*SPOILERS FROM DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES AHEAD*
In a recent interview with Chinese news site M News, director Matt Reeves shed some light on the hugely successful sequel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which has grossed over $600 million worldwide so far. In the interview, he was asked about the real fate of the film’s “villain” Koba, played by Toby Kebbell. In the film, Koba falls to his apparent death, but Reeves has suggested that perhaps that isn’t the case. The director said:
“You’re one of the few people to ever mention that. That’s pretty funny. Because I struggled with… I thought that Toby Kebbell gave such an incredible performance. And I thought he was so powerful and I thought: ‘God, you don’t find a villain who has got that great a story.’ Because as you said, he was not really formed as a villain; he’s really a tragic figure. And I thought: ‘God, he’s amazing; let’s leave open the possibility. Let’s create the door of a possibility if we find a story that becomes worth telling, that we can go down that path again because I thought the vein was so rich.”
He even goes on to say that plans were in place to make Koba’s survival a little more obvious to the audience:
“I actually had been working on a version where you could actually see him survive and I realized that it wasn’t…it was Caesar’s movie, and it was undercutting the whole idea. It sort of felt cheap. And so as we were mixing, I was like: ‘I want to just leave one tiny Easter Egg right at the end. I want to leave open the door just the tiniest crack.”
The crack that Reeves is alluding to is the post-credits blank scene where if you listen closely, faint ape-like sounds can be heard moving around amidst all the debris.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is still in cinemas, while Planet of the Apes 3 is set for release on July 29th 2016.
Originally published September 5, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
