It’s tough being an ape—especially with Woody Harrelson’s obsessed Colonel McCullough looking to wipe you out. Andy Serkis, as the genetically enhanced ape Caesar, will need a bit of help to turn the tables. “The War for the Planet of the Apes” is the third in the series. Each has been more ambitious from a technical standpoint than the previous version.
This time around, visual effects producer Ryan Stafford had his work cut out for him and his crew. There are more chimpanzees, gorillas, and apes in this movie and the conditions are more complex. Rain and snow have their own challenges, but when the fur is flying it also gets wet. This required significantly improved software to handle the large number of entities within a frame, such as the battle scenes, as well as the requirement to provide realistic renditions of the non-human characters.