Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes looks sprawling and gorgeous, and could easily be one of the year’s biggest blockbusters if it delivers a thrilling narrative as well. So, we’re not completely surprised to hear it was mostly shot on location, since, you know, the visual presentation isn’t a blurry, floaty digital mess.
The previous Planet of the Apes trilogy, started by director Rupert Wyatt and later continued/finished by Matt Reeves (who later moved on to work on The Batman), set a new standard for digital characters alongside the Avatar movies, so the fact Kingdom is looking fantastic – despite the creative changes behind the camera – is a very positive sign.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes director Wes Ball (Maze Runner saga), who’s signed up to tackle The Legend of Zelda in live-action next, explained to Collider how they approached the demanding shooting process. “We probably had one blue screen set on the movie. For the most part, we’re out in real locations shooting with real actors,” he said. “They happen to be in these funny dots with this stupid camera in their face everywhere, which they eventually kind of forget about, but you make it like a live-action movie. You just have to image that, ‘Oh, that’s going to be an ape doing that in a year.’ That’s the whole thing. How do you give the spontaneity? That’s the thing for me.”
He added that many scenes in the movie are almost completely computer-generated when it comes to the characters and the objects they’re interacting with, but “it all started from a real camera, and a real world with real, physical actions.” While filmmakers like James Cameron have to create entire worlds from scratch, a post-apocalyptic Earth is something you can recreate from real locations, especially when the ape civilization depicted in this new movie hasn’t advanced much yet. After all, the best kind of CGI is the one that works in tandem with physical elements, and the results speak for themselves in the previews we’ve seen so far.
Ball recently described Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes as “Apocalypto with apes,” which sounds like the coolest s**t opening in theaters this year IMO; high praise after watching something as crazy as Godzilla x Kong and while waiting for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Anyway, we’ll be able to catch this one in theaters on May 10, 2024.