Congratulations on another great film.
I love the sense that youre building a myth here.
I wanted to push us into the realm of the mythic.
Its why we moved into snow, too: I thought it was almost like a mythic fairytale.
Its the book of Exodus, isnt it.
It feels to me as though your approach to cinematography was different this time.
There are a couple of reasons for that.
One is that I shot on a new system we shot on an Alexa 65.
So intimately, the lenses render the faces incredibly powerfully.
That was what I was excited about somehow we could do the epic, but also the intimate.
Visually, that gave us a different look.
The difficulty of that is that its a very heavy camera system.
So those shots lets say I wanted to pivot [the camera] around you.
Thats a very hard to shot.
So there were certain shots that I wanted to do that I couldnt.
They use them in commercials and music videos and things.
Yeah, its like motion control.
You could play out these incredible shots.
You could be incredibly detailed and repeat them and repeat them and repeat them.
So suddenly I was like, Oh, I can do all those moves I wanted to do.
So that was really freeing.
It was creatively very satisfying.
I wasnt restricted in a way that performance capture restricts me visually.
So is that how you got that overhead shot of the battle near the beginning?
Thats not the way Im gonna shoot it.
So I threw it out a lot.
I cant tell you right now what Im going to do.
But my translation might not be the same as the artists translation.
But this time, what I said was, You know what I love?
I said, What Id like to do, is figure out how to take virtual snaps.
So that overhead shot was one of those.
It was too challenging a shot.
They were like, We could put a cable cam through the trees.
One of the shots I found was, Can I take a look down?
I was like, Oh!
This is a great shot.
I know the one!
And youre going, like, Kubrick was such a genius.
How did he think of that shot?
He was lying on the floor looking up, wasnt he?
Its not like things come falling out of your head.
What happens is, you see something and respond.
Theres a great moment where Kubrick goes, Oh!
He gets under Jack Nicholson and goes, This is kinda cool.
And that was how that shot was done!
This is a process that, in pre-viz, is harder to do, because nothing exists.
On this movie, there were a lot of things that were a breakthrough for me creatively.
I could better use all the technical aspects of everything were doing, that still felt organic.
That still felt like being on a set and choosing an angle in a normal way.
And then that lines up to this part of the set.
But in a virtual set, it doesnt have that kind of specificity.
Not that you asked that!
But what youre saying is this is a step further on again.
Im the kind of person that needs to see something for connect.
I like to react in the moment as much as I can.
There were certain things that were more organic than I thought [onDawn].
Ive done other VFX stuff, like when I was onCloverfield, everything was planned tremendously.
Then you capture it the camera has to be rolling at that moment.
What I discovered was that, to my relief, performance capture is very freeing in that way.
And hed go, Yeah.
So Id say, Lets forget about what we were gonna do.
I can just do it in the moment.
That part was very freeing, and allowed for a lot of improvisation.
Thats not the way most CG movies are done.
But performance capture does allow for that.
So there are certain aspects of performance capture that are very friendly to an organic process.
This franchise almost feels like an anomaly as its grown through these three films.
I feel that way as a filmmaker.
And these summer films especially, they live on spectacle.
We could be thematically ambitious.
Its interesting how our brains are wired up.
It gets you there [in the gut].
Because of exactly what youre saying.
The virus, the mutated virus, throws up an interesting situation.
It accelerates the fall of mankind.
Yeah, in the original it took 5,000 years or something.
And this could be decades, couldnt it.
Yeah, and thats the idea.
Were saying that this movie takes place 15 years afterRise.
Its highly accelerated, and people are asking, Are you going to re-do the original.
We know what it becomes the planet of the apes.
So when you know the end of the story, the focus changes.
Its no longer a story about Oh, what happened.
It becomes How did that happen.
I love that movie, its fascinating.
But to be able to tell the story about the how is incredibly compelling to me.
Its more about characters, and our motivations, and our nature.
And what it is about us that draws us to violence.
We have to answer those questions, because we already know the ending.
The story is not about what happens, its about how it happens.
That, again, is an unusual place for a summer blockbuster to be.
There are lots of other places you or another director could take it.
Because you arent tied to the pre-industrial planet of the apes depicted in the 1968 film.
This is really unique in that these three stories havent been told in the Apes universe.
Were not beholden to anything.
Its been really cool.
Are you prepared for that withThe Batman?
Because there you have a lot of canon and a lot of fans.
Heres the truth: I havent even started Batman.
Because we just finished this movie eight days ago.
Ive met with them, and they were like, Wed like to do this.
Im not going to not be completely invested in its completion.
So its very close to me.
But thats how Ill be withBatman Ill be immersing myself in the same way.
And I think in terms of my approach, for me, it has to be personal.
I felt that way about [War], and I do feel that way about Batman.
I do see this kind of similarity.
So theres this weird kind of emotional parallel that I can see, even though theyre such different characters.
But its that same emotional makeup that draws me into it.
Ill approach that the same way.
you might only be reverent to a certain degree.
You cant be reverent to the point where youre not offering a perspective, you know what I mean?
Thats what Im hoping to do.
Matt Reeves, thank you very much.
War For The Planet Of The Apesis out in UK cinemas on the 11th July.
