Warning: SPOILERS for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes are ahead!
Although Kevin Durand’s Proximus Caesar and Peter Macon’s are two of the most important characters in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ cast, these characters don’t share any screen time in this recent addition to the 2024 movies schedule. However, it turns out that these two apparently crossed paths sometime before the events of the latest Planet of the Apes movie. This revelation comes from Kingdom producers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, who informed me they know the special pasts of Proximus and Raka, and now I want to see this explored on the big screen.
Jaffa and Silver have been integral to the Planet of the Apes franchise ever since they were hired to produce and write 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the first installment in the current continuity. So naturally I was delighted to get to speak with them just a few days after the release of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which takes place “many generations” after 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes. Because of all the time that’s passed, I was curious about Jaffa, Silver and their collaborators have a clear history between the eras of Any Serkis’ Caesar and Proximus that’s been laid out in the canon, and Jaffa responded:
There definitely is. It’s not so specifically laid out that after Caesar, the next leader was his son or whatever it was. But we do have a very clear idea of what went down that gave birth to someone like Proximus… and Raka as well. How Raka and the Order of Caesar ended up where they were, where the chain of Proximus… how that all happened. There’s a moment in the film that Kevin does such a great job as Proximus, when he delivers that line, ‘And that old orangutan.’ I don’t know if you caught that or not at the dinner scene, and it’s so brilliant, it was intended in the script. It’s really meant to imply that he knew of Raka, that he knew about those characters. So yeah, like I said, it’s not granular, but we do have a really specific map of what happened.
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Although we learned that Raka’s partner was killed by Proximus’ soldiers in the midst of their search for Freya Allan’s Mae, it’s interesting to hear that Proximus was familiar with the orangutan and his studies into Caesar’s teachings even before all this, if not had outright met him. I’m curious if Proximus learned about Raka before or after his rise to power, but either way, evidently he didn’t consider him enough of a threat, otherwise Proximus would have had Raka killed long before Owen Teague’s Noa came his way. Unfortunately, Proximus still ended up being indirectly responsible for Raka’s demise… or at least that’s how it seems as the moment.
Shortly after Noa and Raka learned Mae could speak, a twist that was revealed to the public ahead of time, the trio were found again by Proximus soldiers, led by the gorilla Sylva. During the scuffle that ended with Noa and Mae being captured, the human woman was nearly swept away in the river underneath the bridge where they were attacked, and Raka rescued her, only to be swept away himself. By the end of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, it’s presumed that Raka is dead, but since we never saw a body, perhaps he managed to survive. Whether that’s the case or not, if Raka and Proximus did meet at some point, it’d be great to see this explored in a flashback or, if I can shoot my shot here, an entire prequel.
Ok, so maybe such a prequel is too much to ask for, but considering Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ strong box office performance in its opening weekend, there’s a good chance a sequel could get the green light, or maybe even the entire new trilogy that Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver have previously said they hope the movie launches. While we wait for news on that front, remember that all the previous Planet of the Apes movies can be streamed with a Hulu subscription.