The Oscars Are Going To Come Calling Once They See Andy Serkis In ‘War For The Planet Of The Apes’

Going through the short list of films which were able to seamlessly leverage advances in computer generated imagery (CGI) to tell an effective story to audiences, three films stand out: Jurassic Park, Avatar, and Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. Jurassic, of course, was a pioneer, and Avatar is the highest grossing film in the history of cinema, but of the three, it was 2011’s Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes that gave us our most lifelike CGI creation to date, Andy Serkis’ Caesar. There was a great deal of chatter around the time of this film’s release that Serkis’ motion-captured performance might land him the industry’s first Academy Award nomination for an actor that portrayed a CG character, but that never came to fruition. That said, after seeing some early test footage from the upcoming War For The Planet Of The Apes at New York Comic Con on Thursday night, let the drumbeat for the 2018 Oscars campaign officially begin.

Decider, the official correspondent of New York Comic Con 2016, was able to grab a few minutes with Andy Serkis, director Matt Reeves (who also helmed 2014’s Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes), and producer Dylan Clark immediately yesterday afternoon following a sold-out conversation with Serkis at Madison Square Garden. Reeves had told attendees during an exclusive presentation of never before seen War footage on Thursday night that Serkis “deserves an Academy Award” for his role as Caesar, but Serkis was quick to give credit to Reeves and his supervision of the team at WETA, the digital effect shop, for their work when he spoke to our Katie Linendoll yesterday.

“What we do on set is one part —it’s very obviously an incredibly important part, it’s where the performances are created— but then Matt [Reeves] is editing the movie and in post-production for a YEAR afterwards,” Serkis told us. “He’s working with WETA, who have an incredible team and take the performances and put them onto the apes faces, and render and skin them and fur them. [The brilliance of WETA] has enabled the perception of performance capture to change and be recognized as acting. That has massively changed over the last 15 years.”

“It’s a true art,” Reeves told Decider. “It’s trying to find the way to translate what Andy’s doing onto Caesar so that there’s a one-to-one connection between the emotion [he’s portraying] and the feeling.”

One of the major themes of the Apes franchise, going all the way back to the 1968 original, revolves around the unwillingness —or maybe it’s inability?— of two disparate groups to communicate and get along. Naturally, this is a prominent issue in our country today (see: our current political climate), but producer Dylan Clark insists that there won’t be any direct references to the election in the film.

“We make these stories about these characters, but people come to the movie and they see a mirror to what’s going on in society. “We always love it that people bring their experiences to the movie, but we’re not necessarily doing a direct messaging to our world or some kind of allegory.”

“The whole idea is that you’re looking at apes, but what you’re really looking at is what’s in the mirror,” Clark said. “You’re looking at human nature. The idea is the audience can connect to the characters in a way that feels really personal.”

The film, which promises the biggest and most intense action sequences of the series to date as the apes retreat into the snowy mountains and other incredible landscapes, is inspired by something you might not expect: biblical epics. “Caesar, he’s like the ape Moses, or even greater,” Reeves told us. “So we watched films like Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments for inspiration, but then we also [want it to feel] like the best war movies. All of those movies had a backdrop of something huge, but were also really about the characters at the forefront. Films like Bridge On The River Kwai and Apocalypse Now.”

As much as War For The Planet Of The Apes will be paced like a war movie, this movie promises to be transformative because of Serkis’ gripping performance. “It was a very, very emotionally intense film,” Serkis confesses. “There really isn’t a scene where Caesar isn’t carrying this huge weight. Without overblowing it, it really was very emotionally challenging. [Caesar] goes to a very dark place, and that does cost: physically and emotionally.”

War For The Planet Of The Apes will be in theaters on July 14, 2017.

[Where to stream Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes]

For more coverage of all things New York Comic Con, including conversations with the casts of Archer, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Underworld: Blood Wars and more, visit decider.com/nycc.