Adding to their unending generosity after revealing a great big new chunk of footage from Alien: Covenant, Fox also treated us to a good look at War for the Planet of the Apes, the third part of the franchise, presented by director Matt Reeves.

The trailer launched last December and looked fab.

We can't share the new footage itself with you for now but we can tell you what we saw.

MILD SPOILER ALERT FOR SOME PLOT DETAILS AND CHARACTER ARCS

We loved the first two Apes movies and it looks like this will continue the trend of expanding the apes' world and making advances in on-location performance capture.

Here are six things we learned about the movie.

1. We're two years into the fight

You may remember at the end of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the rift between men and apes had become more and more pronounced. Ape hero Caesar, who was raised by a benevolent human, was the planet's best chance for peace between the two tribes but a rift caused by damaged, vengeful chimp Koba and idiot human Carver escalated the fight, and has driven it into the forests.

What's left of the American military has been assembled using tanks and weaponry, while the forest is the natural terrain of apes, who have to use their own skills and resources to defend themselves. It's basically a war movie.

2. It's Apocalypse Now. Sort of.

At the start of the film, the human army is hunting for legendary leader Caesar who they believe is in a hidden basd somewhere. After a failed ambush by a human squadron, which results in a human prisoner of war, Caesar learns of the nature of their military leader The Colonel and goes on a mission into the heart of darkness to find him.

"It's a war for Caesar's soul," explains Matt Reeves, "it's a mythical journey," before likening (in a slightly tongue-in-cheek way) the movie to Apocalypse Now as Caesar travels into the snow-covered Sierra mountains in search of the legendary and demonic Colonel.

3. It's a Western. Sort of.

Reeves explained that the movie would traverse a range of genres, one of them being the Western. When Caesar decides to go on his quest to find the Colonel, he's adamant he'll go alone. But his friends won't have it. Orang-utan Maurice (Karin Konoval), chimp Rocket (Terry Notary) and gorilla Luca (Michael Adamthwaite) join him, and the four ride off on horseback like a posse off to confront an outlaw and save the town.

4. There might possibly still be a glimmer of hope for humanity

The posse starts as four but soon becomes five as kind-hearted Maurice discovers an orphaned human girl who seems as if she can't speak. Caesar doesn't want to take her along but Maurice won't leave her, knowing she'll die alone. Could this ape-human show of compassion be a spark of hope in the war-torn world?

5. Woody Harrelson is going to be terrifying

Yeah, that glimmer of hope? If anyone's snuffing that out, it's Harrelson's Colonel. He's a hardened Special ops guy, "he's very extreme, but the situation is very extreme", says Reeves. He responds to the apes with "true cruelty", Reeves explains, but adds that he feels he has a justification, based on a secret from his past that's yet to be revealed. In the film "he never lies", Reeves continues. It's the Colonel who rightly predicts that if the world continues the way it is, they will have a planet of apes.

6. 'Bad Ape' is going to steal the whole film

(This isn't a picture of Bad Ape. This is Caesar and he is largely a good ape. Bad Ape is funny-looking.)

War for the Planet of the Apes has its own Golem! Making his first appearance is a character Reeves refers to as 'Bad Ape', but he's not a bad ape like Koba was. He's a deeply unsettling and probably unstable ape who uses the phrase "Bad Ape" to refer to himself, as if humans had said this to him a lot.

Maurice, Luca, Rocket, Caesar and the mute little girl meet Bad Ape when he tries to rob then. When they confront him, they discover a strange, childlike talking primate, an ex-zoo ape who claims to have escaped when the others died. He's played by Steve Zahn and in the brief footage we saw of him, it's clear he's going to be a key part. Half-deranged, he's been alone for a long time and wants Caesar's gang to stay with him. But he talks of a terrible place, a "human zoo" which was once a quarantine, and Caesar knows he must go there...

War for the Planet of the Apes opens in UK cinemas on July 14.

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