Movies
Stunning, Riveting Footage From ‘War for the Planet of the Apes’
I really don’t think people appreciate the brilliant work behind the Planet of the Apes prequels. Not only is the writing absolutely phenomenal, but so is the craft. Even more impressive is that it gets exponentially better with each film.
20th Century Fox just released the first clip from War for the Planet of the Apes, and I’m gushing. I’ve already gone on a tangent about the CGI work in the film, raving about Weta Digital’s Dan Lemmon (who won an Oscar for his work on Jungle Book), but now I’m romancing over the characters that were co-written by Mark Bomback and director Matt Reeves. The following clip montage introduces us to Nova (Amiah Miller), who the apes have begrudgingly taken under their wing. The footage shows a passage of time in which Nova is discovered by the apes to when she becomes “one of them.” It’s a short block of scenes that are immensely impactful, heartbreaking even. If we can get this much color out of a short clip, how good is this movie going to be? I have high hopes.
Andy Serkis returns as Caesar, with Judy Greer as Caesar’s wife, with Woody Harrelson and Steve Zahn added to the growing battle.
In the film, after the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind. As the journey finally brings them face to face, Caesar and the Colonel are pitted against each other in an epic battle that will determine the fate of both their species and the future of the planet.
War of the Planet of the Apes ends mankind on July 14, 2017.
Universal has been having a hell of a time getting their Universal Monsters brand back on a better path in the wake of the Dark Universe collapsing, with four movies thus far released in the years since The Mummy attempted to get that interconnected universe off the ground.
First was Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, to date the only post-Mummy hit for the Universal Monsters, followed by The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, and now Abigail. The latter three films have attempted to bring Dracula back to the screen in fresh ways, but both Demeter and Renfield severely underperformed at the box office. And while Abigail is a far better vampire movie than those two, it’s unfortunately also struggling to turn a profit.
Where does the Universal Monsters brand go from here? The good news is that Universal and Blumhouse have once again enlisted the help of Leigh Whannell for their upcoming Wolf Man reboot, which is howling its way into theaters in January 2025. This is good news, of course, because Whannell’s Invisible Man was the best – and certainly most profitable – of the post-Dark Universe movies that Universal has been able to conjure up. The film ended its worldwide run with $144 million back in 2020, a massive win considering the $7 million budget.
Given the film was such a success, you may wondering why The Invisible Man 2 hasn’t come along in these past four years. But the wait for that sequel may be coming to an end.
Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, The Invisible Man star Elisabeth Moss notes that she feels “very good” about the sequel’s development at this point in time.
“Blumhouse and my production company [Love & Squalor Pictures]… we are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” Moss updates this week. “And I feel very good about it.”
She adds, “We are very much intent on continuing that story.”
At the end of the 2020 movie, Elisabeth Moss’s heroine Cecilia Kass uses her stalker’s high-tech invisibility suit to kill him, now in possession of the technology that ruined her life.
Stay tuned for more on The Invisible Man 2 as we learn it.
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