Ep 97: King Kong Tutorial

Topic: King Kong

 

 

The move is over, and we’re back with new episodes.  And we pick ourselves back up with one of our more recent topic, on our way to their epic faceoff, we’re studying King Kong, The Eighth Wonder of the World.  Unlike his nemesis, Godzilla, King Kong has a far smaller collection of movies by comparison, but his impact on American pop culture and history and certainly been around in America just as long as his Japanese Counter Part.  And as we await their epic battle, we learn a bit about the massive ape, and study his movies to see what we can gleam off the future encounter.

 

 

Creation

Created by Merian C. Cooper for his title movie, King Kong (1933), young Cooper was fascinated with primates.  Upon growing older, he eventually started working in the motion picture industry and after production finished on The Four Feathers(1929), he started thinking his next picture would be something to do with Primates.

 

A year later, he found himself at RKO, a major movie studio, and Cooper began development on what would be King Kong, deciding that his primate would be giant sized.  He had actually decided the ending of the film first, liking the idea of his giant primate fighting war planes atop of the New York Insurance Building.  Famously, Cooper liked the idea of pitting a giant primate against a dinosaur, but decided to focus on one main character instead.

 

The name for King Kong took some development however.  Cooper originally like names that started with a K, but found himself having a difficult time coming something that sounded mysterious and catchy.  In original scripts, the title monster was only referred to as ‘The Beast’, but the studio did not like the generic name.  Eventually, after notes from the studio, Cooper landed on the name ‘Kong’, but in worried it would sound like a docudrama instead, like other one word films at the time.  He added ‘King’ to differentiate it, thus became King Kong.

 

 

Fictional History

King Kong is a massive Monster Primate, who originates from ‘Skull Island’, a mysterious island that King Kong lives with other prehistoric mammals and creatures.  The island is thus named due to the skull shaped mountain that lies at the center of the island.  The island is also home to the ancestors of a once highly civilized nation that previously built a wall to keep in the monsters on the island.  Though the name was never used in the original 1933 film, the name was featured in the novelization that came out two months prior to the movie, and has since stuck.

 

Though described as prehistoric Ape, King Kong has a number of human like qualities, notably, his ability to walk upright in an anthropomorphic manner.  He is described as being upwards of 40-50 feet tall, he was later rescaled to be 18-25 feet tall in the original 1933 film.  In most initial western versions, King Kong is roughly 25 feet tall, however in later Japanese versions, he was scaled in size to be similar to Godzilla.  Most recently, in the 2017 film, he was 104 feet tall, and finally 337 feet tall to fight against Godzilla in 2021.

 

In most early versions of the character, King Kong is a villain, however, in more recent films, he’s given a sympathetic story, and is even the hero in some of these movies. 

 

 

History

While a major film icon in the west, the character’s intellectual property owners have been split between various parties through history, making the character a difficult character to track.  Initially, the rights were thought to belong with Cooper, but in 1962, when the character was licensed to Toho to make King Kong vs Godzilla (1962), Cooper sued RKO.  Even though there was quite a number of evidence in Cooper’s favor, some key documents were lost between his time in the military and his return home, which the courts found that RKO owned the character.

 

Eventually, concern over the rights would come up again in 1975 when Universal Studios were trying to make a King Kong Film.  Eventually Universal Studios went to court, arguing that the King Kong novelization and serialization were now in the public domain, but that Universal couldn’t infringe on the original 1933 film.  A later ruling affirmed that the Cooper estate has owned the rights to King Kong’s name, story, and character, which were later sold to universal in 1976. 

 

 

The character himself has appeared in less than a dozen films over the last 88 years. 

 

King Kong & Son Of Kong (1933)

The initial films released by RKO, with the success of the initial King Kong movie, a subsequent film was released later in the year.

 

King Kong vs Godzilla (1962)

After the success of Godzilla in Japan, they looked to make further movies in the franchise.  This moving being the 3rd movie in the Godzilla franchise, it was also the first time either character was portrayed in a color film, showing what they would look like in color.  This King Kong was different from its original western counter part, which included:

• Coming from Faro island instead of Skull Island
• Being able to absorb electricity
• Being same relative size as Godzilla, (100 feet)

The film is famous for having to two creatures attacking different parts of Japan, before getting together on the summit of Mount Fuji and fighting each other.  In the end, both tumble in to the ocean, with only King Kong rising up from the depths and swimming back to Faro Island.

 

King Kong Escapes (1967)

In another first, predating Mecha-Godzilla, this 1967 film offered a Mecha-King Kong, a similar mechanical version of the title character.  The film sees a mechanical King Kong digging for a mysterious element, but the robot goes haywire, which results in our heroes capturing King Kong and taking him to Mecha-King Kong to finish each other off.  They eventually can’t do it, and instead somehow get to Tokyo from the North Pole, and recreate the famous ending of the 1933 film, this time using the Tokyo Tower instead.  After defeating Mecha-King Kong, King Kong swims back to his island, never to be heard again.  This is also the version time King Kong seems to have a handler so sorts, as there is a woman who has the ability to control King Kong. 

 

King Kong (1976)

A modern remake of the original 1933 film.  This film was what started the law suits with Universal Pictures, as Paramount Pictures and Dino De Laurentiis were attempting to remake the original film, and bought the rights from RKO-General.  The film is a largely faithful remake, but take places in 1976 instead of the original 1933 time frame.

 

King Kong Lives (1986)

A sequel to the 1976 film, King Kong had been alive the entire time, but is currently dying.  In order to save him, they need to transfuse blood from a similar creature, which is where introduce a ‘Lady Kong’, and another similarly sized King Kong primate who helps save King Kong. The film sees King Kong die after the events to save Lady Kong, but Lady Kong gives birth to their son, and returns to Borneo to live peacefully with their son.

King Kong (2005)

This is the Peter Jackson film that took 3 hour to watch.  A retelling of the 1933 film from a 1933 perspective, it focuses on a film maker, who hires a crew to get footage of the amazing creature, before bringing it back to New York.  The film was well received and earned top marks for its special effects and acting. It was also the first live action film in nearly 20 years.

 

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

As a part of Legendary’s MonsterVerse, which focuses on King Kong and Godzilla movies created in the west.  The movie take places in the same world as Legendary’s other 2014 and 2019 Godzilla movies.  The film follows Monarch, as it searches to map out the various ‘Titan’ monsters around the world.  The Film does a good job of introducing other monsters and setting up the world, and stars Tom Hiddleston and Samuel L. Jackson.  The movie also teases Godzilla vs King Ghidorah, which was the next major movie to come out.

 

Godzilla vs Kong (2021)

The newest feature, which is a sequel to the 2017 film and 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

 

 

 

King Kong in Pop Culture

There have been multiple illusions to King Kong in various media over the last 88 years, ranging from parodies and humorous references, to near duplication.  Famously, scenes have been reference and re-used in various cartoons, such as the Simpsons, Futurama, The Muppets, and more.  Other movies have references scenes from King Kong as well, including the Nutty Professor, Lego Batman: The Movie, and even Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs were based off the films. 

 

Donkey Kong Franchise

The 1981 Nintendo franchise about hero trying to save his girl friend from the title character.  The fact that you travel up buildings that and face off against a large ape were clear illusions, as Nintendo wanted to make a King Kong game.  The character himself would continue on as something much different as the 90s moved on, moving in to a hero role, and being re-imagined as a primate family that fought to save their island.  He was named Donkey Kong, to mean ‘Stubborn Gorilla’.

 

Rampage Franchise

An 1986 arcade classic sees three Kaiju sized monsters destroying a city.  These monsters include a Godzilla/Ymir analog in Lizzie, a giant werewolf in Ralph, and a King Kong like gorilla names George.  The series has several remakes over the years, usually coinciding with new video game hardware and platforms at they came out.  It was adapted in to a film in 2018, which include the Rock leads a rare Albino-Western-Lowland Gorilla that knows sign language, and eventually grows to city-toppling proportions.

 

 

Homework:

Kong: Skull Island (2017): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OULoar_y7H4

Godzilla vs Kong (2021): Available on HBO Max and in Theaters