First of all, we usually transliterate King Kong as "King Kong". In fact, this name is inaccurate. In the King Kong movie view, King Kong’s original name on Skull Island was Kong, and the title King was imposed by King Kong when he was taken to New York for performances. Therefore, King Kong means "the strongest king Kong". Translated into Chinese, it should be "Wang Gang". . . . . . Regarding the name of King Kong, there will be a detailed introduction in the following article. I want to briefly talk about the movies of King Kong in the past.
In the 80 years since the first film was born, there are 8 movies about King Kong (not including Godzilla vs. King Kong scheduled to be released in 2020). We can divide these 8 movies into 4 historical periods, namely the birth period, Japanese period, remake period, monster movie universe period.
1933: "Son of Kong" (Son of Kong)
1962: "King Kong vs. Godzilla"
1967: "King Kong Escape"
1976: "King Kong: Legendary Rebirth" (King Kong)
1986: "King Kong Lives 2"
2005: "King Kong" (King Kong)
2017: "Kong: Skull Island" (Kong: Skull Island)
Birth period -including "King Kong" and "Son of King Kong" in 1933. We are all very familiar with the story of the first King Kong movie, and it is also the classic story based on the 2005 PJ remake. It is worth mentioning that "Son of King Kong", although the film is only 70 minutes long, the highlight is that the son of King Kong is very cute throughout the film, and it is matched with the playful music in the film, which is in sharp contrast to its huge body.
Japanese period -including "King Kong vs. Godzilla" in 1962 and "King Kong Escape" in 1967. When the Japanese got the copyright of King Kong's remake, they added a unique Japanese style to the movie. For example, in 1962, King Kong and Godzilla first met on the big screen and hugged sumo wrestling. For another example, Japan uses their strong manufacturing industry to make King Kong robots.
Remake period -including 1976 "King Kong: Legendary Rebirth", 1986 "King Kong 2" and 2005 "King Kong". The 1976 remake is more interesting. The adventure plot is set on the story of a company searching for oil on Skull Island. The feature of this remake is its naked scale. The heroine (the young American stranger Tan Lan) really does it. Drive if you don't agree. King Kong 2 in 1986 was more bloody, telling that King Kong fell from the building and did not die. A mother King Kong appeared and gave birth to a King Kong baby.
The 2005 remake of Peter Jackson is the most familiar to us, and in my opinion it is also the most embarrassing, because it is a King Kong in the remake period, but it has nothing to do with the two just mentioned, and the time is separated. Very long ago, but almost exactly the same as the first version in 1933, except that the special effects are more advanced and more emotional scenes have been added, which can be said to be a high-definition reissue. The following is a comparison of some lenses between the 2005 version and the 1933 version.
The period of the monster movie universe -including 2017 "King Kong: Skull Island" and "Godzilla vs. King Kong" expected to be released in 2020, as well as the next series of monster films. Legendary Pictures now holds Japan's Toho Many of the monster copyrights, such as Mothra, Gidola, and Raton.
origin
It all starts with Merian C. Cooper, the father of King Kong. One summer in 1899, his uncle gave a 6-year-old Cooper a book titled "Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa". This book tells about the explorer Paul Du Shayrou ( Paul du Chaillu)'s adventure story through the African jungle. In the book, Shayrou not only depicts the beautiful scenery of the African jungle, but also narrates many stories with gorillas. In the eyes of the locals, the gorilla is the "unconquerable king of the jungle." Shayrou emphatically described a gorilla king called the "hell nightmare half man and half beast". Cooper was fascinated by the huge gorillas in the book, and since then, he has gradually planted a seed of adventure in his heart.
Decades later, Merian C. Cooper entered the film industry. When filming "The Four Feathers" in Africa, Cooper had to spend some time with a group of baboons, which reminded him of his childhood favorite book, so he was born to shoot a primate The idea of the film. A year later, Cooper came to Radio Keith Orpheum and started making preparations for this horror movie featuring a gorilla. One day he accidentally saw a plane flying over the Empire State Building, and he thought, "If my gorilla climbed this world’s tallest building (at the time) and wrestled with a fighter plane, it would be a cool one. Scene", so there is a classic scene in later film history, King Kong flying high in the air with his bare hands... Such an end, the story is elevated to a confrontation between primitive and modern civilization.
When the first version of the model design was released, Cooper laughed and said: "This TMD is simply a cross between a human and a monkey, and this ridiculous long hair is too bad." When designing the second version of the model, O'Brien once again asked Delgado to add human characteristics, only to adjust some, but the result still looked weird. Cooper told them that the King Kong he wanted was the most ferocious and savage monster that had never been seen before, and the audience would scream in shock when they saw King Kong.
Origin of the name
Image change
In the first version of the movie in 1933, King Kong appeared as a prehistoric great ape, and its size changed significantly. Cooper's envisioned King Kong was 40 to 50 feet (12.2 to 15.2 meters) tall, and King Kong was on Skull Island. The height of the shooting model was reduced to 18 feet (5.5 meters). When shooting the New York plot, the height of King Kong increased to 24 feet (7.3 meters), and Cooper often used special shooting angles to match the miniature model. , So that in some scenes, King Kong's height even reached 60 feet (18.3 meters).
In the following 70 years, King Kong was remade and restarted in multiple versions, deducting multiple new stories. The 1976 and 1986 versions of King Kong are more personified. In the 2005 version, Peter Jackson completely removed the human characteristics of King Kong, making it look and behave more like a real gorilla. It has the belly of a large herbivore. It uses knuckles to assist. Walking, without any upright posture, it slaps the chest instead of clenching its fists when emotional, and its height was modified by Peter Jackson to 25 feet (7.6 meters).
In the 2017 new version, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts ( Jordan Vogt-Roberts ) hopes that his King Kong will be closer to the image in the early 1933 edition. In an interview, he said: "The first thing we need to consider is, How old is King Kong so that people sigh'that is a god' at first glance. Therefore, our King Kong walks upright. Compared to a super huge orangutan, it is more like a human." In the new version In the eyes of the creative team, King Kong is a unique species with its unique living habits. In order to clearly highlight King Kong's character, in the new version of the film, it is set as a teenager, not as a mature man as people traditionally think.
Skull Island
In the early 1933 film, the name of the island was not mentioned, but the location of the island was roughly described, at 78° east longitude and 12° south latitude, in the Indonesian waters, not far from the island of Sumatra. In the center of the island, there is a small rock mountain in the shape of a skeleton called Skull Mountain. At first, people thought that the island was just an uninhabited island, but as the exploration progressed, everyone found that there were primitive superstitious indigenous people living here. They had a religious worship of certain prehistoric animals on the island, including one. The extremely huge ancient gorilla, Kong.
In the remake of King Kong in 1976, it was called the beach of the skull. For thousands of years, many people claimed to have arrived here accidentally, but they could not provide any substantial evidence. But a secret government document proved the existence of Skull Island, which also mentioned that there was a huge oil storage there, so the greedy oil company drove to Skull Island.
From a geological point of view, crustal movements lifted the oceanic crust out of the sea. Skull Island evolved from an active volcano and is the largest in a series of remnant island chains. Skull Island is located in the Indian Ocean, the western waters of Sumatra, surrounded by many smaller islands, the southeast corner of the island extends into the sea into a small peninsula. There are two main rock mountains on Skull Island. The larger one is weathered to resemble a human skeleton. It is called Skull Mountain. The interior of the mountain is densely covered with complex underground caves and magma channels. Most of them are naturally formed, and of course there are artificial Repair traces.
In ancient times, these caves and passages were used by indigenous people to avoid monsters on the ground, and it turns out that even inside the mountains there are terrible creatures that are no less dangerous than the surface. For example, their heads are huge enough to swallow them whole. A living snake-shaped amphibian with the characteristics of both squid and crabs. It is a luminous creature that attacks with poisonous stings. It is a giant spider with a body of 7 feet high and eight feet long.
According to research, the humans living on Skull Island are the last of an unknown race called Tagatu. They originated in Asia and then spread to the islands west of Sumatra, and these islands are already undergoing geological changes. disappear. Due to natural disasters, they migrated to Skull Island a thousand years ago and built a huge wall on the island to resist the behemoths on the island.
Due to hundreds of millions of years of isolation, the dinosaurs on Skull Island have not been completely extinct, and have continued to evolve in 65 million years, and some new species have appeared. The more famous one is called Deathrunners. Sensitive dinosaurs, 6 to 9 inches tall, running on both feet, are extremely fierce and aggressive. They ruled Skull Island for a long time. The Tagatu and King Kong fought fierce wars with them almost every few days. The generation will undergo a body shape variation, and among them, the largest body size will rule Skull Island. After King Kong was born and grew up, he defeated the dinosaurs and ruled Skull Island.
The above is the past and present life of King Kong and Skull Island, I hope it will be helpful for watching the movie.
View more about Kong: Skull Island reviews
