Merrick here...
...fighting memories of ATTACK OF THE CLONES.
This is from EW, which also offers some perspective on this creature (a White Ape) HERE. Per JCM director Andrew Stanton...
...they’re sort of an oversized gorilla in the books, and they’re kind of ubiquitous. They’re littered everywhere through at least the first several novels. They were always cool, just from a visceral standpoint, [but] they don’t really have a narrative function in the first book. So what we did is we made the White Apes a formidable creature that you kind of hear about throughout the movie, but you never really witness.
[EDIT]
We needed a scene where Carter was going have to get out of his execution sentence in order to move the story forward, and we thought what better than having to go up against this formidable creature?
JCM hits March 9. Click to EMBIGGEN (slightly)!
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