War for the Planet of the Apes broader inspirations from films like "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and "The Great Escape". Feeling that there was a need to imbue Biblical themes and elements, they also watched Biblical epics like "Ben-Hur" and "The Ten Commandments". The influences and inspirations were made evident in the relationship between Caesar and Woody Harrelson's Colonel, a military leader with pretensions toward godhood. Reeves has compared their relationship to the dynamic between Alec Guinness's British Commander and Sessue Hayakawa's prison camp Colonel in "Bridge on the River Kwai". Another comparison is in Caesar's journey to find the Colonel, flanked by a posse
The Bridge on the River Kwai months later. Both bridges were used for two years, until they were destroyed by Allied bombing. The steel bridge was repaired and is still in use today. Japanese viewers disliked the film's "glorification" of a fictitious and indemonstrable "superiority of Western civilization". In particular, they resented the implication in the film that Japanese military engineers were less capable than their British counterparts. In fact, Japanese engineers had been surveying the route of the railway since 1937 and were highly organized. "Variety" reported that this film was the No. 1 moneymaker of 1958, with a US take of $18,000,000. The second