Production has officially begun on War for the Planet of the Apes, and director Matt Reeves marked the occasion by tweeting a photo of a very familiar-looking location.
The most unforgettable scene from the 1968 classic saw Charleton Heston's astronaut George Taylor riding a horse along the coast at the end of the film when he came upon a shocking sight: the upper half of the Statue of Liberty, sticking out of the sand. Taylor had spent the entire movie believing he was stranded on an alien world, but the Statue's presence revealed the truth of his situation. He'd never left Earth, he'd just traveled forward in time to a post-apocalyptic future where humans had nearly destroyed themselves and apes had become the dominant species.
It was one of those stunning finales that changed every scene that came before it, virtually requiring viewers to go back and watch the whole flick again from this new perspective. Other movies have used this technique, but few have pulled it off as successfully (The Sixth Sense comes to mind as another twist ending that worked).
The photo Reeves tweeted from War for the Planet of the Apes shows a silhouetted figure on horseback riding on a pretty similar-looking beach. Another figure stands beside the horse, and this one can clearly be seen wearing the telltale headgear/camera used by actors performing for motion capture recording. It's hard to say if the horse rider is wearing similar gear or if it's a human character.
#It has begun. @ApesMovies pic.twitter.com/6AZVzWfJXW
— Matt Reeves (@mattreevesLA) October 17, 2015
Is this meant to be the same beach from Apes '68? Its inclusion is no coincidence, but is it there as a bookend, connecting the early movies with the new series?
With Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Fox rebooted the aging franchise with a proper origin story, revealing how the Earth reached the state it was in by the time George Taylor crashed on this "alien" world. Envisioned as a prequel trilogy, War for the Planet of the Apes should serve as its climax (although as long as these things keep making money, Fox will look for ways to keep it going).
War stars Andy Serkis, reprising his role as ape leader Caesar, squaring off against a human colonel played by Woody Harrelson. Steve Zahn also stars as an as-yet-unnamed ape character. It's expected to arrive in theaters on July 14, 2017.
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