Kong Skull Island: ‘the biggest Kong that you’ve seen on screen’

Het geliefde personage King Kong heeft een filmgeschiedenis van inmiddels 83 jaar. Kong: Skull Island regisseur Jordan Vogt-Roberts maakt nu echter een grootse belofte middels onderstaande foto. Op de foto zien we de botten van een gigantisch wezen.

Vogt-Roberts zei over Kong:

“From the size of the skull, you can tell that things on this island are much bigger than audiences are used to with traditional Kong lore. Our Kong is by far the biggest Kong that you’ve seen on screen, and that translates to a lot of different things on the island.”

Vogt-Roberts heeft de eerdere Kong-films goed bekeken:

“In terms of actual size, our Kong is by far the biggest Kong. Peter Jackson’s Kong was around 25 feet. The ‘33 Kong ranged between 25 feet and 50 feet, I want to say he was 50-plus feet when he was on the Empire State Building. He varied in size dramatically! The ’70s Kong was somewhere between them. The film takes place in the ’70s. The ’70s was a time where it was believable that we could still be confronted with myth. And there was still unknown in the world.” At the start of the decade, NASA launched a satellite program later known as LANDSAT, which involved satellites mapping the world from space – the end of that “unknown.” In the film, “this island pops up,” leading the characters to investigate.

Vogt-Roberts laat weinig specifieke details los rondom de film. Hij liet wel weten wat we niet hoeven te verwachten:

“We’re very explicitly not telling the beauty and the beast story. The original is a classic, the ’70s version is great for what it is, and Peter’s version is a great retelling of the 1933 film.”

In plaats daarvan zal Kong Skull Island zich richten op de mythologie van Kong’s thuisland:

“The thing that most interested me was, how big do you need to make [Kong], so that when someone lands on this island and doesn’t believe in the idea of myth, the idea of wonder – when we live in a world of social and civil unrest, and everything is crumbling around us, and technology and facts are taking over – how big does this creature need to be, so that when you stand on the ground and you look up at it, the only thing that can go through your mind is: ‘That’s a god.’” Pretty big, we’re guessing? “You will see when we drop a trailer.” 

Kong: Skull Island is de start van een nieuwe ‘Kaiju’-trilogie. Kaiju betekend in het Japans vreemd beest of mysterieus wezen. In Hollywood wordt met de term verwezen naar de Japanse filmmonsters, zoals King Kong, Godzilla, Mechagodzilla. De trilogie zal bestaan uit Skull Island, Gareth Edwards‘ Godzilla 2 (2018) en de grote finale Godzilla vs. Kong (2020). Opvallend genoeg zou Edwards’ Godzilla uit 2014 dan tevens onderdeel van de franchise moeten zijn, waardoor het dan zou gaan om een quadrologie.

De opnames van Kong: Skull Island zijn in volle gang in Hawaii. De film wordt geregisseerd door Jordan Vogt-Roberts gebaseerd op een scenario door Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein en Derek Connolly. Hoofdrollen zijn er voor Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Shea Wigham, Jason Mitchell, Corey Hawkins, John Goodman,

Kong: Skull Island draait vanaf 9 maart 2017 in de bioscopen.