Is there any role, animal or human, that Andy Serkis cannot play? Over the past decade, the British actor has seamlessly transformed from schizophrenic hobbit to gigantic mountain gorilla, from evil alien to an ape poised to defeat humankind and help his brethren take over the world.
“Not all heroes are human,” says Serkis’s Caesar the ape in the July 14 release War for the Planet of the Apes. An inverted version of the line could easily serve as a perfect commentary on the actor’s career. With superlative motion-capture performances as the titular simian in the 2005 remake of King Kong, Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: A Force Awakens and the ape protagonist in the rebooted Planet of the Apes trilogy, Serkis has consistently asked the question: Do performances need to be completely human to be deemed Oscar-worthy?
In a trailer for the concluding film in the apes trilogy, Serkis stakes his claim. The video begins with Serkis, clothed in latex and mo-cap hardware, mouthing lines of dialogue, only to slowly but suddenly transform into Caesar the ape. The eyes and facial movements remain intact, and the emotions are palpable.
The makers of Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) revisited the beloved 1968 science fiction classic source material, but told the story from the point of the apes. Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake in 2001 had tried to do so, but had failed both critically and commercially.
The original movie was notable for the makeup of the chimps, which made audiences forget that there were humans inside the suits. In the digital age, there was only one way forward, with Andy Serkis, the “king of mo-cap”, as Caesar the ape. In order to prepare for the role, the actor spent time observing chimpanzees in zoos to learn how they behaved in captivity. The eventual performance made it difficult to tell where the real ended and digital began.
Serkis himself explained it as “apes infused with the heart and soul of an actor’s performance”.
Over three films in the rebooted Planet of the Apes series, Serkis’s Caesar has steadily emerged as the protagonist, many times more interesting and iconic than the human leads. Caesar’s vocabulary has also gone tremendous change, with one word in the first film to full speaking capability by the third one.
“Caesar’s speech is a lot to do with the throat,” explained the British actor about the signature voice he created for his character. “When we, as humans, articulate, our tongues tend to hit the back of the teeth. So this time I wore a mouth guard to prevent that from happening.”
Serkis had previously played a simina in Jackson’s 2005 remake of the 1933 classic King Kong. The actor visited Rwanda as part of the preparation process. He observed chimps in the wild and in captivity to learn from their movements.
In a two-part behind the scenes video, the technicians at the special effects company Weta explained how the process was created. The videos also showcase the immense physicality required in a motion capture performance, with Serkis imitating ape movements down to a T, covered in velcro and colourful dots that recreate his performance.
When asked what he would like to be remembered as in a recent interview, Serkis said, “Preferably not as the guy who played Gollum.” In a way, the actor is trying to alter that legacy by branching out into direction with Breathe later this year, and productions of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book stories and George Orwell’s seminal critique of totalitarianism, Animal Farm. But because the actor embodied the role of Gollum in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy in its totality, he will always be associated with it. The slithering voice of Gollum repeatedly saying, “My precious” is unlikely to leave us.
When the 53-year-old actor was initially in the career-defining role of Gollum, Jackson only wanted him for his voice performance. But Jackson noticed Serkis’s dedication to the role and realised that the performance would benefit from motion capture. With his special effects company Weta, he was able to create a CG-inflected character that would hold its own in the company of actors such as Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen and Cate Blanchett and, in some aspects, even overshadow them.
In a 2014 appearance on the talk show Conan, Serkis imagined what a phone call between Gollum and Caesar would sound like.