Later this year, 20th Century Fox will be releasing War for the Planet of the Apes, the third installment in their critically-acclaimed, rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise. Picking up several years after the events of 2014's Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - which ended with the humans and apes (led by Andy Serkis' Caesar) officially going to war with each other - is likely going to be the epic conclusion to Caesar's story that's been at the heart of the franchise ever since it first began in 2011. With director Matt Reeves returning behind the helm, after directing Dawn in 2014, it looks to be possibly the bleakest and darkest installment in the franchise yet.
At least, that's what the first trailer for War for the Planet of the Apes made it out to be like, with not only the reintroduction of Caesar and his remaining Ape brethren but also the debut of Woody Harrelson's Colonel, a high-ranking military official personally leading the humans' last charge against the Apes. And while that first teaser trailer managed to perfectly build the hype and sell the tone of War rather well, thankfully, fans won't have to wait much longer before they get to see more from the new film.
In fact, they can expect to see the second official trailer for War for the Planet of the Apes being released online sometime tomorrow. 20th Century Fox announced the news with a brief trailer teaser, which continues to give new insight into the ever growing conflict between the human military and the increasingly more intelligent Apes. There's also a couple of nice new teasing shots of the film's battle sequences, which promise to be the most bombastic and large-scale in the franchise up until this point. Check it out for yourself in the space above.
Out of the many, many tentpole franchises populating the entertainment industry nowadays, the Planet of the Apes franchise has been able to stand out from the rest thanks to the higher attention it gives its characters and the emotional complexity behind Serkis' Caesar. Additionally, directors Matt Reeves and Rupert Wyatt both have managed to find inventive new ways of bringing the franchise's action sequences to life, from interesting moments like a slow 360-degree spinning shot on top of a tank while an ape hijacks it, or deciding to pit the humans and apes against each other for the first time on a foggy Golden Gate Bridge in broad daylight.
The motion-capture technologies at the heart of the Apes films have been nothing short of revolutionary either, with Serkis' performance, in particular, earning him large amounts of critical acclaim and awards buzz each year, but it's been the marriage between those special effects and the film's stories that are why the Apes films have managed to work as well as they have. There's no way of telling if War for the Planet of the Apes continues that same pattern or not, of course, but it's certainly off to a considerably good start so far.
Source: 20th Century Fox
