One
of the greatest adventure stories in Hollywood history gets a new
interpretation in this action drama from Academy Award-winning director
Peter Jackson. In the early 1930's, Carl Denham (Jack Black) is a
daring filmmaker and adventurer who has gained a reputation for his
pictures documenting wildlife in remote and dangerous jungle lands;
despite the objections of his backers, Denham plans to film his next
project aboard an ocean vessel en route to Skull Island, an uncharted
island he discovered on a rare map. Correctly assuming his cast and
crew would be wary of such a journey, Denham has told them they're
traveling to Singapore, but before they set sail, his leading lady
drops out of the project. Needing a beautiful actress willing to take a
risk, Denham finds Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), a beautiful but
down-on-her-luck vaudeville performer and offers her the role; cautious
but eager to work, Darrow takes the role, and onboard the ship she
strikes up a romance with Jack Driscoll (Adrian Brody), a respected
playwright hired by Denham to write the script for his latest epic.
When Denham and Company arrive on Skull Island, the natives react with
savage violence, but they happen to be the least of their worries.
Skull Island is a sanctuary for prehistoric life, and lording it over
the dinosaurs and other giant beasts is Kong, a twenty-five-foot-tall
gorilla who can outfight any creature on Earth. The natives kidnap
Darrow, giving her to Kong as an offering to appease the giant beast;
Denham and his men set out to find her, with Driscoll bravely
determined to save the woman he loves. Eventually, Driscoll finds
Darrow and Denham outwits Kong, intending to take the giant ape back to
New York for display. But Kong has bonded with Darrow, and his
attraction to her proves to be his undoing. Andy Sirkis, who provided
the body movements for Gollum in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings
pictures, performed similar duties on King Kong, studying gorillas so
he could mimic their actions, which were then used as the basis for the
special effects crew's digital animation of the great ape.
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