Villains Wiki

Hi. This is Thesecret1070. I am an admin of this site. Edit as much as you wish, but one little thing... If you are going to edit a lot, then make yourself a user and login. Other than that, enjoy Villains Wiki!!!

READ MORE

Villains Wiki
Advertisement

Chief Inspector Kolp, later Governor Kolp, is the secondary antagonist of the Planet of the Apes franchise.

He was the Chief Inspector of Central City during Governor Breck's administration, and served as Breck's chief enforcer in the management of the city's ape slaves. This position put him in direct opposition to the chimpanzee Caesar, and he eventually came to define himself as Caesar's archenemy. Later on, after humanity was largely destroyed by nuclear warfare, Kolp assumed the title of Governor himself, ruling the radiation-scarred survivors taking shelter beneath the ruins of the city.

He was portrayed by the late Severn Darden.

Biography[]

First appearing in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Kolp was the Chief Inspector of Central City's State Security secret police, serving under Governor Breck and superior to fellow inspector Hoskyns. Kolp was shown to have a sadistic but calm and detached personality, compared to Breck's open tyranny. Despite this difference, Kolp faithfully carried out Breck's orders against the apes.

Kolp and Hoskyns were tasked by Breck with interrogating Armando, a circus owner who had been arrested on suspicions that he had been protecting Caesar, a fugitive ape Breck sought to have eliminated; Breck feared that Caesar's ability to speak meant he would lead the world to the apocalyptic future described by his late parents Cornelius and Zira. Kolp and Hoskyns' interrogation led to Armando committing suicide when they used a machine to force him into answering their questions truthfully.

Kolp later searched through the records of ape shipments coming into Ape Management, suspicious that Caesar may have infiltrated the city by posing as a wild ape. He found that Caesar had tried concealing himself in a shipment of orangutans, and that Breck had unwittingly purchased him at auction. Once the secret police apprehended Caesar, Kolp oversaw his electric torture during Breck's interrogation, and ultimately gave the order for Caesar to be executed in the same method once it was proven he could speak and reason. However, Kolp and Breck left the executioner alone to carry out their sentence, and did not know that Caesar survived due to Breck's sympathetic aide Mr. MacDonald tampering with the equipment.

Though he was not seen during the apes' revolt on the Night of the Fires, Kolp evaded capture and survived. He then also survived the nuclear war humanity unleashed, leading to their subsequent downfall as a species. As Breck and MacDonald died during the war, Kolp was able to seize control of the few survivors, styling himself Governor and establishing a colony beneath the ruins of Central City. However, the radioactivity left by the war caused Kolp and his subjects to begin suffering physical illness and mutation, and started driving Kolp insane, turning him into a paranoid megalomaniac. He feared that Caesar and the apes would one day return to conquer the city and finish off humanity once and for all.

Twelve years later, Caesar, his orangutan advisor Virgil, and Mr. MacDonald's brother traveled to the ruins - now dubbed the Forbidden City by the apes - in search of old video recordings of Caesar's parents' testimony about the future. Kolp's security forces discovered their presence, causing Kolp to believe his fears were coming true. He dispatched spies to track them back to Ape City, and upon learning not only the location of the city but the health and prosperity of the apes and humans living there, decided to marshal his forces for an all-out invasion. His second-in-command Méndez tried to warn him that an attack would violate their twelve years of peace, but Kolp dismissed his concerns by deeming their current situation as boring.

Kolp traveled with his troops to carry out the attack personally, ordering his men to leave Ape City "looking like the city we came from," and to do their worst. The initial exchange of fire in the battle led to Kolp's forces gaining the upper hand and pushing into Ape City's borders. There, they found dozens of seemingly dead apes, with an injured Caesar among them. Meeting Caesar face-to-face again for the first time since the Night of the Fires, Kolp menaced him with a revolver, declaring himself to be the Brutus to Caesar and promising that the apes would again learn what it meant to serve a master. However, before he could shoot Caesar, Caesar's wife Lisa shouted to distract him, allowing Caesar time to order the apes to carry out their surprise attack, having played dead to lure Kolp in. Many of Kolp's soldiers were captured, but Kolp and a small group of his troops escaped on a school bus. However, they were ambushed by General Aldo and his gorillas, who disabled the bus and killed them all.

Deleted scenes from the original cut of Battle for the Planet of the Apes reveal a final backup plan Kolp had: if his invasion of Ape City were to fail, Méndez and his lieutenant Alma were to activate the humans' secret weapon - the Alpha-Omega Bomb from Beneath the Planet of the Apes - and launch it at Ape City. When Kolp was killed by Aldo prior to sending any signal about whether or not to launch the missile, Alma decided to carry out the order, but Méndez convinced her not to, telling her that the bomb's destructive power should be venerated instead of used. Thus, this established the beginning of the House of Méndez cult seen with the Alpha-Omega Bomb in Beneath.

Trivia[]

  • An early script for Battle for the Planet of the Apes featured as its main antagonist a rogue US Army general named "Nimrod" whose real name was revealed to be Méndez, thus establishing the time loop that would lead to the House of Méndez cult in Beneath. In this version, Kolp did not appear.
    • A later draft featured Governor Breck returning as the main antagonist, as he had been spared by Caesar in the last-minute rewrite of the ending of Conquest. However, Don Murray turned down playing the role again. This led to Kolp assuming the title of Governor as Breck was killed off during the nuclear war off-screen.
      • As the novelization of Conquest used the original ending where Breck was killed, the novelization of Battle had to use Kolp as its antagonist to maintain continuity.
  • Kolp and Dr. Zaius are the only villains to appear in more than one film in the original film series. If the reboot film series is included, Koba shares this distinction.

Navigation[]

           PlanetOfTheApesTitle Villains

Novel
Mi Zaïus | President of the Assembly

Original films
Dr. Zaius | Dr. Maximus | President Gaius | Dr. Honorius | General Ursus | Albina | Ongaro | Adiposo | Caspay | Mendez XXVI | Dr. Otto Hasslein | E-1 | E-2 | Governor Breck | Governor Kolp | General Aldo |

Remake film
General Thade | Attar | Limbo | Zaius | Minister Shiva

Reboot films
Humans
Steven Jacobs | Dodge Landon | Roger | Tommy | Dreyfus | Carver | Mae

Apes
Koba (Loyalists) | Pope | Grey | Brutus

Alpha-Omega
Colonel McCullough | Red | Preacher | Winter

Coastal Ape Colony
Proximus Caesar | Sylva | Lightning | Trevathan

Advertisement