Comic-Con 2011 Teaser Footage From Rise of the Planet of the Apes Plus a New Preview Clip Introduced by Andy Serkis
Posted 07.24.11 by Ryan
Part of Twentieth Century Fox's Comic-Con panel focused on the upcoming Planet of the Apes prequel, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. On hand were director Rupert Wyatt (The Escapist) and Andy Serkis, who portrays Caesar, the lead ape in the movie. Serkis played the character not in the iconic ape make-up of the Planet of the Apes movies that precede Rise, but by using motion-capture technology, something Serkis became familiar with playing Gollum in the The Lord of the Rings trilogy and by playing another (much larger) primate in King Kong. Serkis admitted (via The Guardian) that his friends wondered why he was choosing another "monkey" role.
Whenever I choose a role people say, "Why are you choosing another ape character? Why are you playing another monkey?"
I'll just chart the development of this character for you. He's a young, innocent soul who is brought into this world. He's brought up by human beings, nurtured, loved and cared for. At a certain point he realizes he's not the same as the human beings and he feels like a freak, he's treated like a Frankenstein's Monster. He's then taken away from his family and thrown into a hardcore prison for apes. He brings this disparate group of apes together and leads them to revolution. It's an amazing journey.
In the movie, Caesar gains his intelligence from an Alzheimer's Disease drug developed by James Franco. Not unsurprisingly, the apes were the focus of the Comic-Con footage, but first, here's a new preview clip from ComingSoon, introduced by Serkis that shows Franco and Freida Pinto having a difficult time saying goodbye to Caesar when they bring him to a primate facility run by Brian Cox. As Serkis told The Wall Street Journal after the Comic-Con panel, it's at the facility where Caesar starts his journey towards an uprising.
He’s [Caesar] taken away from the family that’s nurtured and loved him and taken to an ape sanctuary, which is the equivalent of a hardcore prison. He has no idea how to behave with these wild animals. The first thing he does is try to shake hands with them. They’re there because they’re all damaged. Some are from the entertainment industry, some are from labs, some have been abused and dumped.
Below is the footage from Comic-Con, which does play spoiler to the latter part of the movie where the apes decided to begin their revolution on the streets of San Francisco. Just be warned that several moments at the end of the movie may be spoiled by watching the clip.
Written by co-producers Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa, Rise of the Planet of the Apes co-stars John Lithgow, and Tom Felton.
Next Showing: Rise of the Planet of the Apes opens Augt. 5