Why War for the Planet of the Apes made me a vegetarian

When I left the theater, I vowed never to eat meat again

Cesar in War of the Planet of the Apes.
(Image credit: Twentieth Century Fox Films / Lifestyle pictures / Alamy Stock Photo)

It was his eyes that got me.

Brown, deep-set eyes looking down from the big screen, as I watched in the darkened cinema. Eyes that held all the emotions — the distress, the hurt, the inconsolable despair of grief — that a father experiences upon losing his beloved child and wife. My rational mind ignored the fact that those eyes belonged to an ape. It didn't care that apes don't have wives. I was transfixed by the pain pouring out of the screen and into my own heart. As I left the cinema after watching War for the Planet of the Apes, all I could think was: "I can never eat an animal ever again."

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Nadia Neophytou

Nadia Neophytou is a journalist from South Africa, who lives and runs in New York City. She reports on U.S. stories for Eyewitness News in South Africa, and writes about film, music, and culture for The Sunday Times, GQ, Marie Claire, and the Mail & Guardian. When she's not sitting down interviewing movie stars, she can be found running — and interviewing other runners on the run, literally, in her YouTube series called The Rundown.