Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Subtly Confirmed The Fate Of James Franco's Will

Summary Will Rodman's fate in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes remains ambiguous, hinted at through subtle clues left in the film.

Signs around Will's house suggest he may have succumbed to the Simian Flu outbreak, with FEMA markings indicating infected individuals inside.

While Will doesn't appear in the film, his presence is felt through mentions in the wider rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise and tie-in novel.

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes may not have revealed the fate of James Franco's Will Rodman in dialogue, but it subtly confirmed the worst. 1968's landmark sci-fi Planet Of The Apes featured Charlton Heston landing on a planet dominated by sentient apes who have enslaved humanity. The franchise was rebooted in 2011 with prequel Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, where a present-day scientist named Will (James Franco) raises an intelligent chimpanzee named Caesar (Andy Serkis). The story ends with Will saying goodbye to Caesar following the ape uprising and being shocked to realize he can speak.

In the original script, Will was supposed to die in this sequence as Brian Cox's character — who owned the primate shelter Caesar and the others escaped from — tried to shoot Caesar, only to hit Rodman instead. The movie now ends with Will's neighbor — a pilot unknowingly infected with the Simian Flu — causing the outbreak of the virus worldwide. James Franco's Will wasn't seen again in the franchise, but the 2014 sequel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes hinted at his eventual fate.

1:50 Related Every Single Planet Of The Apes Movie (In Chronological Order) The Planet of the Apes timeline is a bit confusing, so we arranged them in their proper chronological order

How Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Revealed Will's Fate

Key Signs Around His House Suggest He Didn't Last Long After The Simian Flu Outbreak

Will doesn't feature in Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes outside a brief scene where Caesar watches a video of himself playing with James Franco's scientist when the ape was still young. This scene finds Caesar hiding out in Will's house after Koba tries to kill him, and while it's assumed Will and his girlfriend Caroline (Freida Pinto, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle) were killed during the outbreak of the virus, this is never confirmed in dialogue.

If Will or Caroline became infected, that means they died in the early stages of the outbreak.

However, there's a major giveaway Will died in the house — there's a FEMA sign marked outside the front door confirming infected people are inside. The only people to survive the outbreak of the virus in the Planet of the Apes reboot timeline are naturally immune to it, so if Will or Caroline became infected, that means they died in the early stages of the outbreak.

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Further evidence of this is the fact Will's old station wagon from Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is seen deserted in front of the house, meaning he likely never left his home. Producer Dylan Clark later suggested Will was never supposed to survive past Rise's ending, which was his punishment of sorts for unleashing the Simian Flu. Will's demise was seemingly kept just vague enough in Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes that it's possible the filmmakers could have brought him back for War, which ultimately didn't happen.

Related Planet Of The Apes: All Movie Timelines Explained A complete guide to every timeline introduced in the Planet of the Apes franchise, from the original timeline to the prequels' timeline.

Will Was Mentioned Several Times After Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes

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While James Franco only starred in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and appeared in Dawn thanks to archival footage and hints about his character's death in the Simian Flu outbreak, Will Rodman was mentioned a few more times in the wider rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise. Caesar may be the focus of the franchise, but it would feel odd if Rodman was forgotten completely given his importance in Caesar's life. While the movies didn't refocus on Rodman, his name did appear again in the tie-in novel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Firestorm.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Firestorm is a prequel novel written by author Greg Keyes, and was released in 2014, filling in some of the gaps between Rise of the Planet of the Apes and its sequel. In particular, the novel focuses on Koba, the bonobo who stands by Caesar's side during the Ape Rebellion and eventually challenges him for his position of leadership among the primates. Will Rodman is seen multiple times in Koba's flashbacks.

Koba was one of the apes Will and his team experimented on when trialing ALZ-113, the drug that eventually granted Caesar his intelligence and created the Simian Flu.

Koba was one of the apes Will and his team experimented on when trialing ALZ-113, the drug that eventually granted Caesar his intelligence and created the Simian Flu. These flashbacks show a different side to Will, and thanks to Koba's perspective of James Franco's scientist and his team it's easy to see why all the apes didn't agree with Caesar's assertion that not all humans were bad.

Will was a key reason Caesar had some faith in human beings. However, due to being the subject of his lab experiments, it's clear that Koba would see Will as one of the most dangerous of them all, making the bonobo's rebellion in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes much more understandable.