WIRED: What is it like working with Andy Serkis [in terms of his motion capture outfit?]
FRANCO: On set, Andy would be dressed in an outfit that looked like gray pajamas, with a ton of wires around him and a small camera at the end of a wire armature pointed at his face to capture his expressions. He looked nothing like a chimpanzee, but he was so good at capturing the behavior of a chimpanzee that I guess my actor’s imagination took over. It was like acting with a chimpanzee who has amazing acting instincts.
WIRED: Were you a fan of the old Planet of the Apes movies?
FRANCO: Not really, although I did study them. If you compare our movie to the other ones, I think there’s a huge shift in theme. The early Apes movies are much more about cultures clashing, and the later ones became much more about race. In ours, they’ve shifted the emphasis—it’s a Frankenstein story. But Mary Shelley’s book was more about a scientist playing God. Our film is really a cautionary tale about what can happen when experimentation is unchecked.
WIRED: What’s the difference?
FRANCO: I took a required class about the ethics of science as an undergrad at UCLA, and it was all about who gets the funding. I suppose there must be altruistic scientists out there working for the betterment of humankind. But like anything—movies, religion, anything—money gets bound up in it all. That’s where it gets dangerous.
I just watched this movie, Limitless, which was, you know, really well made, but it was weird. The main character is a novelist, and he takes a pill and realizes all his intellectual potential. He can do anything now, because he’s so smart. So he writes his novel in four days, and then he gives up writing and goes into, like, speculating on the market. And there’s no critique of that. That’s our hero—this guy who’s going to make a lot of money. On the other hand, maybe that’s a great reflection of how our country operates. Granted, I fell asleep, so maybe they critique his actions a little bit in the end. But I don’t think so.