Interview [Written]: Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver
From THR an interview with Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.
You already had written the 2011 reboot, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. What were your biggest challenges this time around?
Amanda Silver: We wanted to provide something new that was special and not sort of a rehash of the first movie. We also really had to figure out how far ahead to jump in time. There were a lot of variables regarding when to pick up with Caesar’s story.
Rick Jaffa: When you see the movie the time jump might seem natural, but at the beginning there were a lot of different ideas tossed about of when do we start the next film.
A lot of the movie involves sign language. What were the conversations like when deciding to do that?
Jaffa: That really was the next big issue — how far have the apes evolved? Everyone agreed they can’t have evolved to where they are all speaking the Queen’s English, or even some horrible version of a Western from the ’50s where Native Americans spoke in very broken English. Ideas went everywhere from having only Caesar talk to having all of them being able to talk.
How did you finally decide what you did?
Jaffa: Going back to the original movie, Amanda and I did a ton of research about apes and sign language and how apes not only can learn sign language from humans, but that there are documented cases where apes taught each other sign language. That was a pretty hard sell to the studio at first but the fact that these apes would have elevated intelligence due to the drugs and the virus — then you can make that leap. I think the audience is ready to make that leap too.
Silver: There’s the need to make the storytelling muscular and visual — that you are telling a lot through action. You realize we’re not writing a movie where apes are going to be discussing things rapidly back and forth. They are going to be acting and you set up situations where there is a lot of communication going on without words. It is a fun challenge and it’s a great way to tell a story.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes opens this weekend.
For the rest of the interview, go here.
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