Caesar

Will Rodman is testing the drug ALZ-112 on chimps at Gen-Sys. Caesar's mother, Bright Eyes, is put down after an attack, and Will finds her hidden baby. He takes him home, where he lives with his father, Charles, who has Alzheimer's, and names him Caesar.

The chimp grows up learning sign language, solving puzzles and roaming Muir Woods with Will and the vet Caroline. Will uses the drug on Charles, who gets better for a while. When the neighbor, Hunsiker, roughs up Charles, Caesar attacks him to protect the old man, and a court sends the ape to a primate shelter.

At the San Bruno shelter, Caesar is abused by keeper Dodge Landon and shunned by the other apes. He befriends Maurice, a former circus orangutan who knows sign language, earns the respect of Buck the gorilla and becomes the group's leader. When Will comes to take him back, Caesar refuses to go.

He slips out at night, steals canisters of the new formula, ALZ-113, from Will's house and releases the gas in the shelter. When Dodge tries to subdue him, Caesar shouts his first word: No! The apes free others from Gen-Sys and the zoo and fight their way across the Golden Gate Bridge. In Muir Woods, Will asks Caesar to come home, and he answers: Caesar is home.

A flu caused by ALZ-113 has wiped out most of humanity. In the forest, Caesar leads a community with a school, laws and hunts. He's with Cornelia, has a teenage son, Blue Eyes, and a newborn. The main law is simple: ape not kill ape.

A group of humans shows up needing to restart a dam to power the city. Caesar sends a message: apes don't want war, but they will fight. Later he lets Malcolm and his team work, as long as they hand over their guns. Ellie, from Malcolm's group, saves Cornelia with medicine. The bonobo Koba distrusts all of it.

At the celebration when the dam comes back online, Koba shoots Caesar with a gun stolen from the humans and pins it on them. With Caesar presumed dead, Koba leads the apes in an attack on San Francisco and locks up anyone who won't follow.

Malcolm finds Caesar wounded and takes him to Will's old house, where he recovers watching a video of himself as a baby. Blue Eyes finds his father alive and helps free the captive loyalists. At the top of an unfinished tower, Caesar fights Koba and, when the bonobo begs for help hanging over the edge, tells him he is not ape and lets him fall. He warns Malcolm that the military is coming and that the war has already started.

Two years later, the apes hide in the woods while a battalion led by the Colonel hunts them. Some of Koba's followers now work for the humans. One night, the Colonel raids the hideout and kills Cornelia and Blue Eyes. Caesar sends his people to find a new home across the desert and sets out for revenge with Maurice, Rocket and Luca.

On the way, they take in Nova, a human girl who can't speak, and meet Bad Ape, a lone chimp who talks. Luca is killed by soldiers. Consumed by hate, Caesar starts seeing visions of Koba and realizes he's becoming like him.

Caesar finds his people imprisoned in the Colonel's camp, forced to build a wall. The Colonel tells him he killed his own son, infected by a strain of the virus that takes away human speech, and that other military forces are coming for him. Caesar is strung up and nearly dies of thirst until Nova brings him water.

With Bad Ape's help, the apes escape through tunnels. Caesar finds the Colonel already infected and mute and leaves him his gun, which he uses on himself. During the battle between the soldiers, an avalanche buries them. Caesar is hit by an arrow. He leads the group to an oasis, sees his people safe and dies beside Maurice, who promises to tell young Cornelius who his father was.

The original Caesar comes from the '70s series: he leads the uprising in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and returns in Battle for the Planet of the Apes, played by Roddy McDowall. The 2011 version has a different origin and was played by Andy Serkis through performance capture in all three films. The work won critics' awards and sparked a fan campaign for an Oscar nomination that never came.