British actor Andy Serkis took to the stage at the annual Comic-Con event in San Diego to explain why he chose to play an intelligent chimpanzee in science fiction reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
- Rise of the Planet of the Apes
- Production year: 2011
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): 12A
- Runtime: 104 mins
- Directors: Rupert Wyatt
- Cast: Andy Serkis, Brian Cox, David Oyelowo, Freida Pinto, James Franco, John Lithgow, Tom Felton
Serkis plays Caesar, an ape who inherits human-like intellect from his mother, a chimpanzee involved in clinical trials aimed at helping find a cure for Alzheimer's disease. It is one of a number of motion-captured roles that the actor has taken during the course of his career: others include Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong in Peter Jackson's 2005 remake of the 1933 original.
"Whenever I choose a role people say: 'why are you choosing another ape character?'" said Serkis. "Why are you playing another monkey?
"I'll just chart the development of this character for you. He's a young, innocent soul who is brought into this world. He's brought up by human beings, nurtured, loved and cared for. At a certain point he realises he's not the same as the human beings and he feels like a freak, he's treated like a Frankenstein's monster. He's then taken away from his family and thrown into a hardcore prison for apes. He brings this disparate group of apes together and leads them to revolution. It's an amazing journey."
Rise of the Planet of the Apes stars James Franco as a scientist working with apes, along with John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Freida Pinto and Tom Felton. It arrives in the UK on Thursday, 11 August, and in the US a week earlier. The movie is the seventh film in the long running Planet of the Apes series, which began with the Charlton Heston original in 1968.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jul/22/andy-serkis-comic-con-apes