| King Kong | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Credits | |
| Title: | King Kong |
| Genres: | Adventure Comedy |
| Directed by: | Peter Jackson |
| Written by: | Fran Walsh; Philippa Boyens; Peter Jackson |
| Produced by: | Daniel Lupi; Adam McKay; Julie Wixson Darmody; Ryan Kavanaugh; Brad Silberling; Marty Krofft; Sid Krofft; Jimmy Miller; John Swallow; Joshua Church; Michele Panelli-Venetis |
| Music by: | Michael Giacchino |
| Cinematography: | Dion Beebe |
| Edited by: | Peter Teschner |
| Production | |
| Distributed by: | Universal Pictures Relativity Media |
| Released: | December 14th, 2005 |
| Rating: | PG-13 |
| Running time: | 187 min. |
| Country: | USA |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $100,000,000 |
| Gross: | $49,392,095 (US) |
| Navigation | |
| Previous: | — |
| Next: | — |
King Kong is a 2005 epic adventure monster film co-written, produced, and directed by Peter Jackson. It is the eighth entry in the King Kong franchise and the second remake of the 1933 film of the same title, following the 1976 film. The film stars Andy Serkis, Naomi Watts, Jack Black, and Adrien Brody.
Development began in early 1995, when Universal Pictures approached Jackson to direct the remake of the original 1933 film. The project stalled in early 1997, as several ape and giant monster-related films were under production at the time and Jackson planned to direct The Lord of the Rings trilogy. As the first two films in the trilogy became commercially successful, Universal went back to Jackson in early 2003, expressing interest in restarting development on the project, to which Jackson eventually agreed. Filming for King Kong took place in New Zealand from September 2004 to March 2005. It is currently one of the most expensive films ever produced as its budget climbed from an initial $150 million to a then-record-breaking $207 million.
King Kong premiered at New York City on December 5, 2005, and was theatrically released in Germany and United States on December 14. The film garnered mostly positive reviews from critics, and eventually appeared in several top ten lists for 2005; it was praised for the special effects, performances, sense of spectacle and comparison to the 1933 original, though some criticisms were raised over its 3-hour run time. It was a commercial success, grossing over $562.9 million and became the fourth-highest-grossing film in Universal Pictures history at that time and the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2005. It also generated $100 million in DVD sales upon its home video release in March 2006. It won three Academy Awards for Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects. A tie-in video game was released alongside the film, which also became a commercial and critical success.
In 2014, Legendary Pictures announced that they were working with Universal Pictures to make a King Kong prequel, simply titled Skull Island, that would go beyond the original story and dig deeper into the mythology of Kong's home. However, following the success of the American 2014 Godzilla film, the two studios made a deal with Warner Bros., and the script was rewritten to explicitly connect the two films into a bigger cinematic universe, and to set up another potential meeting between Godzilla and Kong in the future. To direct the film, the studio hired young American filmmaker Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who had made a splash with his independent coming-of-age film, The Kings of Summer, and so, sporting an all-star cast, Kong: Skull Island was released in early 2017, becoming the first film to finally step out of the shadow of the original and add new dimensions to cinema's oldest giant monster.
Plot[]
In 1933 New York City at the height of the Great Depression, after a lively performance, vaudeville actress Ann Darrow returns to work in the morning to find the theater closed. Her stage partner Manny tells her to try out for a part in a play she was eyeing, only for her to learn the role was already cast. The producer sends her to a burlesque theater out of pity. At the same time, director Carl Denham sits with another group of bored producers before pitching the idea of following a map he had received to an uncharted island to film there instead. However, they are less than thrilled at the prospect of wasting more money on him and agree to scrap the picture for stock footage. Unwilling to see his art go to waste, Denham grabs his assistant Preston and makes preparations to leave immediately for Skull Island. Preston informs them that their lead actress has pulled out of the film, and Denham leaves to find a new girl. While examining posters outside a burlesque theater, he spies Ann reflected in the glass door and goes after her when she turns away. Ann then tries to steal an apple only to be caught and have Denham buy her out of it before taking her to dinner to propose that she join him. She is interested but declines before learning that Jack Driscoll is writing the screenplay and accompanies Denham to the docks where the Venture is waiting. There, Preston informs him that police are coming to arrest them. Denham then bribes Captain Englehorn to start getting the ship ready to cast off. The director then goes to see Driscoll, who handed in an incomplete script. Denham stalls to get him to stay on board as the ship pulls out of the harbor right as the police arrive.
As the ship makes its way out, Driscoll settles in and gets to know Ann throughout filming. However, when the crew learns that they aren't heading for Singapore as Denham led them to believe, Benjamin Hayes, Lumpy, and Jimmy warn him not to try to find Skull Island based on accounts from a mad castaway from seven years before. That night, Jack shows Ann a stage comedy he had started writing, and the two share a passionate kiss before Englehorn receives a telegraph and begins to turn the ship around. Denham barges in to try to stop them, but Englehorn refuses and prepares to divert to Rangoon as the telegraph had ordered to turn Denham over to the authorities. However, with their navigational equipment malfunctioning, the entire crew begins to see that they are entering a thick fog. The ship quickly gets scuttled on a hidden carving, and Denham spots the giant wall, knowing he has reached his destination. The following day, Denham takes his crew to the coast, where they discover an abandoned city home to a civilization living in ruins. However, things quickly turn hostile upon meeting the natives, and they lose two men before Englehorn and the sailors arrive with guns to save them.
Englehorn then orders the crew to lighten the ship and throw everything overboard, and Jack wakes up after being clubbed in the head on the island. He discovers the necklace of the man who had struck him and goes to locate Ann, only to find dead sailors and a ransacked cabin. He quickly informs Englehorn that the natives took her, and the captain sends the crew ashore to rescue her.
The natives forcibly drag Ann to a sacrificial chamber on the island. By the time the crew arrives, the natives have already lowered Ann over the other side of the wall, where their chants and drums attract the beast god Kong, who grabs her and takes her into the jungle as the sailors arrive. They enter the wilderness, and after a short way into the jungle, the rescue party becomes spooked and fires wildly into the darkness, only to cease at Hayes' order. The mate then lights a flare, and a Ferrucutus comes charging out of the brush. Wounded and wild, the beast flails about in an attempt to defend itself until Hayes can kill it with a volley of shots to its head. The team, after hearing Ann scream, arrive at a boneyard, where they find a path of destruction left from the ape's journey and begin to follow the trail. After trekking through the swampy jungle, the group takes a five-minute rest in a narrow valley, where a pack of Venatosaurus spook a herd of grazing Brontosaurus, who begin to stampede toward the rescue party. Most of the party manages to escape being trampled or eaten and climb a steep ledge before continuing the journey. Elsewhere, Ann attempts to escape Kong while he stops for rest, but he quickly finds her and is enraged until she begins to perform her vaudeville routine to his apparent amusement. However, when she refuses to continue, Kong becomes confused and angry before leaving her.
After escaping the Brontosaurus stampede, Bruce Baxter and a few sailors return to the village, but those who remain tie logs together into makeshift rafts, which they paddle across a swamp. Midway across, they are attacked by several Scorpio-pedes, but they all quickly retreat. The crew sits in silence briefly before their rafts get rocked by a Piranhadon from under the water’s surface; it destroys the first raft, sending sailors spilling into the swamp. They try to escape, and Carl shoots at the creature as it swims beneath them, breaking the raft. Many sailors make it to shore, but the Piranhadon eats the slowest sailor before returning to the depths.
As the crew continues through the jungle after the Piranhadon attack, Jack pauses to listen to movement in the wilderness. Lumpy, however, becomes frightened and shoots toward the sound. Fearing he shot Ann, Jack rushes through the brush to find a fallen Brutornis. Then Lumpy puts the creature out of its misery before they continue onward.
The remaining sailors come to a log bridging a deep crevice, and Hayes goes across before ordering them all back to the other side before Kong emerges from the tunnel at the other side and kills him. He then shakes the sailors off the log and into the pit below as Ann hears the gunshots and runs toward them only to come face to face with a Foetodon that is quickly eaten by a Vastatosaurus rex. The saurian chases Ann upon seeing her, and just when she thinks she has escaped, Ann encounters its mother. She screams, and Kong comes to rescue her. He wrestles with the two beasts, only for a third to enter the fray. He smashes the youngest one's head with a rock before wrestling the parents over a cliff, where they become entangled in vines. He manages to kill one, but the last one falls to the valley floor with Ann. Then, after a tense standoff with Ann in the middle, Kong battles the reptile, emerging victorious before taking Ann to his lair.
Jack awakes at the bottom of the pit and barely has time to check for other survivors before the monstrous bugs begin to move. Most of the sailors die, including Lumpy, who is eaten by Carnictis trying to defend Choy's body. However, when they find themselves cornered by encroaching Arachno-claws, Englehorn and Baxter return and rescue them.
But just before climbing out of the pit, Jimmy went to where Hayes was lying dead. He picked up Hayes' fallen cap and brushed it off before putting it on and moving to climb out of the chasm.
Jack alone ventures on while Denham convinces Englehorn to try and capture Kong. He arrives at the beast’s lair under cover of night and finds Ann asleep in Kong's hand. As he tries to rescue her, the god awakes and furiously tries to smash Jack but is distracted by a horde of Terapusmordax long enough for the two to escape.
When they arrive at the gate, they discover the drawbridge is up, and cannot cross. With Kong quickly catching up to them, Preston lowers the bridge against Denham’s orders, and the two escape to safety, with Kong pounding on the massive gates behind them. Englehorn commands the attack to commence when the ape breaks through. The sailors drag him down with grappling hooks and break a bottle of chloroform gas under his face. Ann protests the attack, and Englehorn tells Jack to take her away, but when Kong sees her getting pulled away, he breaks free of the netting and gives chase.
He reaches the rocky coast as the crew starts to row away. He smashes one of them when Jimmy shoots at him, causing Englehorn to shoot his leg with a harpoon, allowing Carl to break a chloroform bottle on his face before vowing to bring him to Broadway as “Kong: The Eighth Wonder of the World.”
After returning to New York, Jack and Ann lose contact, and Denham puts Kong up on Broadway. Jack goes to find her at the Alhambra theatre where Kong is playing but finds another actress playing her role. However, an overconfident Denham allowing flash photography to further distress Kong after discovering the fake Darrow causes him to break free of his bonds.
On seeing Driscoll in the crowd, Kong immediately begins to chase him down. He finally smashes the cab he tries to lure the beast awat in, and roars in triumph before Ann walks up to him, and the two enjoy a moment of peace in Central Park before the military forces him out. He leaps over the rooftops before finding the Empire State Building and beginning to climb up. At the base of the mooring mast, the two admire the rising sun before six biplanes arrive, and Kong climbs to the very top, where he is shot at and swipes at the planes while Ann tries to climb up to get to him.
Kong saves her life again by catching her when a ladder pulls away from the building. He sets her inside the observation deck, and she climbs up to him. The two share a short moment before Kong takes a row of bullets in the back. He touches her face one final time before succumbing to his wounds and falling from the top of the building. Jack soon arrives to console Ann. Down on the street, photographers swarm around Kong’s body, with one proclaiming that the airplanes had killed him. Denham then breaks through the crowd to declare that it was "Beauty Killed The Beast".
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