If you follow director
Jordan Vogt-Roberts on Twitter (at least before he deleted his account), you're well aware that the up-and-coming director is a big fan of all-things geek, particularly anime and video games. So it should come as no surprise that Kong: Skull Island looked to an anime for its ques on designing the big primates' island adversaries. Speaking to one of the film's producer on set, JoBlo got the scoop from Alex Garcia.
"The creatures are a big thing. Jurassic World obviously owns the dinosaur thing right now. If Kong is the God of this island, we wanted each of the creatures to feel like they're individual gods of their own domain. Miyazaki and Princess Mononoke was actually a big reference in the way that the spirit creatures sort of have their own domains and fit within that. A big thing was trying to design creatures that felt realistic and could exist in an ecosystem that feels sort of wild and out there, and then also design things that simultaneously felt beautiful and horrifying at the same time. Where if you look at this giant spider or water buffalo, you stare at, a part of you says, 'that's the most amazing thing I've ever seen' and 'oh my god, that's going to kill me right now, I need to run for my life!"
It's clear the film needed to go a different direction from Peter Jackson's 2005 King Kong film which had Kong going against a T-Rex. In order to prove a worthy foe for Godzilla in their 2020 showdown, this version of Kong will need to be much bigger than his predecessor.
Kong: Skull Island opens in theaters next month, on March 10.
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