<P> Principal photography on the film began on October 14, 2015 in the Lower Mainland in Vancouver, under the working title Hidden Fortress . Filming was expected to take place there until early March 2016 . Parts of the film were expected to shoot for up to five days in the Kananaskis in late January and early February . In March, Serkis confirmed that he had finished shooting his portions . </P> <P> As with Rise and Dawn, the visual effects for War were created by Weta Digital; the apes were created with a mixture of motion - capture and CGI key - frame animation, as they were performed in motion - capture technology and animated in CGI . </P> <P> At New York Comic - Con 2016, Reeves explained that he and Bomback were influenced by many films before writing . He said, "One of the first things that Mark and I did because we had just finished Dawn was that we decided to watch a million movies . We decided to do what people fantasize what Hollywood screenwriters get to do but no one actually does . We got Fox to give us a theater and we watched movie after movie . We watched every Planet of the Apes movie, war movies, westerns, Empire Strikes Back...We just thought,' We have to pretend we have all the time in the world,' even though we had limited time . We got really inspired ." </P> <P> Additionally, during production, Reeves and Bomback sought broader inspirations from films like The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Great Escape . Feeling that there was a need to imbue Biblical themes and elements, they also watched Biblical epics like Ben - Hur and The Ten Commandments . The influences and inspirations were made evident in the relationship between Caesar and Woody Harrelson's Colonel, a military leader with pretensions toward godhood . The parallels between Caesar as Moses and the Colonel as Pharaoh are quite evident . Caesar arranges for the escape of his oppressed and enslaved fellow apes . The oppressor army is totally destroyed by an overwhelming "sea" as in the Exodus story . Finally, when Caesar and his clan reach the mountain overlooking the "promised land" he dies--just as Moses did on Mt . Nebo . Reeves indebtedness to the Exodus story is substantial . Reeves has compared their relationship to the dynamic between Alec Guinness's British Commander and Sessue Hayakawa's prison camp Colonel in Bridge on the River Kwai . Another comparison is in Caesar's journey to find the Colonel, flanked by a posse of close friends--a situation Reeves explicitly tied to Clint Eastwood's war - weary soldier in The Outlaw Josey Wales . Influences from the film Apocalypse Now, notably Harrelson's character and his Alpha - Omega faction being similar to Colonel Kurtz's renegade army, were also noted by several journalists . Harrelson has also acknowledged the similarities and inspiration . </P>

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