When we last saw Caesar, the intelligent chimpanzee-turned-simian freedom fighter of Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), he was leading his ape army into Muir Woods, determined to find sanctuary and safety for his species away from human interlopers. Much has changed when we pick up the story a decade later in the sequel to the successful franchise reboot, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. A "simian flu" has wiped out a huge amount of the homo sapien population; Caesar (again played by Andy Serkis, the Marlon Brando of motion-capture performers) has formed a tribal ape society among the redwoods. Then an engineer (Jason Clarke) and his fellow human survivors stumble across the peaceful monkeys, and things start to get heated. Tentative agreements are reached. A militant ape named Koba wants to go all Kong on those hairless intruders. Everybody knows that all-out inter-species war is just one misunderstanding or banana-peel slip-up away.
Best known for the giant-monster found-footage movie Cloverfield (2008) and the child-vampire remake Let Me In (2010), director Matt Reeves grabs the reigns of the Apes series and expands on the first film's ideas of animalistic evolution, social devolution and reverse Darwinism. Rolling Stone got him on the phone and asked him to dissect five of Dawn's key scenes. As told to David Fear