In 2014, the giant monster genre came back in a big way with Gareth Edwards’ reboot of the Godzilla franchise. While the movie is not universally praised, it did set the stage and foundation for a whole new cinematic world.
In March of next year, one of the most iconic creations ever put to film will return in a brand new adventure in Kong: Skull Island. Neophyte director Jordan Vogt-Roberts has assembled a talented cast including Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers), Brie Larson (Room), John Goodman (10 Cloverfield Lane), and Samuel L. Jackson (The Hateful Eight), to bring his new vision of the creature to life.
In a recent interview with EW, Vogt-Roberts gave insight into his new vision for the King Kong:
“A big part of our Kong was I wanted to make something that gave the impression that he was a lonely God, he was a morose figure, lumbering around this island.
We sort of went back to the 1933 version in the sense that he’s a bipedal creature that walks in an upright position, as opposed to the anthropomorphic, anatomically correct silverback gorilla that walks on all fours. Our Kong was intended to say, like, this isn’t just a big gorilla or a big monkey. This is something that is its own species. It has its own set of rules, so we can do what we want and we really wanted to pay homage to what came before…and yet do something completely different.”
There were questions after it was uncovered that both Godzilla and Skull Island are actually building towards a movie that will see the two titans fight. Primarily, how would King Kong battle Godzilla, since the creature was hundreds of feet tall in his rebooted movie. The concerns were answered when the first teaser for Skull Island was shown at this past summer’s San Diego Comic Con.
The director went on to explain more about the size of Kong, as well as how they pulled off camera tricks and innovative story structure to make the upcoming film stand out:
“Well, the reveal you can wait for in the film itself, but you’ll see, I shot this on anamorphic lenses, which a lot of people said, ‘You’re crazy, you’re taking away more space to show how big he is!’…It seemed like a bigger challenge to communicate scale in that way. We’re also fundamentally not playing the same game that Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla did and most monster movies do, which I’m sort of sick of the notion that a monster movie needs to wait an hour or 40 minutes until the creature shows up. Kong traditionally does not show up in these movies until very, very late, and the monster traditionally does not show up until very, very late in a monster movie, so a lot of these movies tend to have this structure that’s a bit of a slow burn. Something about this movie made me want to reject that and play a very, very different game.”
While almost no one complains about the epic action sequences of 2014’s Godzilla, most who found fault in it disliked the slow build up to the kaiju’s reveal. It’s the same issue that origin stories in comic book movies run into where the hero doesn’t usually get their costume and superhero identity until the second or third act. It will be interesting to see how the movie is scripted to avoid the common pitfalls of monster movies.
There are a lot of reasons to get excited about the return of King Kong to theaters, plus the movie’s release is only four short months away. So get ready from a lot more awesomeness in the coming months.
Kong: Skull Island opens on March 10th, 2017.
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Source: EW