There is a sinister circular logic to the Planet of the Apes series. Characters journey to the stars and wind up … back on Earth. They travel back in time … and directly cause the events that lead to the rise of their dystopian future. Even as War for the Planet of the Apes concludes the story of the ape leader Caesar, it brings the franchise’s overarching narrative closer and closer to its origins on a desolate, sun-swept beach, one that looks a lot like the one Caesar and his monkey mates gallop across during their quest for revenge. That’s what makes these movies so troubling. It’s not the monkeys with machine guns or the gorillas with grenade launchers; it’s the sense that collapse is inevitable, that even when people (and apes) act with the best of intentions, they can’t escape the cruel hand (or paw) fate has dealt.
We haven’t seen too much of the Han Solo movie, except for all that hot goss about why Phil Lord and Chris Miller left the project, but the set photos have been trickling in. Yesterday, a couple pictures surfaced from the set of our young Han (Alden Ehrenreich), Chewbacca, and Woody Harrelson’s mysterious character together and in costume on set.
A cute kid, apes loading machine guns, apes throwing grenades, Woody Harrelson shouting at apes – there’s a lot going on in the latest trailer for War for the Planet of the Apes. The third (and supposedly final, but we’ll wait for the box office numbers to determine that one) installment in the Planet of the Apes reboot is an all out war between mankind and ape-kind, and it looks pretty wild.
If you’re going to tease trailers with shorter versions of the already brief coming attractions, this is the way to do it: With atmosphere, style, and intelligence. The latest War for the Planet of the Apes ad arrives ahead of tomorrow’s full final trailer, and it contains very little actual movie footage; par for the course for this kind of pre-tease. But instead of five or six seconds of flash frames and nothing else, this awesome, ominous clip pairs the voice of longtime Planet of the Apes star, the late Charlton Heston, with newsreel footage and images from the previous two Apes movies, setting the stage for “the end,” which is apparently coming in director Matt Reeves’ War for the Planet of the Apes. (We’ll see about that. Apes together are pretty strong at the box office.)