With Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes picking up ten years after **Rise **left off, you might be curious as to what exactly has occurred in the intervening period. As luck – and 20th Century Fox’s marketing bods – would have it, there are three new viral videos showing exactly that. And, from humanity’s point of view, it’s not too pretty. Ape-manity, meanwhile, is out there... biding its time.
Motherboard, Vice’s science and tech channel, is behind these three virals that offer a glimpse into the decade elapsed, as well as a further video that takes us to an ape testing facility in Liberia.
The standout, Story Of Gun, boasts obvious echoes of **Winchester 73 **in charting the breakdown of law and order in society as shotgun passes from one pair of hands to another. And another...
The intervening period has brought the spread of the Simian Flu. First isolated cases, then an epidemic and finally a full-blow pandemic has devastated the human population and brought anarchy and despair. Looting is everyone and the penalty for just about any crime is death.
Into this breach scampers an army of apes, led by Andy Serkis’s Caesar who negotiate a fragile-looking truce with the human survivors, Jason Clarke’s scientist Malcolm and Gary Oldman’s jaundiced Dreyfus among them. Judging by the latest trailer, war will be hard to avoid.
With Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Kirk Acevedo, Enrique Murciano and Judy Greer rounding out the cast, and Matt Reeves behind the camera, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes opens in the US on July 11 and six days later in the UK.