For anyone who might have somehow missed that giant all-caps headline,
SPOILERS abound for both
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and potentially its sequel, from here on out.
Still with me? Recently, a Chinese website called "
M Time" sat down with
Apes director Matt Reeves and asked him the one question that curiously no one seems to have asked the filmmaker yet - Did Koba (
portrayed brilliantly through motion-capture by Toby Kebbell - who is also our new Doctor Doom in the Fantastic Four
reboot) actually die from his fall after the climactic fight with Caesar? We've been provided with the English translation for this interview, courtesy of Badass Digest:
"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.'
Reeves goes on to reveal that at one point, heavy consideration was given to the possibility of making Koba's survival MUCH clearer for audiences:
"And so 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.' "
Of course, the Easter Egg he's referring to is that "scene" at the very end of
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, after the credits roll. The screen remains blank for a few extra seconds until something can be heard moving around amidst rubble and debris. A few faint ape-like sounds can be discerned...and that's it. Combined with Matt Reeves' not-so-subtle comments, this teaser further reinforces the tantalizing possibility that the villainous Koba may be alive and could return in the sequel to cause some more trouble for Caesar, his apes, and possibly the rapidly-advancing human military presence that was teased in the last scene of the film.
So what do you think? Do you want to see Koba defy death and return for the sequel? Sound off in the comments below!
A growing nation of genetically evolved apes led by Caesar is threatened by a band of human survivors of the devastating virus unleashed a decade earlier. They reach a fragile peace, but it proves short-lived, as both sides are brought to the brink of a war that will determine who will emerge as Earth’s dominant species.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In), from a screenplay written by Mark Bomback, Scott Z. Burns, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. The cast includes: Andy Serkis (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey), Jason Clarke (Zero Dark Thirty, Public Enemies, The Great Gatsby), Gary Oldman (The Dark Knight Rises, The Harry Potter film series), Keri Russell (The Americans, Mission Impossible III), Toby Kebbell (The Prince of Persia, Wrath of the Titans, Rock N Rolla), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Let Me In, ParaNorman), Enrique Murciano (Traffic, Black Hawk Down), Kirk Acevedo (The Thin Red Line) and Judy Greer (The Descendants, Three Kings, 13 Going on 30). The film hit theaters July 11, 2014.