King Kong is a giant movie monster, resembling a gigantic ape, that has appeared in various media since 1933. The character first appeared in the 1933 film King Kong from RKO Pictures, which received universal acclaim upon its initial release and re-releases. A sequel quickly followed that same year with Son of Kong. The most recent film, Kong: Skull Island (2017), set in 1973, is part of Warner Bros./Legendary's MonsterVerse, which began with Warner Bros./Legendary's reboot of Godzilla in 2014. A crossover sequel, Godzilla vs. Kong, once again pitting the characters against one another.
Background[]
Overview[]
Conception and creation[]
Origin of the name[]
Appearances and abilities[]
Personality[]
Behaviour[]
Legal Rights[]
Appearances[]
King Kong (1933)[]
Regardless of his origin Kong was discovered on Skull Island by the crew of the USS Venture after Ann Darrow was offered up by the Island Natives. Eventually he was captured by Carl Denham and the rest of the USS Venture crew, where he was taken to New York as a show. Unfortunately Kong escaped and met his demise after being shot off the Empire State Building and falling to his death.
Son of Kong[]
MonsterVerse[]
Kong: Skull Island []
In the 1944 prologue, Kong first appears rising over a ledge where Marlow and Gunpei Ikari are fighting.4
In 1973, he makes his first proper appearance as Preston Packard and his crew drop bombs on the land below to map it. Enraged, Kong attacks the helicopters, swatting them out of the air and killing many of Packard's men, to which Packard swears vengeance against Kong. He reappears later on, heavily wounded from the earlier fight. As he washes his wounds and drinks from the lake, unknowingly watched by Jack Chapman, a Mire Squid attacks Kong, but he manages to kill the creature by stomping on its head and proceeds to make a meal of the giant cephalopod.
Later, Kong is seen jumping from one mountain to another as he looks over the island. By a large vent leading underground, Kong finds a dead Sker Buffalo nearby being eaten by a Skullcrawler. As he is about to engage the creature, another one ambushes Kong from behind. After a quick fight, he kills them by throwing one to the ground, breaking its neck, and stomping the other's head. Then some time afterward, as Weaver tries and fails to save a Sker Buffalo trapped under a downed helicopter outside the Iwi village, Kong appears and rescues the buffalo. He encounters Weaver for the first time and looks at her curiously before leaving her be. Later that night, he is seen sitting at the top of a mountain, somberly watching an aurora.
At night the following day, Kong sees both Weaver and Conrad on the top of a tall ledge through a blanket of fog and approaches them. While frightening at first, Kong warms up to them as Weaver touches his face and visibly weeps before retreating. Suddenly, explosions begin to sound and blaze in the distance as Packard has set a napalm trap to kill Kong. He is lured in and set on fire by Packard. Several of Packard's men get crushed in his rampage, but Packard renders Kong unconscious and prepares to blow him up with explosive charges. However, Conrad, Weaver, and Marlow intervene and convince the remainder of Packard's men to defect against killing Kong. However, from the swamp nearby emerges the largest of the Skullcrawlers, the Skull Devil. After coming to and crushing Packard with his fist, Kong attempts to fight the monster, but the Skull Devil manages to overpower him.
As the morning comes, the Skull Devil turns its attention onto the humans and chases them into a marsh. Kong returns and saves them by bashing a giant boulder against the Skull Devil's head, giving the humans the chance to get to safety. The fight continues with Kong managing to get the upper hand by wielding a tree trunk as a bat at one point. However, the Skull Devil uses his tail to throw Kong into a shipwreck, where he becomes tangled in its chains. As the Skull Devil prepares to deliver the killing blow, the humans distract the giant monster long enough for Kong to free himself.
Using a ship's propeller attached to a chain like a flail, Kong manages to wound and pull the Skull Devil back towards him. Then Kong throws the Skull Devil against the cliff Weaver is standing on, causing her to fall into the water. He fights and seemingly kills the Skull Devil when he slashes the giant reptile's throat with the propeller. However, as Kong rescues Weaver, the Skull Devil springs back to life and attacks, trying to eat the human clasped in Kong's hand. Then the Skull Devil wraps his tongue around Kong's arm and pulls it down his throat. As the Skull Devil refuses to let go, Kong violently yanks out his opponent's tongue, ripping out the Skull Devil's internal organs, finally killing his enemy for good.
Once Kong ensures Weaver is finally safe, he gently sets her down and leaves. As Conrad reunites with Weaver, Kong looks back at them before wandering off. He appears one last time as the humans depart from the island in the rescue helicopters. Kong watches them leave as he beats his chest and loudly roars, proclaiming himself the King of Skull Island.
Godzilla vs. Kong[]
Skull Island[]
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters[]
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire[]
Other appearances[]
The Lego Batman Movie[]
Kong was one of the prisoner of The Phantom Zone until he meet The Joker. He escape along with the other prisonier and attack Gotham. Later, he try to kill Robin but was stoped by Batman and presumably kill him.
Ready Player One[]
Kong was among the obstacle for the Race for the Cooper Key.
Space Jam: A New Legacy[]
King Kong returns with LeBron James and one of Warner Bros. Iconic Characters in Space Jam: A New Legacy.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The Monsterverse King Kong is the tallest version of the character to date, surpassing his 1962 incarnation by roughly 190 feet, or 58 meters.
- This incarnation of Kong is the second to appear alongside Godzilla, and the first to become his ally; Kong previously faced off against the King of the Monsters in King Kong vs. Godzilla.
- Kong's battle with Mechagodzilla marks the first instance of the character appearing alongside a monster which originated in a Godzilla film other than Godzilla himself.
- King Kong has possessed a beard previously on the manga adaptation for The King Kong Show
- When Kong arrived in the Hollow Earth temple during Godzilla vs. Kong, his roar was very similar to that of the 1976 roar.
- Concept art shows Kong holding a giant bone as a weapon instead of an axe. An illustration used in tie-in media shows Kong with his battle axe and a torch made with a bone; it is unclear if the latter was ever considered for Godzilla vs. Kong.
- Kong originally had a scar on the left side of his face throughout Godzilla vs. Kong, as seen on the model used for pre-visualization scenes. It still appears in a Chinese poster, tie-in Instagram stickers, an illustration used in tie-in media, and in the bust made by Prime 1 Studio.
- This is the largest incarnation of King Kong to appear in an American film, and the largest incarnation overall to date.
- Kong is referred to merely as "Kong" and not the usual moniker of "King Kong" (the official bio references this, stating the 'story of how Kong became king').
- The skeletons of Kong's species (his deceased parents) are strewn along the ground of the Bone Graveyard (also known as the "Valley of Fallen Gods").
- Kong seems to care for the native Sker Buffaloes, as he is enraged upon seeing one killed by a Skullcrawler and later helps another that got trapped under the wreckage of a helicopter.
- Some of Kong's animation was portrayed by Terry Notary, who previously played the chimpanzee Rocket in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Fellow Dawn of the Planet of the Apes actor Toby Kebbell, who played Koba, provided some reference facial animation for Kong.
- Kong combines features of early hominids, the mythical Bigfoot, and perhaps some aspects of the Gargantuas instead of being a more "realistic" gorilla, as seen in the 2005 film.
- According to director Vogt-Roberts, an alternate opening would have taken place in WWII with soldiers fighting on a beach, when a massive ape (similar to the 2005 Kong) attacks them and is immediately gunned down. However, the real Kong then emerges, many times more massive and threatening. Unfortunately, the studio nixed the idea, telling Vogt-Roberts, "You can't do that!"(Citation needed)
- This iteration of King Kong is the first to not die at the end: in King Kong 1933 and the 2005 remake, he was shot by aircrafts and falls to his death from a skyscraper, specifically the Empire State Building. In the 1976 film, he fell from a skyscraper, specifically the World Trade Center twin towers, but was put into a comatose state. In King Kong Lives, his artificial heart fails, and dies. In the 1998 animated remake, The Mighty Kong, Kong falls from the Empire State Building but this time, he survives his fall, and has an already deceased son in Son of Kong.
- In contrast to the 1933 and 2005 incarnations who met their ends trying to fight off attacking airplanes, this incarnation of Kong makes his first significant appearance by successfully defeating a group of military aircraft.
- Kong is similar to Godzilla in several ways: both are the last of their kind, both have a vendetta against their natural enemies (the Skullcrawlers, the MUTOs, and Ghidorah) who have killed the rest of their species, and both are portrayed as morally-neutral apex predators who maintain order and have no personal quarrel with humans.
- Another similarity between both Titans is that they had directly confronted humans in a bid to stop them from bringing back the great threat they vanquished; whereas Kong attacked Preston Packard and his crew to prevent them from further using seismic bomb charges knowing it will attract Skullcrawlers back to Skull Island, Godzilla laid waste upon Apex Cybernetics' facilities because the company defiled Ghidorah's surviving remains for a shady purpose.
- Like the 2005 incarnation, this Kong has numerous scars on his body, giving him a somewhat "battle-hardened" look.
- Like the traditional backstories for Kong, this incarnation is the last of his kind.
- In the novelization, Kong's injuries from Packard's napalm trap are more severe as his fur is left smoldering in places with some patches wholly burnt off, exposing the skin underneath. More instances of Kong's intelligence are shown, such as using dirt to put out the fires made by the helicopter battle and Packard seeing Kong trigger a rockslide to bury a Skullcrawler.
- The outpost Kong lives on, Monarch Outpost 33, homages 1933, the year King Kong was released.
- According to Warner Brothers, in 2019, Kong was 270 feet tall. They provided his height for this height chart to Conan's Studio for an unaired Skit, and it should be noted Conan's team made an error and counted Godzilla's dorsal fins towards his height of 355 feet, making him seem shorter than he actually is.
- S.H.MonsterArts has released scale models for Godzilla, Kong, and MechaGodzilla. Godzilla is scaled down from 393 feet and his height is official and unchanged. Using the same scaling method, it is found that according to S.H.MonsterArts, Kong is approximately 356 feet tall.
- When asked about Kong's larger size compared to the other Titanus Kong members of Skull Island, Arvid Nelson, the author of Godzilla: Aftershock and Skull Island: The Birth of Kong, stated that species is able to grow to adapt according to the size of its available predatory range, and that they grow sort of similar to how goldfish will grow to the size of their environment. Arvid also posited that the radiation from Hollow Earth would affect Kong's growth, and he could rival other titans in size in the biome by the aforementioned principle.
- Arvid Nelson has postulated that Kong is a "bad match-up" for MUTO Prime, as Kong's raw power and blunt force would be critically effective against her armor. Arvid had also said to ask Drew Edward Johnson, who has suggested that MUTO Prime's strength, sonic, and seismic attacks would be too much for Kong to handle, and that he would need armor and weapons to even survive an encounter with her.
External Links[]
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