8 Ways Planet of the Apes' Director Is Saving Summer Blockbusters

8 Ways Planet of the Apes' Director Is Saving Summer Blockbusters

David-James/20th Century Fox

8 Ways Planet of the Apes' Director Is Saving Summer Blockbusters

David-James/20th Century Fox

Much like pimpin' and being green, making sequels that live up to their predecessors isn't easy. (Unless you're Francis Ford Coppola making The Godfather: Part II, obvs.) Making sequels when you're taking over for a director who has left the franchise and then not completely face-planting is even harder. With Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Matt Reeves has pulled off both—and he's just getting started.

Nearly four years after the release of his last film—2010's Let Me In—and six years after he first forayed into the world of genre blockbusters with Cloverfield, Reeves is back with a movie that's both darker and psychologically heavier than Rupert Wyatt's 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Set 10 years after the virus outbreak that ended that Rise, Dawn chronicles what happens when the simians (led by super-intelligent Caesar) form their own society in the Redwoods north of San Francisco—only to find out that the humans they thought had been wiped out have merely been hiding.

"Then it becomes like a classic Western. They're sort of vying for survival on this one place of land," Reeves says. "The question then becomes: can they work it out?"

The ensuing showdown is about as white-knuckle suspenseful and heart-breaking as can be. It's also a rarity. Big summer popcorn flicks aren't usually this dark or thought-provoking, and in a season of hits (X-Men: Days of Future Past) and misses (The Amazing Spider-Man 2) it could prove to be one of the best films of the current crop. That's due in large part to its focus on the apes—and its ability to show the savagery and compassion of both humans and monkeys.

Matt Reeves.

Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

That shift in focus was Reeves' idea. The initial version of the Dawn story started out as a much more human-centric film, but before signing on for the sequel the director insisted on taking it in a different direction. "I said, 'The miracle of what you did was you created this hero in Caesar," he explains. "The most human character in your last film was not a human, and that's incredible.'" (Sorry, James Franco.) His decision to do "a Caesar-centric story" in the ape world is not only what makes his film so compelling, but it also serves as the best example yet for why performance-capture actors like Serkis can be leading men. Well, proto-men.

WIRED sat down with Reeves in the Apes' hometown of San Francisco to get his formula for the ultimate Apes movie&mdsh;and to find out what other summer blockbusters he might have up his sleeve.

Let the Apes Rule

Reeves spent about eight months shooting Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, but he spent a year in post-production with Weta Digital perfecting all the apes on screen. It shows. Watching Dawn, it's easy to forget the simians aren't just a bunch of actual really well-trained monkeys. That was Reeves' goal from the beginning. "When I saw Rise, I'd never had that level of emotional identification with a character that was CG," he says. "What I wanted to do was take the photo-reality of that further. I wanted to continue the emotion of that and I wanted to push everything into reality as much as possible."

Keep It Gritty—And Without Any of That Fancy Lord of the Rings Stuff

Some of Dawn was necessarily going to be darker than Rise simply because the latter takes place before a pandemic. But Reeves' movie is bleak. Like, make-Blade Runner-look-almost-sunny bleak, from the nature-reclaimed Financial District of San Francisco to the rain-soaked woods where the apes have built their new civilization. "I actually said to [the studio] specifically in my pitch that I thought there were ways you could push the naturalism further and that I was really interested in doing that," he says. "For all of the amazing work that [Weta has] done with the Peter Jackson films, a lot of that stuff was what I would call fantastical. I didn't want that beautiful storybook look, I wanted that very believable naturalistic look."

If You Want a Place That Looks Overtaken by the Elements, Look No Further Than New Orleans

All of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes takes place in the San Francisco Bay area, but very little of it was shot there. A lot was filmed in Vancouver and New Orleans, where Reeves happened to find a Katrina-ravaged house that worked perfectly as the now-rundown house Will Rodman (Franco's character) and Caesar had once lived in. "We did a lot of research and [spent time] going to New Orleans and seeing areas that, sadly, since Katrina, nature has started to reclaim," Reeves says. "The original house is in Vancouver, because that's where Rise was shot, that and the stage, and we were not going to shoot that part in Vancouver and we weren't going to build it. [We] happened to find a house that looked almost exactly the same, and it was covered in greens. It was bizarre."

Make Movies With J.J. Abrams as a Kid (Even if It Doesn't Get You a Star Wars Movie)

Most people know Reeves and now-Star Wars: Episode VII-director J.J. Abrams go back to their days working together on Felicity (anyone wondering how Keri Russell found her way into a Planet of the Apes movie, here's your answer). But they actually go back way further than that: "We met and made movies as kids and I would say that two of our biggest obsessions were Planet of the Apes and Star Wars and it's a really weird thing that that's [what we're both doing now]." Reeves even got Abrams' input on Dawn. So has he been offered a Star Wars film of his own? They seem to be going to every sci-fi/genre director working today. "I have not," he says. "My mind has been so in the world of apes. I've been living, breathing, sleeping apes. But I'm incredibly excited for J.J."

Trust Andy Serkis

The performances in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes are solid across the board, but Andy Serkis as Caesar steals the show. It's his movie from beginning to end, even if he's in his digital ape garb the whole time. It might be the first time the performance-captured actor in a film is the leading role. And he basically saved Reeves' butt. "He is one of the best actors I've ever worked with; the big relief of diving into the performance-capture world came once I realized that the reason that Caesar was so amazing was that Andy was amazing," Reeves says. "That was it. That and the fact that Weta were geniuses and were able to translate his performance."

Know What You're Going to Do for Your Next Apes Film From the Get-Go

Luckily for everyone, Reeves is already set up to make the next Apes movie—and as with Dawn he has a very clear vision of what he wants to do. It starts with drawing a path from the current franchise to the 1968 Charlton Heston Planet of the Apes, for which the current franchise serves as a loose prequel. "What was cool about the making of this was that in the making of it ... I wanted to really dive into that world and make you connect with those [ape] characters," Reeves says. "If you imagine where we are [at the end of Dawn] and where the '68 film is, there's such a long journey from here to there."

If You Can, Make Your Movie Like The Godfather

Well, not really. But Reeves definitely wanted Caesar—and the ape famiglia he created—to have the feel of Coppola's series. "The idea of Caesar becoming this mythic, almost god-like, character of the apes and leading them not just as a revolutionary but through this very difficult period into what is going to be one of the darkest parts of their early history, that sounds like a kind of epic, grand, generational, ape family story," he says. "I wanted the story to be, without being grandiose about it, like The Godfather with apes. To do a sort of Shakespearean type story where our Don Corleone is Caesar, then to imagine future generations. It just seems like such a rich vein to continue to explore."

Keep a Cloverfield Sequel in Your Back Pocket

Most sci-fi/monster movie fans remember Reeves as the guy who directed Cloverfield. Written by Alias (and later The Cabin in the Woods) scribe Drew Goddard, the found-footage movie about a group of friends during a New York monster invasion was produced by Abrams and had us guessing what it was about until it hit theaters. Ever since it came out there have been whispers of a sequel. Will it happen? Reeves isn't opposed. "We have thought about it. ... We've talked about it. I think it would be really fun to do one day," he says. "Specifically, when we were shooting the movie I had [the characters] run into other people who were shooting their evening. I just think that the same event from another perspective can be an entirely different story, and then it can lead into other chronologies that connect to that."