Steve Zahn

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.

Just because War for the Planet of the Apes is poised to finish up the current Apes trilogy, that doesn’t mean it can’t introduce a few new characters into the mix. We’ve already met Nova, the mute human child that’ll connect this trilogy to the original movies, but there’s another new face joining Caesar’s crew. Bad Ape, portrayed by Steve Zahn, is a similarly altered chimpanzee who learned to talk when the Simian Flu hit and wiped out most of humanity, and he brings news to Caesar’s tribe of an ape zoo that he escaped from.

If you’d told me a decade ago that one of my most highly anticipated moments of the summer would be a showdown between Woody Harrelson and a CGI primate, I probably would have politely excused myself, driven to the local video store, rented a VHS copy of Clint Eastwood’s Every Which Way But Loose, and smacked you over the head with the cassette tape. My, how things change. Under the careful eye of director Matt Reeves, the war between primates and mankind is now one of the hottest summer tickets, and the early trailers and teasers for War for the Planet of the Apes promise one of the best big-budget movies of the year.

On Thursday, 20th Century Fox showed journalists some sneak peek footage from the upcoming War for the Planet of the Apes. I got to see some brand new unreleased footage, hear some details from director Matt Reeves, and see the new trailer.

Character actor Steve Zahn is a national treasure, and it looks like he’s going to be flexing a different acting muscle in his next project. The actor will rally on the side of the apes in Matt Reeves’ War for the Planet of the Apes, following in the footsteps of Toby Kebbell, whose incredible portrayal of Koba in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes nearly stole the show.

It’s possible to talk about Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur without bringing up its troubled production, but it’s difficult. Aside from one very cute teaser trailer, everything we’ve heard about this movie has revolved around massive delays and directors being replaced and the story being radically reworked. Even the newly revealed voice cast includes major changes – Pixar has revealed the “official” cast for this movie before and it looked very, very different.