King Kong (2005 film)

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King Kong
Theatrical Poster For King Kong
Directed by	Peter Jackson
Produced by	Jan Blenkin Carolynne Cunningham Fran Walsh Peter Jackson
Written by	Story: Merian C. Cooper Edgar Wallace Screenplay: Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens
Starring	Naomi Watts Jack Black Adrien Brody Thomas Kretschmann Colin Hanks Jamie Bell Andy Serkis
Music by	James Newton Howard
Cinematography	Andrew Lesnie
Editing by	Jamie Selkirk
Distributed by	USA Theatrical and Worldwide DVD / Video Universal Pictures Non-USA Theatrical United International Pictures
Release date(s)	December 14, 2005
Running time	Theatrical: 187 min. Extended Edition: 192 min.
Language	English
Budget	$207,000,000
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

King Kong is the three-time 2006 Academy Award-winning remake of the original 1933 King Kong film about a fictional giant ape called Kong. It was directed by Peter Jackson, produced by Jackson and Fran Walsh, written by Jackson, Walsh and Philippa Boyens, and its cast included Naomi Watts in the role of Ann Darrow, Jack Black as Carl Denham, Adrien Brody as Jack Driscoll and through performance capture Andy Serkis as Kong.

In 1933, Great Depression-era New York City, actress Ann Darrow has just lost her job at the local theatre and is faced with dancing at the local burlesque show to survive. Meanwhile, film director Carl Denham faces the cancellation of his latest movie because of his unorthodox methods and approach to filmmaking. After Carl recruits Ann to replace his leading lady, who joins the film because of the presence of her favorite writer Jack Driscoll, they set sail to evade the police and journey to a remote Indian Ocean island known as Skull Island to find the legendary creature known as Kong.

The film's budget climbed from an initial $150 million US to a record-breaking $207 million. With a huge marketing campaign and many commercial tie-ins, the December 14, 2005 release was all-encompassing for the movie market, and was seriously challenged only by its other major competitor, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The film made a modest opening of $50.1 million, and significantly underperformed expectations at the box office. Nonetheless, Kong turned out to be very profitable as ticket and DVD sales combined, the film earned well over $600 million, becoming the fourth-highest grossing movie in Universal Pictures history.

It recieved positive reviews, which some considering it one of the all-round best movies of 2005, though it has been criticized for its excessive length at three hours and eight minutes. It won Academy Awards for visual effects, sound mixing, and sound editing.

Plot

Carl Denham is a documentary filmmaker whose penchant for "safari films" does not go over well with his studio bosses who prefer to see him turn in a romance film for a change. When he discovers that they would rather sell his films off as stock footage than fund his latest movie, Denham steals the film and quickly organizes to leave for his next shoot immediately. Still in need of a leading lady, along the way he meets Ann Darrow, an unemployed vaudeville actress whose theatre was recently closed down due to lack of money. He convinces Ann to join him in his latest movie endeavour and boards a tramp steamer with her.

Jack Driscoll — a hapless playwright who has written part of the screenplay - is tricked by Denham into joining the journey in order to finish the story. The ship leaves just in time for Denham to escape the police, who have been sent by Denham's angry studio bosses, and sets off on a voyage to what Ann and Jack believe to be Singapore. Along the way, Denham reveals they're actually heading for Skull Island, a place unknown to the outside world that Denham believes will make for some spectacular footage for his production. Although Captain Englehorn and the first mate, Ben Hayes, voice concerns and skepticism about their destination, they set out to find the island anyway. Meanwhile Ann, a fan of Jack's plays, begins to fall in love with the playwright. Eventually, Jack tells her that he's writing a stage comedy for her, and ends up kissing her.

News that Denham is wanted for arrest puts an end to the search for the island, but the ship then stumbles into the island's location and becomes trapped on a big rock. As the steamer's crew try to fix the ship, Denham, Ann, Jack and the film crew go ashore, where they are ambushed by a mob of angry natives. Denham's sound-recordist Mike and one other crewman are killed, but Denham, Jack and the rest of the landing party are rescued by Captain Englehorn and his crew. They return to the ship and make preparations to leave, but a native slips on board and captures Ann, killing a crewman in the process. Ann is soon held captive, tied up, and strapped to the superior posts of a thin wooden drawbridge that juts across to the other side of a massive wall which separates the natives from the rest of the island. The ship's crew arm themselves and attempt a rescue mission, but are too late as Carl watches Ann get taken away by a giant ape.

The crew discover that the ape, named "Kong" by the natives, lives in a massive jungle where prehistoric creatures have been protected and hidden for millions of years. After some discussion, the captain allows Denham and Jack to take 15 armed crewman led by Hayes to go look for her. Denham attempts to take advantage of the search, and brings along all his camera gear, remaining film crew, and even the actor. As they trek through the jungle, the group comes across a Ceratopsian dinosaur. Panicking, they start firing at it and it rampages, possibly killing four crewmen. They are able to kill it with a few shots from a Tommy gun.

As they continue through the jungle, the group stops to rest. Carl, Bruce and the camera assistant, Herb go to film some scenes and they run into a pack of Brontosaurus dinosaurs. A pack of Venatosaurus causes the Brontosaurus to start running, and the crew is caught in the middle of the rampage. Four crewmen and Herb are killed in the rampage. Meanwhile, in an attempt to keep Kong from possibly killing her, Ann desperately resorts to trying to entertain Kong by dancing and doing tricks, which actually succeeds in amusing Kong. But when Ann stops and defies him, Kong becomes angry and throws a tantrum, but fails to intimidate her. Kong then strangely leaves, so Ann takes the opportunity to escape.

Meanwhile, the film crew has constructed two log rafts to cross a river. While on the river, large scorpion type animals crawl onto the rafts. The crew easily fends them off, but a gigantic serpent monster attacks them. When it corners Preston, who has Carl's camera, and Jack in the water, Carl grabs a gun and stops the monster from killing them. They then manage to swim back to shore, with three crewmen killed.

Later, as they are crossing a log bridge, Hayes goes into a cave to check if it's clear and is killed by Kong in a surprise attack. Kong then drops the log (with everyone on it) into the chasm, with the fall killing three men, including Lumpy the cook's friend Choy. When they wake up in the hole, the survivors find themselves trapped in a chasm with giant invertebrates, including bloodworm-like Carnictis (Vile Meat-Weasel), weta-like Weta-Rexes, Arachno-Claws (that look like a cross between a spider and a scorpion) and other large insects. Carl, enraged by the destruction of his camera, grabs a wooden stick and fights off the bugs. Lumpy, trying to save the body of Choy from becoming worm food, dies protecting it from the Carnictis bugs. Jimmy is able to save Jack by picking off the bugs on him with the only remaining gun. In all, three men are killed, and only Carl, Jack and Jimmy remain. The survivors are rescued by Captain Englehorn with another rescue party lead by Bruce Baxter. Alone, Jack continues his determined search for Ann, whilst Denham decides to capture Kong and bring him back to New York City.

Trying to find her way back, Ann runs into two scavenging Foetodons. Just before one comes close to killing her, a huge Vastatosaurus rex emerges and kills it, and then chases after Ann. She narrowly escapes the Vastatosaurus rex, but is cornered next to another one. Kong then returns and engages the two V-rexes — and then a third one that emerges — in a massive battle, with Ann thrown along all throughout, but saved by Kong from being killed. Eventually, Kong kills all three of the V-rexes. During the battle, Ann realizes that Kong is her only chance of surviving the island, and voluntarily lets Kong carry her with him afterwards. Kong returns to his lair atop a cliffside, where Ann observes him taking in a tranquil sunset. She goes into Kong's hand and soon falls asleep.

Eventually, Jack finds Ann, and they escape while Kong is busy defending himself from an attack by giant bat-like creatures called Terapusmordax. Kong catches up to them at the wall, but Denham and the surviving crew members are waiting and attempt to capture Kong (against Ann's pleas), but Kong breaks free of the trap. He kills many of the crew members, but at the last minute, Denham successfully subdues Kong by smashing a bottle of chloroform across his face. He announces his plans to display Kong as, "The Eighth Wonder of the World".

Months later in New York City, Ann is an anonymous chorus line dancer (after refusing large sums to appear on stage with Kong), while the lovelorn Jack watches a comedy he wrote whose lead role was meant for her. Denham puts the subdued and shackled Kong on display on a Broadway stage in front of a large audience. However, angered by the show's fake "Ann", and frightened and enraged by the commotion and press-flashbulbs, Kong breaks free from his chains, charges into the crowd, and runs amok in Times Square searching for Ann picking up any blonde in the street only to throw her away when he realizes it isn't her.

Jack attempts to draw Kong away from crowded areas, and a hectic car chase through the streets ensues, which ends with Kong almost killing Jack. Ann then approaches Kong, calming him down. Carrying Ann with him, Kong wanders through the city, eventually into Central Park, where he slides around with her on a lake of ice, in a brief moment of happiness. Moments later, they are ambushed by the Army, who attack Kong with machine gun fire and artillery rounds.

Reminiscent of his cliff-dwelling, Kong escapes to the Empire State Building, which he proceeds to climb, with one hand, holding Ann gently in the other. Kong and Ann take in the sunrise at the top of the building, until six biplanes (Curtis Helldivers) appear and attack Kong. Ann tries to stay with him, but Kong puts her down, climbing to the top of the skyscraper as the planes attack. Ann tries to climb higher to save him, waving and yelling at the biplanes to stop. Kong manages to destroy three of the planes, but is repeatedly machine-gunned. Mortally wounded, Kong eventually succumbs to his injuries as Ann cries, and falls to his death. Jack rushes to comfort Ann as she stands grief-stricken. As he and the crowds view Kong's broken body, Carl Denham recites the story's signature quote, "It wasn't the airplanes, it was Beauty killed the Beast."

Production

Peter Jackson was a nine year old in the New Zealand town of Pukerua Bay when he first saw the 1933 version of King Kong. He was in tears in front of the TV when Kong slipped off the Empire State Building. At age 12 he tried to recreate the film using his parents' super-8 camera and a model of Kong made of wire and rubber with his mother's fur coat for the hair, but eventually gave up on the project. In 1996, he developed a version that was in pre-production for 6-7 months, but the studio cancelled it. This is most likely because of the release of Mighty Joe Young and Godzilla the same year. He then began work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. No casting was ever done, but he had hoped to get either George Clooney or Robert DeNiro. With its overwhelming box office and critical success, his desire to make King Kong was realized, and he was paid $20 million USD to direct this film, the highest salary Hollywood ever paid a director.

The film's budget climbed from an initial $150 million US to a record-breaking $207 million, making it the most-expensive film ever made in terms of current money spent and the sixth-most expensive film adjusted for inflation. Universal Studios only agreed to such an outlay after seeing a screening of the unfinished film, to which executives responded enthusiastically. The production budget was approximately $187 million and, in addition, it is estimated that marketing and promotion costs were about $20 million. Production had difficulties, such as Peter Jackson's decision to change composers from Howard Shore to James Newton Howard seven weeks before the film opened. Also, the film was originally set to be 135 minutes, but soon grew to 200, prompting Universal executives to fly to New Zealand to view a rough cut, but they liked it so their concerns were addressed. Other challenges include the rewriting of the script between 1996 and 2005, adding more character development to the 1933 story and acting as though the 1976 version never existed. The process began with a nine minute animatic created by Peter Jackson and shown to the writing team, causing Philippa Boyens to cry. Peter Jackson decided early on that he did not want Kong to act human, and so they studied hours of gorilla footage. Originally, the script began with a prologue of World War I that was later cut.

Peter Jackson has stated that the script significantly changed between the 1996 and 2005 drafts. In Jackson's original 1996 draft of the script, Ann was the daughter of famed English archaeologist Lord Linwood Darrow exploring ancient ruins in Sumatra. They would come into conflict with Denham during his filming, and they would uncover a hidden Kong statue and the map of Skull Island. This would indicate that the island natives were a cult religion that once thrived on the mainland of Asia, and all trace of the cult was wiped out, except for the few on the island. Instead of a playwright, Jack was the first mate and an ex-First World War fighter pilot still struggling with the loss of his best friend, who was killed in battle. Herb the camera-man was the only supporting character in the original draft who made it to the final version. Another difference was that Ann was actually caught in the Tyrannosaurus's jaws in the Kong/3 T-Rexes fight. According to the draft, Ann was wedged in the mouth and slashed by the teeth; after the fight, Kong got her out but by some reason Ann got a fever, which she recovered from. (It didn't say how Ann got it, but it was almost unmistakably an infection in one of her cuts). Jackson's first rough draft was described as a "tongue-in-cheek comedic film with elements of Raiders of the Lost Ark and other films," according to Jackson himself. Originally, he wanted a comical "monkey-farce" to be released, but he credits Universal for pulling the plug, as he was able to rework things into what ended up on screen.

For the character of Kong, Andy Serkis, who modelled its movement, went to the London Zoo to watch the gorillas, but was unsatisfied. He ended up going to Rwanda to observe mountain gorillas in the wild, with a company called Rainbow Tours. Possibly as a result of this, Kong acts and moves very much like a real gorilla.

Apart from Kong, Skull Island is also inhabited by dinosaurs and other large fauna. However, though they may look similar, they are not the familiar species. Inspired by the works of Dougal Dixon, the designers have imagined what 65 million years or more of isolated evolution would have done to the dinosaurs. Naturally, the creatures are presented as more scientifically accurate than those portrayed in the 1933 version. The names of these and hundreds of other beasts are found in the book The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island. Here are the creatures seen in the film:

• Vastatosaurus-Rex, which greatly resembles its relative, the T-Rex, is seen in the famous "Kong vs. T-rex" scene in the film. This creature is on-screen for about 20 minutes.
• Foetadon is the reptile-like creature which chases Ann into a rotting log. Moments later, the Foetadon is grabbed by a Vastatosaurus-Rex, pulled from the log, and eaten.

Deleted scenes

There are many deleted scenes known to exist in King Kong.

^ indicates confirmed to be in Extended Edition.

• Herb the camera-assistant (who has an artificial leg) tells Bruce Baxter how he lost his leg on an earlier film shoot with Denham. This scene would explain Herb's waddling run and being unable to climb, later in the film.
• Choy tries to throw Denham's camera off the ship when the crew are trying to lighten the Venture off the rocks. On the log bridge later on, a cursing Lumpy kicks the camera away from Denham.
• The film crew are on the shore, where Denham films another scene with Ann and tells her to scream. Kong's roar is then heard for the first time, as if responding from hearing her. Part of this scene was included in the trailer of the film.
• The party is attacked by a Ferrucutus, which tosses a few crew members around before being shot in the face. Although incapacitated, it is still alive (or at least dying), as indicated by its still moving tail.^ (Which is itself a reference to an almost identical Stegosaurus attack in the original movie
• The rescue party build a couple of rafts to cross the swamp, and are attacked by a Piranhadon. Denham tries to use a Tommy gun to shoot at the creature. Jack is thrown off the raft and is threatened by the creature, but is able to escape and hide in the roots of a tree. Several of the group are caught and eaten by the creature.^
• Panicking, Lumpy shoots blindly into the forest when he hears a rustling noise. Initially, it is implied that he shot Ann Darrow by accident, but it turns out to be a giant, flightless bird.^
• Extended bug pit sequence.^
• Kong tramples over one of the army trucks.^
• Ann struggles against 2 armed soldiers restraining her after the army has begun to attack, and before Kong grabs her to scale to the highest building.
• It is shown how Kong was transported to New York on the Venture (this scene was featured at a convention in which Peter Jackson specially created a five-minute montage of outtakes from the film).
• Two armed soldiers shoot at Kong. (This is probably in the scene where the soldiers restrain Ann, and Kong steps on the army commander who yells "Fire")
• Kong reacts as if threatened by a statue that resembles him.

Some scenes took place in the film's novelization that might exist as deleted scenes.

• After the conversation with Hayes, Lumpy the cook and Jimmy, Denham privately confides later on to Driscoll that the map came from the Norwegian captain. Denham also reveals hearing of an ancient legend of "Kong", but declares that it had nothing to do with his interest in Skull Island.
• The rescue party encounters two Ligocristus dinosaurs, and shoots them both.
• Kong, with Ann, is attacked by a pair of either Venatosaurs or juvenile V-rexes. Afterward, Kong eats the kills.
• Ann encounters a giant spider in a cave.

Release

A massive advertisement in Australia.

The marketing campaign for King Kong started in full swing on June 28, 2005, when the teaser trailer made its debut, first online at the official Volkswagen website at 8:45 p.m. EST, then 8:55 p.m. EST across media outlets owned by NBC Universal (the parent of Universal Studios), including NBC, Bravo!, CNBC and MSNBC. That trailer appeared in theatres attached to War of the Worlds, which opened on 29 June. In a unique co-promotion, New York State held a special King Kong lottery game in which tickets were sold for a one time drawing to be held on December 5, 2005 offered a grand prize of $50 million and several second prizes of $1 million.

Jackson also regularly published a series of 'Production Diaries', which chronicled the making of the film. The diaries started shortly after the DVD release of The Return of the King as a way to give Jackson's The Lord of the Rings fans a glimpse of his next project. These diaries are edited into broadband-friendly installments of three or four minutes each. They consist of features that would normally be seen in a making-of documentary: a tour of the set, a roving camera introducing key players behind the scene, a peek inside the sound booth during last-minute dubbing, or Andy Serkis doing his ape movements in a motion capture studio. The production diaries were released on DVD on December 13, 2005, one day before the U.S. release of the film. This was one of the first occasions in which material that would normally be considered supplementary to the DVD release of a film, was not only released separately, but done so in a prestige format; the Production Diaries came packaged in a box with a set of prints and a replica 1930s-era clipboard. It is also the first time such material was published prior to the release of the film.

A novelization of the movie and a prequel entitled The Island of the Skull was also written. A multi-platform video game entitled Peter Jackson's King Kong was released, which featured an alternate ending. There was a hardback book entitled The World of Kong, featuring artwork from Weta Workshop to describe the fictional beastiary in the film.

Reception

With a take of $9.7 million box office on its opening day, King Kong failed to live up to its pre-release hype, and did not meet expectations of Universal Studios executives. Some media outlets considered the film to be a flop after its weak opening weekend, as at that point it wasn't on pace to make back its 207 million dollar budget.. It had an opening weekend of $50.1 million - good for most movies, but short of the inflated expectations caused by the movie's enormous budget and marketing campaign. In its opening weekend, it earned over $15 million less than its only serious competition, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, had earned during its opening weekend one week earlier.

As of May 11, 2006, the film has grossed $218.1 million in the United States (putting it in the top five grossing films of 2005 domestically) and approximately an additional $331.1 million outside North America, leading to a worldwide total of $549.2 million. It is a general rule of thumb that a big-budget movie must earn at least twice its production budget to make money, and King Kong exceeded that by grossing almost $550 million worldwide. Other factors affect a film's profitability besides box office sales, though, such as the DVD sales. Kong, as of April 3rd, sold more than 7.2 million DVDs, generating over $100 million in the largest six-day performance in Universal Studios history. And as of June 25, 2006 In addition, King Kong has generated $38 million from DVD rental gross. Universal will earn a certain amount of revenue from home television rights, advertising tie-ins (such as Burger King's King Kong-themed commercials), and other sources; however, they will pay a certain amount of gross and net revenues to producers and members of the cast and crew.

Thus, despite the film's inauspicious start at the box office, Kong turned out to be very profitable. Ticket and DVD sales combined, the film earned well over $600 million, becoming the fourth-highest grossing movie in Universal Pictures history. Its release on home video and DVD was also a great success.

Critical reaction

King Kong received a favourable critical response, garnering an 84% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The most common criticisms of the film were due to excessive length, over-use of slow motion, and several moments where the audience was aware of CGI effects. Positive critical reviews regarded it as one of the few good epics and all-round best movies of 2005. Roger Ebert gave the movie four stars, and listed it as the 8th best film of 2005. Similarly, King Kong has been included in many critics' Top Ten of 2005 lists. The film received four Academy Award nominations for Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, and Art Direction, winning all but the last. Some criticized the film for retaining racist stereotypes present in the original film, though it was not suggested that Jackson had done this intentionally.

Possible future

Peter Jackson has expressed his desire to remaster the film in 3-D at some point in the future. Though this has been officially disclaimed as a potential project by Universal Studios, both Shrek and Terminator 2: Judgment Day had short 3-D versions made for the Studio as theme park attractions. Jackson was also seen shooting with a 3-D camera at times during the shoot of King Kong. The film is more than 90% CGI mastered, so converting the scene to 3-D is largely a software exercise, with some creative work required for the closer shots of actors. All the face shots of Kong can be "3D-ised" from the original animation files. It is estimated that the conversion would cost about 10 million dollars, due to the great length of the movie (3 hours 8 minutes).

Cast

Cinematic and literary allusions

Jamie Bell's character is repeatedly shown reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, a novel about a journey into a primitive land. Jack Black and critics have noted Carl Denham's similarity to Orson Welles. When Jack Driscoll is searching for a place to sleep in the animal storage hold, a box behind him reads ' Sumatran Rat Monkey — Beware the bite!' - a reference to the creature that causes mayhem in Peter Jackson's film Braindead (1992) (in that film, the rat monkey is described as only being found on Skull Island).

Soundtrack

The musical score for King Kong was composed by James Newton Howard. Originally Howard Shore, who worked for Peter Jackson on The Lord of the Rings, was to compose the score for the film, and recorded several completed cues before he was removed from the project by Jackson. Howard joined the project with literally weeks to score and record more than two hours of music. Shore still makes a cameo appearance as the ill-fated conductor in the theatre from which Kong escapes.

DVD release

King Kong was released on DVD on March 28, 2006 in the United States. The three versions that came out were single disc fullscreen, single disc widescreen and a 2-Disc Widescreen Special Edition. The second disc of the Special Edition contains the remainder of almost all the KongisKing.net production diaries not contained on the Peter Jackson's Production Diaries DVD set. The only missing episode is "13 Weeks To Go" which contained footage of Howard Shore recording the original score. It is still available on the website.

All DVD versions of the movie contain at least four known instances of DVD "watermarking" that are assumed to be anti-piracy measures. In Region 1, the letters "KKDD" appear for one frame on the character Bruce Baxter's ( Kyle Chandler) arm at 00:30:29 and 2:01:33. Another is seen at 1:00:05 on the arm of an islander. The fourth instance is at 01:30:05 on the bamboo stick King Kong is chewing on. Region 2 has the same instances, but the letters "KKID" are used instead.

On Tuesday, June 27, 2006, www.kongisking.net reported that Spanish DVD website Zonadvd officially confirmed the release date of an extended edition of King Kong on November 15, 2006. It was also said that three discs would be included in the set. Unseen features, including deleted scenes, commentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, and so on are sure to follow (these features were previously mentioned before).

The 3 disc Deluxe Extended Edition was released on November 14th 2006 in the U.S.A., and on November 1st in Australia. 13 minutes were put back into the film, and a further 40 minutes presented alongside the rest of the special features. The film was spread onto the first two discs with commentary by Peter Jackson and Philippa Boyens, and some featurettes on Disc 2, whilst the main Special Features are on Disc 3. Another set was released, including a WETA figurine of a bullet-ridden Kong scaling the Empire State Building, roaring at the army with Ann in hand. The extended film amounts to 192 minutes in total.

Extended Edition scenes

The extended edition not only has 13 minutes of added footage reincorporated into the film, 40 minutes of deleted scenes on the DVD, but also over 120 new visual effects shots:

• The crew is attacked by a Ferrucutus.
• The crew is attacked by many Scorpio-pedes.
• The crew is attacked by a Piranhadon.
• Extended Bug Pit scene.
• Kong leaps from cliff to cliff killing crew members.
• Kong throws a stone at natives on a cliff.
• A military truck with a man insulting Kong is destroyed.
• Kong kills the man who issues the "FIRE!" command.
• Kong picks up a car and throws at another car.