With the upcoming release of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, director Wes Ball talks freely about the film but also about the future of the saga and the connections with the previous trilogy.
Wes Ball reveals a deleted scene that connects with current events
Let’s start with news that went around the world over the weekend, namely that a team of scientists recorded for the first time the behavior of a Sumatran Orangutan very similar to that of a human being: the primate, named Rakus , he treated a wound on his face caused by one of his peers using chewed leaves of a local vine, which is used in traditional medicine as an antibacterial and soothing agent. After some time, the wound completely healed:
The director has https://twitter.com/wesball/status/1786485577514151985 on Twitter that he cut a virtually identical scene from the film. Curiously, the character in question has a very similar name:
Incredible, because we had a scene that we later cut for time reasons, where Raka literally does the same thing. It will be in the deleted scenes, though.
The original title of the film
We have known for some time that with this film the intention is to launch a new trilogy. Interviewed by Comicbook, the director spoke about how long we will have to wait for the sequel:
It will take as long as it takes. Luckily, this franchise is important for the studio so we will make the film in the right time, without rushing, as we did in this case – and in fact it turned out well. Development takes time, and I spend a lot of time on it, I don’t want to start pre-production before the script is ready: I’ve had to do that in the past, and it doesn’t lead to anything good. The best thing we can all do is to stop doing this. We would save a lot of money.
The good thing is that right during the development of the film we thought a lot about its future and what direction to take, so we already have an idea of where we want to go, revealing a much bigger world to explore, full of drama, conflicts and things of this type. Let’s hope so!
The director then revealed what he initially wanted the film to be called:
The original title was Empire of the Planet of the Apes. It was my original title… but we couldn’t use it, it just couldn’t be done.
The connection with the original trilogy
In another interview, Peter Macon (who plays Raka) talks about how his character is the most important link to Caesar and the original trilogy:
We took a fundamental element that emerged in the previous trilogy, which is the phrase “apes don’t kill apes, apes are strong together, apes and humans live side by side”. The idea is that stories and legends live much longer than the truth. The truth tends to turn into stories and fairy tales, which are told generation after generation. So, for many generations Caesar’s legacy, the foundation of his principles, are these concepts, and they emerge in the previous trilogy. His manifesto is what survived. So Raka is kind of an archaeologist finding human objects, piecing together the story. He offers new perspectives to Noah and Proximus, and is aware that there are other clans out there. Even Proximus knows it, the one who doesn’t know it is Noah. The latter finds himself in the middle of all this, and in the meantime tries to understand who he is. No one really knows the truth, because too much time has passed. Then they try to put the pieces together.
What I did was try to invent a past for my character, discussing it with the screenwriters and director. And I think ultimately the audience likes to know that there’s room to imagine things.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes will arrive at the cinema in Italy on May 8th. You can find all the information on the film in our sheet.
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