The Entire Planet Of The Apes Timeline Explained

We'll start with 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Will Rodman, a researcher on the cusp of an Alzheimer's cure, hopes his promising ALZ-112 treatment (a retrovirus that repairs and enhances brain cells) can be rolled out in time to save his ailing father Charles. For testing purposes, the team selects Bright Eyes, a caged chimp captured in the West African jungle. To the team's excitement, the treatment works. Stunningly well, in fact — to the point that Bright Eyes is catapulted from standard chimp intelligence to that of a human. 

Sadly, Bright Eyes goes on a violent rampage not long after, and is put down by security in front of the traumatized board of directors. By the time it's made clear that she lashed out to protect her child, it's too late: The project is terminated and Rodman finds himself out of a job. Robert Franklin, tasked with killing off the remaining test chimps, struggles when he reaches Bright Eyes' baby, and instead sneaks him to Will, who names him Caesar, and raises him at home.

Caesar, now leading the San Bruno apes, heads back to Will Rodman's house and smuggles samples of a newer (and, though Caesar doesn't know this, deadlier) ALZ-112: ALZ-113. Upon returning to the facility, he releases the treatment, elevating the cognitive abilities of the other captive apes to his level. Caesar then cages Dodge after refusing to get back in his own cage, and works to free the remaining apes. After escaping through the facility's roof, Caesar splits his forces in two, sending half to rescue the apes at Rodman's former lab, and the rest to free those housed at the San Francisco Zoo. 

Buck, one of Caesar's lieutenants, leads the latter group on a riotous stampede down the streets of San Francisco before meeting up with Caesar's crew at the Golden Gate Bridge, which they'd planned to cross to get to the relative safety of the Muir Woods National Monument. Unfortunately, a police barricade blocks the way forward. The resulting battle is fierce: Buck is killed protecting Caesar, and Koba, a murderous chimp with a hatred for humans, establishes himself as Caesar's chief rival for command. The apes do manage to break through, but not before Will arrives to say goodbye to Caesar, and give his blessing after the chimp refuses to return home with him.

Caesar now leads a colony in the Muir Woods, consisting of many apes he'd freed in the first movie, as well as their offspring. There's also Koba, the disfigured, human-hating Bonobo brute from the lab, who harbors his own ambitions of leadership, along with plans for war with the humans. Caesar's eldest son, Blue Eyes, accompanies Rocket's son Ash to a part of the woods in which a group of humans are patrolling. Startled, one of the men opens fire, wounding Ash and drawing Caesar and a small army of apes to the area. Caesar demands the humans leave immediately; they do. 

That night, a War Council is convened in which Caesar argues against a war with the humans, citing the accomplishments such a conflict would jeopardize. Koba, however, eager for a brawl, humbly suggests they need to display strength to discourage a further attack. Caesar agrees to this, and in the morning, he leads a war party into run-down San Francisco to find and confront the humans: A small group of virus-immune survivors In a tower. There, Caesar demands the humans and apes steer clear of each other, before leaving. Malcolm, a man who'd been in the party that'd wounded Ash, realizes he needs to access ape territory to secure a hydroelectric dam the humans desperately need. He decides to lead a team to Caesar to bargain for rights to the dam. Members on both sides prepare for war.

Koba leads the apes on a vicious nighttime assault against the humans in which they manage to breach their compound. Casualties are high for both sides. Dreyfus, a co-founder of the human colony, flees underground while Koba's apes kill or capture every remaining human within the sanctuary. At one point, Koba orders Ash to kill an unarmed human. Ash refuses, saying Caesar wouldn't do such a thing, and Koba kills him. "Caesar gone!" he roars, "Apes follow Koba now!" With that, Koba turns his rage on any ape he suspects of harboring loyalty for Caesar, and jails them alongside humans who need to "know life in a cage". 

The captives watch Koba's apes continue their rampage, killing and capturing any humans they run across. Meanwhile, Malcolm, Ellie and Alexander (their son) find a barely alive Caesar, who says Koba, not Carver, had shot him. They take Caesar with them but, upon discovering Koba now rules the compound, follow Caesar to his previous home, where they learn about his upbringing with humans. When Ellie points out Caesar's wound and lack of surgical supplies, Malcolm agrees to sneak into the city to retrieve them. He returns with them and Blue Eyes, who reunites with his father as Ellie nurses him back to health. When he's healthy enough, Caesar, Malcolm, and Alexander, newly aware of the similarities between their species, head to the city to settle the score.

Many of Koba's loyalist apes are forced to become slaves to the humans in 2017's War for the Planet of the Apes, which opens with a surprise assault on Caesar's forces by a fanatical remnant of the US military known as the Alpha-Omega. The apes win, but Caesar releases the four humans they capture back to Colonel McCullough as a token of peace. Shortly after, his son Blue Eyes, accompanied by Rocket, returns with the location of a potential new home for the apes, in a desert oasis far away from Alpha-Omega. Before the apes can depart, however, McCullough leads a night-time attack that kills Caesar's wife and several other apes. 

Caesar has no choice but to order the evacuation to proceed the next morning, far sooner than he would've liked. While the other apes head for the new sanctuary, he takes Maurice, Luca, and Rocket off to keep the humans away from the migrating clan and, hopefully, lure McCullough into the open, where Caesar can kill him. Early in their journey, this squad stumbles upon a nearly abandoned village housing a lone Alpha-Omega deserter (whom Caesar shoots) and a mute young girl who they befriend and take with them. Later, they encounter the traitorous Winter, an ape working for the humans, and accidentally kill him when he screams for help after divulging the Colonel's location and intentions.

With the help of Rocket, Maurice, and Bad Ape, Caesar manages to evacuate the imprisoned apes via an underground tunnel system, before rushing off to kill McCullough. When he finds him, however, Caesar realizes he's been infected with the mutated flu that he'd launched his crusade to eradicate in the first place. Unable to deliver better justice, Caesar hands the man his gun back — he kills himself with it — and heads outside, where Alpha-Omega forces are firing on the fleeing apes, despite being shelled themselves by the northern army. When Caesar tries to attack them from behind, he's wounded by Preacher, one of the captive humans he'd released in the beginning of the film. 

Red, a human-allied ape slave, saves his life by firing a grenade launcher at Preacher just before he is killed himself. A wounded Caesar manages to win the battle for the northern forces by detonating the Alpha-Omega's fuel depot, but inadvertently triggers an avalanche that the apes climb trees to escape. At long last, the apes are free to migrate to their new home in peace. Maurice, however, discovers that Caesar is mortally wounded. In private, he assures Caesar that he'll see to it that his youngest son, Cornelius, will be informed of his father's accomplishments and carry on his fight. Thus ends The War for the Planet of the Apes: bloody, brutal, and brilliant.