By Brent McKnight | 6 years ago

If you were watching something besides the season finale of The Walking Dead tonight, you missed out. Not necessarily for the episode itself—that’s up for debate—but for the new look at director Matt Reeves’ upcoming Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Ominous and awesome, you don’t need to worry about the oversight, because the video is embedded right here for your pleasure and convenience. And if that isn’t enough of a treat late this Sunday night, or early Monday morning, depending on when you read this, there’s also a brand spanking new poster.

We’ve seen pictures of the actors playing the titular apes in their motion-capture suits, but this is our best and longest look at what the finished product will look like, and it is good. Seriously, why can’t it just be July 11 already so we can pay our money to see this? Dawn was already one of our most anticipated movies of the year—we loved Rise of the Planet of the Apes, so how could this not be—but this just makes us run around like screaming little fanboys. The fact that it’s ten o’clock on a Sunday night and I voluntarily chose to sit down and write about this should indicate my level of enthusiasm.

The clip begins as a gate opens up, revealing Caesar (Andy Serkis) and an entire crew of highly-evolved apes astride their horses, looking tough as all hell. That image alone is enough to strike fear into the hearts of men, but what really sets the mood is not their grimaces or their grim expressions, but the narration. A human voice tells you exactly why the apes will win and take over the world by the time Charlton Heston returns from space in the future.

I can’t be sure who is actually talking. It doesn’t sound like Jason Clarke or Gary Oldman, the two male human leads, but it doesn’t matter. What’s important are the words: “You know the scary thing about them? They don’t need power, lights, heat. Nothing. That’s their advantage. That’s what makes them stronger.” And that is exactly why the human race is about to go the way of the buffalo.

Here’s the official synopsis:

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.

Then there’s the poster, which debuted over at Collider. Both this image and the visuals from the clip are fantastic. The level of detail is incredible. Even online you can see each individual hair on the ape, each raindrop stuck in their fur. And this is all on a YouTube clip and a photo that’s gone through a couple of generations of degradation, just imagine what this movie is going to look like on the big screen.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes stars Serkis, Clarke, Oldman, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Kirk Acevedo, Enrique Murciano, Judy Greer, and a bunch of damn dirty apes, and opens everywhere July 11.