King Kong (2005 film)

For the video game, see Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie.

King Kong
Theatrical poster for King Kong
Directed by	Peter Jackson
Written by	Screenplay: Peter Jackson Fran Walsh Philippa Boyens Story: Merian C. Cooper Edgar Wallace
Produced by	Jan Blenkin Carolynne Cunningham Fran Walsh Peter Jackson
Starring	Naomi Watts Jack Black Adrien Brody Andy Serkis
Cinematography	Andrew Lesnie
Edited by	Jamie Selkirk
Music by	James Newton Howard
Distributed by	Universal Studios
Release date	December 14, 2005
Running time	Theatrical Cut: 187 min. Extended Edition: 200 min.
Countries	United States New Zealand
Language	English
Budget	$207,000,000
Box office	$550,517,357

King Kong is a 2005 remake of the 1933 film of the same name about a giant ape called Kong. The film was directed by Peter Jackson and stars Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow, Jack Black as Carl Denham, Adrien Brody as Jack Driscoll and, through performance capture, Andy Serkis as Kong. Serkis also played Lumpy, the galley chef on the SS Venture.

The film's budget climbed from an initial US$150 million to a record-breaking $207 million. The film was released on December 14, 2005 and made an opening of $50.1 million. While the film performed lower than expectations, Kong made domestic and worldwide grosses that eventually added up to $550 million, becoming the fourth-highest grossing movie in Universal Pictures history. Strong DVD sales also added over $100 million to the grosses. It also received positive reviews, with some considering it one of the all-round best movies of 2005, though it has been criticised for its length at three hours and eight minutes (while a three-disc extended DVD edition actually increases this to over three hours and twenty minutes). It won Academy Awards for visual effects, sound mixing, and sound editing.

Plot

The film opens in New York City, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. Having lost her job as a vaudeville actress, Ann Darrow is hired by troubled filmmaker Carl Denham to be an actress in his new motion picture against the famous and popular actor Bruce Baxter. With time running out, Ann signs on when she learns her favourite playwright Jack Driscoll is the screenwriter. On the SS Venture, they slowly fall in love. As for Carl, a warrant is out for his arrest and Captain Englehorn begins to have second thoughts, following the fears of his crew over the legend of Skull Island. Despite his attempt to turn around, their ship is sucked up into a fog and crashes into one of the encircling rocks.

Carl and his crew explore the island, with a deserted village against a wall, but they are attacked by the vicious natives. Mike, the sound technician, is speared, one of the sailors has his head crushed, and Jack is knocked out. Ann screams, and a roar beyond the wall responds. The matriarch vows to sacrifice her to "Kong", a 25 ft (8 m) gorilla. Englehorn and his crew break up the attack and return to the damaged ship. They finally lighten the load to steer away, until Jack discovers Ann has been kidnapped. On the island, Ann is hung from a balcony to the other side of a valley. The crew comes armed, but are too late. Carl sees the gorilla that has taken her. Englehorn gives them 24 hours to find her. In the meantime, Ann discovers the remains of the previous sacrifices, and stabs Kong's hand with her ceremonial necklace to no avail. Kong takes Ann into the jungles of the island.

Captain Englehorn organises a rescue party to find Ann and hunt down the beast. The rescue party is caught up in a Venatosaurus pack's hunt of Apatosaurus, and four of them (including Herb, the cameraman) are killed while Jack and the rest of the crew survive. Ann manages to entertain Kong with juggling and dancing, but he does not kill her when she refuses to continue, leaving her instead. The rest of the rescue party come across a swamp. It is here that Bruce Baxter and two others leave the group. The survivors stumble across a log where Kong attacks, shaking them off the log into a ravine. He returns to rescue Ann from three Vastatosaurus rex (modern Tyrannosaurus), and takes her up to his mountain lair. While there, Ann briefly attempts to communicate with Kong using sign language, but without success. Englehorn and the rest of the crew rescue whomever is left of the rescue party from the pit of giant insects, and as Jack decides to continue to search for Ann, Carl decides to capture Kong. Jack comes to Kong's lair, and disturbs him from his slumber. As Kong fights a swarm of giant bats, Ann and Jack escape by grabbing the wing of a Terapusmordax and then jumping to a river. They arrive at the village wall with the angry Kong following them, where Ann becomes distraught by what Carl plans to do. Kong bursts through the gate and struggles to get her back, but he is knocked out by chloroform.

In New York around Christmas, Carl presents Kong — the Eighth Wonder of the World on Broadway. Ann opposes Kong's imprisonment so a double of her is used in the production; however Kong becomes enraged from the replacement as several camera flashes from nearby photographers who are filming Carl and Bruce anger him further, and breaks free from his chrome-steel chains and breaks out of the theater and into Times Square. He wonders around searching for Ann by picking up several look alikes, Jack looks him in the eye and results in a chase across town where Kong eventually encounters Ann again. They share a quiet moment on a frozen lake in Central Park before they are interrupted by the military. Kong climbs to the top of the Empire State Building, and observing the dawning day repeats the sign for "beautiful" Ann had used in his lair, causing a shocked Ann to realize his intelligence. Before Ann is able to attempt further communication they are again attacked and Kong makes his last stand against the Curtiss Helldivers, on the summit of the observation spire, downing three of them. Ultimately Kong is hit by several bursts of gunfire from the surviving planes, and gazes at a distraught Ann for the last time before falling off the building to his death. Ann is greeted by Jack, and the reporters flood to Kong's corpse. Carl takes one last look and says, "It wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast."

Cast

• Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow: A struggling vaudeville actress who is desperate to continue acting. Carl Denham discovers her attempting to steal an apple from a fruit stand, only to pay for it himself. She is a big fan of Jack Driscoll, but knows nothing about acting in a movie. During the course of the voyage, she falls in love with Driscoll. She also forms a special relationship with Kong. Ann herself is very confident, beautiful, and capable of handling herself in a tough situation.
• Jack Black as Carl Denham: A film director who obtained the map to Skull Island. Due to his desperate situation — involving debts and theft — Carl is obsessive and slowly loses his moral compass during the film. His producers are convinced that he is on a wild goose chase and the police have a warrant for his arrest.
• Adrien Brody as Jack Driscoll: A scriptwriter who falls for Ann. He is on the voyage mistakenly, when he delivers 15 pages of script to Denham, who consequently delays him as the SS Venture begins its voyage. Jack is quickly enchanted by Ann's beauty and charm, and plans to write a play for her. He refuses to give up on Ann's rescue, even continuing on alone even the crew turns back. He is heavily involved with Kong's return to Manhattan.
• Thomas Kretschmann as Captain Englehorn: The German Captain of the SS Venture, who Denham has hired to take the film crew to Skull Island.
• Colin Hanks as Preston: Denham's neurotic but honest personal assistant.

• Jamie Bell as Jimmy: A boy who was found on the SS Venture, wild and abandoned. He is a kleptomaniac and views Hayes as a father figure.

• Evan Parke as Ben Hayes: Englehorn's first mate and a friend of Lumpy, who leads Ann's rescue mission due to his army training and combat experience gained during World War I. He is killed during the log scene after Kong snatches him and subsequently throws him against the rock wall. In the extended cut, Jimmy takes his hat in remembrance after the group is rescued from the insect pit.

• Lobo Chan as Choy: Lumpy's best friend and a janitor on the Venture, who falls to his death during the log scene.

• Kyle Chandler as Bruce Baxter: An actor who specialises in adventure films such as Tribal Brides of the Amazon, Rough Trader, and Dame Tamer. He abandons Ann's rescue mission but brings Englehorn to rescue them from the insect pit, and is given credit for rescuing Ann during the Broadway display of Kong. He has sense once more to leave before Kong escapes.

• Andy Serkis as Kong (motion capture and voice): A 25-ft gorilla who is around 120–150 years old. He is the last of his species, Megaprimatus kong.
  • Andy Serkis as Lumpy: The ship's cook, barber and surgeon. He is a brave sailor who goes to search for Ann but is eaten alive in the pit after fighting a group of leech-like creatures.

• John Sumner as Herb: Denham's loyal camera man who has a fake right leg. He is killed by a pack of Venatosaurus after the Apatosaurus stampede.

• Craig Hall as Mike: Denham's soundman for the journey and ends up being the first person to be killed by the Skull Island natives when a spear impales him.

• Jed Brophy and Todd Rippon cameoed as crew members.

Production

Pre-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. During this time Jackson had achieved the designs of the Brontosaurus and the Venatosaurus. 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 De Niro. With the overwhelming box office and critical success of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Universal contacted him during production of the second film, and he was paid $20 million USD to direct this film, the highest salary Hollywood ever paid a director.

Screenplay development

Peter Jackson has stated that the script significantly changed between the 1996 and 2005 drafts. He described his first rough draft as a "tongue-in-cheek comedic film with elements of Raiders of the Lost Ark and other films", and as a "monkey-farce". He has said that in retrospect, he is glad that Universal pulled the plug on this version of the film, as he was able to rework the screenplay into something better.

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 the last remnants of a cult religion that had once thrived on the mainland of Asia. 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 had been killed in battle during a World War I prologue. Herb the camera-man is the only supporting character in the original draft who made it to the final version. The fight between Kong and the three V. rex also changed from the original draft. In the draft, Ann is actually caught in the V. rex's jaws, where she becomes wedged, and slashed by the teeth; after the fight, Kong gets her out but she is suffering from a fever, from which she then recovers.

The rewriting of the script between 1996 and 2005 involved basing the characters more closely on the 1933 ones, but adding more detail (the screenplay is not based at all on the 1976 version). The process began with a nine minute animatic created by Peter Jackson and shown to the writing team, causing Philippa Boyens to cry. Jackson, alongside Christian Rivers and his team, created animatics for all the action sequences which wound up becoming the first stage in animation. The Empire State Building animatic in particular, was completely replicated in the final film.

Pre-production

Peter Jackson decided early on that he did not want Kong to behave like a human, and so he and his team studied hours of gorilla footage. Andy Serkis, who modelled his 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. The resulting Kong is entirely a special effect, but he acts and moves very much like a real gorilla.

Andy Serkis in his Kong bodysuit.

Apart from Kong, Skull Island is also inhabited by dinosaurs and other large fauna. However, they are not intended to replicate actual species. Instead, inspired by the works of Dougal Dixon, the designers imagined what 65 million years or more of isolated evolution might have done to dinosaurs. The names of these and hundreds of other beasts are found in the book The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island.

Difficulties

The film's budget climbed from an initial US$150 million to a record-breaking $207 million, making it at one point the most expensive film yet made. Universal Pictures only agreed to such an outlay after seeing a screening of the unfinished film, to which executives responded enthusiastically. Marketing and promotion costs were an estimated $60 million. The film's length also grew; originally set to be 135 minutes, it 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 difficulties included Peter Jackson's decision to change composers from Howard Shore to James Newton Howard seven weeks before the film opened.

Release

The marketing campaign for King Kong started in full swing on June 27, 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 June 29.

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 instalments 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 novelisation 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 bestiary in the film. A number of spin-offs from the remake's franchise include books, novels, comics and video games.

Reception

The billboard at the Odeon Leicester Square premiere

With a take of $9.7 million on its Wednesday opening day, and an opening weekend of $50.1 million, King Kong did not meet expectations of Universal Pictures executives. Some media outlets even considered the film to be a flop after its weak opening weekend, as at that point it was not on pace to make back its $207 million budget. Its opening weekend of $50.1 million, while good for most movies, fell short of the inflated expectations caused by the movie's enormous budget and marketing campaign.

However, King Kong was able to hold its audience in the subsequent holiday weeks and ended up becoming a domestic hit, grossing $218.1 million at the North American box office (putting it in the top five grossing films of 2005 domestically). King Kong fared much better in the international market, as it grossed $332.437 million outside North America, leading to a worldwide total of $550.517 million (putting it in the top five grossing films of 2005 worldwide).

Other factors also affect a film's profitability besides box office sales, such as the DVD sales. King Kong, sold over $100 million worth of DVDs in the largest six-day performance in Universal Studios history. As of April 3, 2006, King Kong has sold more than 7.5 million DVDs, accumulating over $140 million worth of sales numbers, domestically alone. As of June 25, 2006 King Kong has generated almost $38 million from DVD rental gross.

Thus, despite the film's inauspicious start at the box office, King Kong turned out to be very profitable. Ticket and DVD sales combined, the film earned well over $700 million, becoming the fourth-highest grossing movie in Universal Pictures history.

Critical reaction

King Kong received a favourable critical response, garnering an 83% "Certified Fresh" approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The most common criticisms of the film were due to excessive length, lack of pace, over-use of slow motion, and some obvious use 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. Entertainment Weekly called the depiction of Kong the most convincing computer generated character in film in 2005. Some criticised the film for retaining racist stereotypes present in the original film, though it was not suggested that Jackson had done this intentionally. King Kong ranks 450th on Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.

Possible future

Peter Jackson has expressed his desire to remaster the film in 3-D at some point in the future. Jackson was also seen shooting with a 3-D camera at times during the shoot of King Kong.

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 and mankind's exploitation of fellow man. 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).

References to other versions of King Kong

• Fay Wray, the original Ann Darrow, was asked by Peter Jackson to do a brief cameo in which she would utter the film's final line: "It was beauty killed the beast." At first she flatly refused, but then seemed to consider the possibility. However, she died shortly after her meeting with Jackson. The line ultimately went to the character of Carl Denham, as in the original.

• An ad for Universal Pictures is visible while Kong is tearing up Times Square. In the original film, an ad for Columbia Pictures appeared in the same spot, and the production designers replicated it, but Columbia asked for a large amount of money for its use, so effects artists replaced it.

• When Denham is considering who to play the part before meeting Ann, he suggests "Fay", but his assistant Preston replies, "She's doing a picture with RKO." Music from the 1933 original is heard, and Denham mutters, "Cooper, huh? I might have known." Fay Wray starred in the 1933 film, which was directed by Merian C. Cooper and released by RKO.

• When Carl Denham calls Bruce Baxter and Ann Darrow to film a scene on the deck of the ship, the shot is essentially identical to a scene between Ann and Jack Driscol in the 1933 version.

• In the original film, Merian C. Cooper made up an Arabian proverb about beauty and beast for Denham to use in the Kong stage show. The 2005 remake uses the proverb in a different way.

• Kong's New York stage appearance looks very much like a re-enactment of the sacrifice scene of the 1933 film, including the posts the 'beauty' is tied to and the nearly identical performance and costumes of the dancers. In addition, the music played by the orchestra during that scene is the original 1933 score by Max Steiner.

• The 1933 film featured an extended sequence in which several members of the party were devoured by massive spiders and insects after being shaken off a log into a ravine by Kong. This scene was pulled before release when Cooper decided it slowed the film down. Peter Jackson recreated the scene for the 2005 remake. He also paid homage to the spider pit sequence by recreating the scene using stop motion photography, which he included as an extra for the deluxe DVD release of the original 1933 film.

• The battle between Kong and the final V. rex is almost move-for-move like the last half of the fight between Kong and the T. rex in the original 1933 film, right down to Kong playing with the dinosaur's broken jaw and then standing, beating his chest and roaring victoriously.

• After the crew captures Kong on the beach, Denham speaks a line from the 1933 film: "The whole world will pay to see this! We're millionaires, boys! I'll share it with all of you. In a few months, his name will be up in lights on Broadway! KONG, THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD!"

• In the original film, director and co-director Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack appear in cameos as the pilot and rear-gunner who shoot Kong. In the 2005 film, Jackson plays one of the gunners; the pilot is played by Rick Baker, who played Kong (in a rubber suit) in the 1976 remake.

Musical score

Untitled

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. James Newton Howard joined the project with literally weeks to score and record more than three hours of music. Shore still makes a cameo appearance as the ill-fated conductor in the theatre from which Kong escapes. The film's record album was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.

Track listing

1. "King Kong" – 1:09
2. "A Fateful Meeting" – 4:16
3. "Defeat Is Always Momentary" – 2:48
4. "It's in the Subtext" – 3:19
5. "Two Grand" – 2:34
6. "The Venture Departs" – 4:03
7. "Last Blank Space on the Map" – 4:43
8. "It's Deserted" – 7:08
9. "Something Monstrous… Neither Beast Nor Man" – 2:38
10. "Head Towards the Animals" – 2:48
11. "Beautiful" – 4:08
12. "Tooth and Claw" – 6:17
13. "That's All There Is…" – 3:26
14. "Captured" – 2:25
15. "Central Park" – 4:36
16. "The Empire State Building" – 2:36
17. "Beauty Killed The Beast (Part I)" – 1:59
18. "Beauty Killed The Beast (Part II)" – 2:22
19. "Beauty Killed The Beast (Part III)" – 2:14
20. "Beauty Killed The Beast (Part IV)" – 4:45
21. "Beauty Killed The Beast (Part V)" – 4:13

Home media

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.

The 3 disc Deluxe Extended Edition was released on November 14, 2006 in the U.S.A., and on November 1 in Australia. Thirteen 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 Discs 1 and 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 201 minutes in total.

A special HD DVD version of King Kong was part of a promotional pack for the release of the external HD DVD Drive for the Xbox 360. The pack contained the HD DVD drive, the Universal Media Remote and King Kong on HD DVD. It was also available separately as a standard HD DVD. The film's theatrical and extended cuts were released together on Blu-ray Disc on January 20, 2009.

Extended Edition scenes

The extended edition has 13 minutes of footage reincorporated into the film, over 230 new visual effects shots, and 40 minutes of deleted scenes on the DVD.

The first major addition comes after the rescue team enters the jungle, in which they startle a Ceratopsian dinosaur and it goes on the rampage. Hayes shoots it and the scene ends on a reference to the original film as Carl and Herb film its tail in death throes.

The second major addition is a scene in the swamp where the rescue team on two rafts are first surrounded by swarms of Scorpiopede creatures, before an attack from an enormous serpentine Piranhadon fish (this is briefly seen in the teaser for the film). Three men are killed and Jack almost drowns. Carl captures the last death on camera (to the disgust of Lumpy) which he takes great pains to retain in the chaos. After exiting the swamp, Lumpy shoots an approaching sound in the thick foliage. Jack believes he has shot Ann, which turns out to be a large bird similar to a giant Moa (which may have been Jackson's fictional "Brutornis").

The insect pit sequence is extended with footage of the characters climbing out of the pit, notably including a monologue from Carl about the point of death, Jimmy finding Hayes's body and taking his cap to remember him, and Bruce Baxter killing more insects. There is also more film of Kong rampaging the native village. Kong chasing Jack's cab is extended. During the army's attack on King Kong, he tramples a van containing a man who issues the fire command, and also knocks a van, with a commander insulting Kong, out of his way. The rest of the deleted scenes have unfinished effects, and are not incorporated into the film, but remain on the DVD set with individual introductions by Peter Jackson.

External links

• Official website
• King Kong at IMDb
• King Kong at Rotten Tomatoes
• King Kong at Box Office Mojo
• Review from Xdafied.com.au