It was previously said that Kong: Skull Island will feature the largest King Kong ever, and now we get an idea on just how big the great ape will be.
“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,” director Jordan Vogt-Roberts offers. “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 continues with mention of specifics regarding the size of the new King Kong, but only teases it’s “much larger” than previous versions.
“In terms of actual size, our Kong is by far the biggest Kong,” he explains. “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.”
Plot details are also made known as well as Hiddleston and Larson’s characters:
“The film takes place in the ’70s,” he explains. “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.
Hiddleston plays an ex-British SAS tracker; Larson is a war photographer, “who’s seen all sorts of terrible, terrible things.” Vogt-Roberts avoids any specific details about what they find on the island, but he’s adamant about what they don’t find. “We’re very explicitly not telling the beauty and the beast story,” he says. “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.”
“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,”
Look for more about Kong: Skull Island at next week’s Comic-Con.
“Kong: Skull Island” has a March 10, 2017 release, with Godzilla Vs. King Kong released on May 29, 2020.
