Formal Film Study #2: The History of Kong

The Kaiju genre can be seen either as the most underground influential action genre or the most well accepted horror genre. These ideas can be traced to the fact that only recently has hollywood began its destiny to produce bigger budget Kaiju movies, such as Pacific Rim or Godzilla (2014). But most, if not, all of these films would not have even existed without the massive influential push by the King Kong films. The 3 films we will be looking at all have the same name "King Kong". The first came out in 1933, the next in 1976, and the latest in 2005. As for the horrendously beautiful B-movie spectacular "Kong Lives" or "Godzilla vs King Kong", I may mention them here and there, but they can be considered as their own separate films.

Very few zoos throughout America and the world featured apes and primates as the demand to see these amazing creatures grew. So people began to ask and beg Hollywood to start filming the interesting beasts. This was the beginning of a small yet large new age of film.This group of movies was known as Jungle films. Jungle films were a huge success and quickly became very profitable. The problem was that much of the information in these films was not entirely accurate, for Hollywood was more interested in the visuals and ideas than the facts. Beasts in the Jungle from 1913 is largely considered the first of the sub-genre. A lot of trick photography was also used in most of these films. Just as all other genres of movies consisted of a formula, the Jungle films also had their own. The formula was putting sexy woman and primative apes into the movie. This new craze eventually led to the groundbreaking epic that is King Kong from 1933, which also was green lighted by RKO mainly did so because of the idea that "gorillas plus sexy women in peril equals enormous profits"(Erish).

The original film has a very different style from its followers. The film features more basic shots throughout, possibly mainly due to the painstaking work of stop-motion. The style also displayed the island as a cramped and very dense jungle. The shot above gives a perfect example of what most of movie consisted of. The shot makes it clear that the greenery has consumed most of this island, and easily transfers us all into it. The shots also last longer than most films today. They even return to the same shot throughout this battle between Kong and the V. Rex. Another feature that seperates this film from the others is its special effects. All of the creatures, including Kong himself, are featured in black and white stop-motion. However, there are some scenes where Kong is a giant animatronic, which in itself was all the more groundbreaking for its time. This movie's special effects gave practically gave birth to Toho's Godzilla franchise, Gorgo, Jurassic Park and countless other classics.
Overall, the first Kong movie seems as if it was trying to be a big-budget horror film. There are countless shots of Kong stomping on, or even devouring people. There are also numerous shots of people being attacked and even killed by some of the other interesting beasts living on Skull Island. The tribal people alone may terrify the audience with their cannibalistic and sacrificial nature. There is even a deleted scene where spiders devour people. However, the film can also be viewed as an adventure movie. A group of people travel to an island where they must confront numerous creatures to bring back one of their own. Of course, the plot later turns into an obviously insane director who brings Kong to New York and pretty much causes much destruction. This story sounds similar to that of numerous adventure movies from years before.

 Many, if not all, of you have probably not heard of this one; Heck, you've probably heard more of King Kong vs Godzilla than this movie! But I have to review this one, even if it was just made for reasons that even included the infamous sequel "Kong Lives" (which is a fantastic movie, mainly because of Dr Who and MechaKong). The Kong movie from 1976 at first glance seems as if it was made mainly for the lust of the leading actress and the greed of the possible profit that would be received. However, after a quick watch, it honestly wasn't that bad of a film. It was a campy film that was decent at times.
As stated previously, the film's style is more campy than its more revolutionary and famous predecessor. Rather than a dense and mysterious jungle, this film goes for a more B-movie budgeted feel for its numerous jungle scenes. Kong's arms, when holding the main actress throughout the film, were actually huge animatronics. This was done to make it easier for the actress to interact with Kong. The big ape himself was made using state of the art costumes, as well as animatronics. The scene above is a perfect example of what many of the shots of the film were like. The girl and hand were shot in front of a green screen, while Kong in the background was filmed separately. The campy quality of most of the shots also leaks out from this image, specifically with the mask looking face of Kong, and the shades and colors of the background.
Also, many of the famous scenes, such as the Rex's mouth being ripped open, were saved for the sequel, and instead we get a giant snake.

The latest Kong movie that has been released, and that we will be talking about, is Peter Jackson's masterpiece from 2005. The film was what really brought the CGI company Weta Digital, which was also created by Peter Jackson, on the map. This Kong movie is one of the very few remakes that has been considered better than the original. The movie was created by Jackson mainly because he had a huge history with the beast. He remembered crying when he first saw the giant monster fall off the building, and even attempted to remake the film with his Super 8 camera. The film became his life blood and fuel to become a film maker. Universal Pictures began seeing Jackson's work, and immediately became impressed. When given the chance to remake the creature from the black lagoon, Jackson declined and Universal learned of his obsession with Kong. The Kong character was Public Domain at the time, so it was decided a remake would be made. Jackson surprisingly declined the offer to remake Kong, but then decided to immediately sign on because he "quickly became disturbed by the fact that someone else would take it over," (Pryor). 
The film's style was definately reminicent of that of the time period the film takes place in. The cars are vintage, the people's clothes are vintage, even the discrimination of women is made apparent in the movie. One big thing this film did different than the previous ones was that there was no scene where Kong's hand reaches into a building and grabs the main character. Instead, she goes to him to try to calm him down and stop destroying the city.
The scene above shows how artsy many of the shots are throughout the film. Jackson was always concerned with the amount of screen time all the creatures were getting, so he made sure there were many full on views, and that many of the shots lasted longer than many of the previous film's.