamlining everything that you guys did, as opposed to other films?

Erik Winquist: First of all, when we get into the whole previs side of it, one interesting thing was that I came into this process expecting we were going to previs the entire movie. I was kind of surprised that there were these key sequences we did on the movie that Halon had done some really fantastic work for. And it was those big action scenes where the entire crew was going to need to know what the plan was. But the rest of the film was either storyboards or just finding it on the day. That whole process was really cool.

Casey Pyke: When Wes came to us for previs, oftentimes we do the key sequences and big VFX action sequences. But there's plenty of sequences in this movie that are incredibly heavy in special effects, like the Proximus intro scene, that we didn't previs. We ended up postvising it after they shot it.

But when Dan handed me the edit for that, I was like, "Oh, man...." It was this moment where I was like, "Should we have prevised this?" Because there's all these plates, and there's 10 guys in sweatsuits standing out in the yard, but there should be maybe a thousand. It was really fun to be on both sides of that; one in previs where it's following Wes, and we have boards to go on, but sometimes we don't. We had scans of environments that Erik's team had done, and so we were able to make sure that our previs worked in the real-world shooting locations that they were going to shoot on, and then afterward we had scans of the sets that they had built and everything so that we could kind of map some of that stuff out. The crowd density and how big is the ship behind them and that kind of stuff. It was a harmonious process, and I Erik being there from the beginning of previs, which was really cool.

Erik Winquist: As far as the Wes factor goes, the dude brings just an enormous energy to the project, but he also brought a huge amount of trust. I mean, Wētā FX had done those previous three films, and the track record was there. It was like, "Look, if I'm saying we should do it this way, there's a reason for it." And he was fully on board, trusting the process. And the show is a unicorn.

Casey Pyke: Speaking to Wes' energy, when he comes in to pitch you a scene, he's making sound effects and his arms are going full force.

Dan Zimmerman: When he gets into pitch mode, he can sell ice to an Eskimo. True, seriously. But he also, with that knowledge of visual effects, streamlines the whole back half of the process. Because he can talk really intelligently to Erik about very technical aspects of a shot and what a shot needs to relay his kind of thought. Then they're having to spend less time trying to figure out what the director wanted and being more like, "Okay, got it."

Breaking Down The Big Proximus Vs. Noa Fight From A VFX Standpoint

Looking back on the big final fight, how did Owen Teague and Kevin Durand help you take that mocap to the next level?

Dan Zimmerman: The fight upstairs with the birds? Interestingly enough, those two guys kind of went at it. It was their performance. We had some stunt things when they were being thrown and whatnot, but when the birds were attacking Kevin? That was Kevin reacting to nothing. Like, literally nothing. They just went for it, right?

One of the things that Kevin said to me during the post-process was, "The best thing about doing a movie like this is that there's no vanity." You can truly let go and just give it everything because you're not having to worry about, "What do I look like? Is my hair okay?" Whatever. You just let it rip and go, and they did.

Erik Winquist: And they really let it rip. I had to actually have a word, I think, twice on that day to Kevin. I had be like, "Just don't do the full stunt falling back. You're going to damage your equipment, man." He was in it. He was fully going for it.

I would love for you guys to break down the fight scene for me between Proximus and Noa, from the initial filming of motion capture to the final product. What are some of the things that fans may not know that goes into all that?

Dan Zimmerman: The fight itself always happened, but when the Eagle chant started, that had to be done by music. It was very musically driven, so we had our composer on months before even the shooting of it, recording choirs and people doing what Owen replicated. [Makes ape grunting sounds] and all that stuff was pre-planned way in advance, so that when Owen did it on the day, there was sort of a rhythm to it.

But at the end of the day, everything had to be done musically. I had to have very close to what the final chant was going to be musically before I could even cut the scene. And then I had to try to figure out how to make it work with the shots that I had to make sure it was all good, and then fudge a little bit here and there. Obviously, that's where Wētā FX can help out a lot. That was super challenging because, as an editor, you don't ever want to be put in a box. That one sort of put me in a box, so to speak, but I think it turned out great. It was definitely something that had a lead to it.

Erik Winquist: I think, from our side of things, a really fun part of that whole deal was just figuring out what the wounds were going to be. Surveying the damage as Proximus is just beating on Noa, wanting to show that progression of him getting smashed up more and more, getting thrown across, getting smashed into the concrete - to the point where he finally gets thrown to the end. Our effects team had submitted a take one day where it was just blood mixed with spit coming out of his mouth.

Then during postvis, there were several shots that needed to be all CG. Wes, coming from a visual effects background, was like, "Just give me your files, and I'll animate it." He laid out the crowd of a bunch of apes kind of just standing there, and the camera moves. Then we came in and added a rough crowd and refined the camera moves and stuff.

That scene in particular was really fun to work on because we didn't previs it in pre-production, but during postvis, there was a lot of exploration. "How exactly does he go over the thing?" Wes had the great idea of this rolling camera, and the shot design for the fall and all that stuff. We were peppering that place with cameras and showing him what it looked like from different elevations and all that stuff. That was a really fun one to do.

One thing I love about home entertainment releases is that you can go frame by frame and look for every little Easter egg. Are there Easter eggs that people still haven't found that you guys have put in there? What are some of your favorite Easter eggs from past Apes movies that are in the film?

Erik Winquist: I don't think I've heard anybody talk about the mural yet.

Dan Zimmerman: In the airport, where Raka is walking Noa out, they stop at this mural where they see some humans. And in the background, we have the Statue of Liberty.

Erik Winquist: The Statue of Liberty is there, but so is Icarus. Both Icarus with his wings and a rocket. It's the history of flight.

How Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ VFX Compares To The Batman & Doctor Strange 2

Casey, you also worked on The Batman, which is another Matt Reeves project. He's an alumnus of the Apes films, and The Batman is also very grounded. What would you like to see in the future of his Batman and in The Penguin, visually speaking? Do you think that any more of these fantastical characters like Killer Croc could fit into that universe?

Casey Pyke: Well, I really like what they did with The Penguin in that one, but I feel like one of the things that was so cool for The Batman - because we did previs for it, and there was all this art up on the walls from the art department. There was a lot of different kind of styles of what Gotham the city would look like. I just overhearing conversations as we were doing our animation and stuff on how stylized and whether this one was going to be like a Tim Burton, but like a new one, something like that.

But when it came out, it's so grounded, but it's also so stylized. The oranges and all the light in there and it was constantly raining. All that stuff was kind of a surprise because that stuff happened after we had wrapped on it.

As far as Killer Croc and stuff go, I do think Killer Crock is probably a little farfetched for that world. But the way that they did Ridler and Penguin in that movie totally felt like Riddler and Penguin. Even with Penguin, with his prosthetics and everything. I feel like there are a lot of characters that could enter that world, but Killer Croc and Mr. Freeze? Poison Ivy, maybe, maybe not.

Erik, you worked on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Can you talk about the differences on working on a project like that compared to Apes?

Erik Winquist: I think they're very different worlds. When we came into the stuff on Doctor Strange, we were living very much in a supernatural, fantastic world and bringing in some of those really fantastic elements to it.

Whereas everything in the Apes world, apart from the fact that they're talking apes, is meant to be very grounded and all that stuff. We ended up doing the zombie, or the Doctor Strange cloak at the end, which was a massive effects challenge. But it was very stylized visual effects work; insanely complicated, but very fun. Whereas what we had to do here just had to absolutely tie into the world that we were shooting, in of an absolute photo reality thing. The stylization wasn't really there anymore.

About Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes

Several generations in the future following Caesar's reign, in which apes are the dominant species living harmoniously and humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

Check out our other Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes interviews:

• Owen Teague
• Wes Ball at WonderCon
• Owen Teague, Kevin Durand & Alain Gauthier
• Freya Allen & Peter Macon
• Wes Ball

Screen Rant also interviewed the cast at SDCC.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes debuts on Hulu on August 2. It will also become available on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD on August 27.

Source: Screen Rant Plus

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