Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Stars Compare Characters to Luke Skywalker and Elon Musk

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes‘ leading actors Owen Teague and Kevin Durand recently shared their pop culture inspirations for playing Noa and Proximus Caesar.

The stars of the latest Apes installment spoke to the Inside Total Film podcast where Teague responded to director Wes Ball‘s comparison of the movie’s hero Noa to Star Wars‘ Luke Skywalker. “I mean, it makes sense,” Teague said. “Those stories that those characters have are very much a kind of rise to heroism and to saving their people, societies, or whatever. And that is exactly Noa’s story. I mean there’s pressure for sure but he [Ball] is absolutely right.”

Teague’s co-star Durand revealed a similar comparison between the new Apes’ villain Proximus and tech genius Elon Musk. Ironically, the actor in real life has been mistaken for Musk in person. “I get Elon Musk all the time actually, it’s very funny,” Durand said. “People approach me with a look in their eye where I realize they are not meeting an actor that they like, it’s something bigger. But the fact that it comes through even when I’m an ape is fantastic!”

Durand added, “I did look at really charismatic speakers — I watched [life coach] Tony Robbins quite a bit, Elon, Arnold Schwarzenegger doing like his governor speeches,” he explained. “Just these humans who without trying, you just have to watch them as they hold so much power and charisma.”

What happens in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes?

The official synopsis reads: “Director Wes Ball breathes new life into the global, epic, franchise set several generations in the future following Caesar’s reign, in which apes are the dominant species living harmoniously and humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.”

Owen Teague headlines the latest Apes movie alongside Freya Allan (The Witcher), Peter Macon (The Orville), Eka Darville (Marvel’s Jessica Jones), Kevin Durand (Swamp Thing), Travis Jeffery (Preacher), Neil Sandilands (The Flash), Sara Wiseman (Power Rangers Dino Fury), Lydia Peckham (Cowboy Bebop), Ras-Samuel Welda’abzgi (The Clearing), William H. Macy (Mystery Men), and Dichen Lachman (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.).

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is now playing in theaters.