The first trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes (geez that’s a mouthful) from director Rupert Wyatt has officially hit the internet. These ain’t your Tim Burton primates…
Is anyone else sincerely creeped out by those things? Honestly, the people at WETA (Lord of the Rings, Avatar) are amazing. I find it hilarious that Andy Serkis is playing yet another primate (he depicted Kong in King Kong) but he’s actually bringing that chimp to life exceptionally well.
“The main thing we’re trying to do is create these completely believable ape characters and treat them completely in a live-action sense,” senior visual effects supervisor Joe Leterri told Empire Online who have some breakdowns of the visual effects.
“This actually grew most directly out of what we were doing on Avatar, but here we brought the motion capture completely onto the live-action stage. We had to hide all of the motion-capture cameras all over the live-action sets. And so we could have Andy Serkis, and any of the other actors playing the apes in the set with the [non-ape] actors actually performing.”
Serkis also spoke about the chimpanzee he plays named Caesar. ”Kong was purely a gorilla, so I went all-out to to make that work and play the psychology and DNA of a pure gorilla,” he said. “But this is much more mercurial and ‘shifting sands’ in terms of who this creature is, because he’s brought up with human beings, and then he’s inherited this drug which has enhanced his intelligence, so you have to almost forget he’s a chimp, really. We’ve been experimenting with treating him much more as a human being, really. It feels more like a human drama story.”
Rise of the Planet of the Apes also stars James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox and Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter) and will swing into theaters August 5. The official website, ApesWillRise.com, is now live.
