Interview: Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts on Resurrecting an Icon for KONG: SKULL ISLAND

In Kong: Skull Island, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts transports audiences to a mysterious land brimming with creatures both friendly and deadly, and ruled over by one of cinema’s most iconic monsters of all time: King Kong.

At the recent press day for Kong: Skull Island, Daily Dead joined several other journalists in speaking with Vogt-Roberts, who discussed his approach to the aesthetic of the project, the challenges that came with creating Kong for this film, and more.

A Legendary Pictures film, look for Kong: Skull Island in theaters everywhere this weekend from Warner Bros.

Skull Island feels like it pays homage to Apocalypse Now and some other war films of that era. Was that something conscientious to you as you were approaching the project?

Jordan Vogt-Roberts: Well, the version of this movie that came to me took place in 1917, so it was not a movie in the ’70s at all. When they brought me this film, I sort of said, “Awesome that you’re making a new King Kong movie, but why do we need this? Why should this exist?” Because audiences are so smart now, people can feel when something isn’t pure, and when it’s not fresh.

That’s when I sort of went away for the weekend and thought about what my version would be if I would do it, where you mixed King Kong and a Vietnam War film, then fill it with monsters, so I was like, “Well, I haven’t seen that film before, and that felt like a really interesting jumping-off point to me. So, yeah, there are some aesthetic homages to Apocalypse Now, but it’s also a different mash-up of a lot of other things, too.

Can you discuss the size of Kong, and the challenges that came with creating him as a character?

Jordan Vogt-Roberts: One of the first things I did when I came on, I said, “I do not want this Kong to be a quadruped. I want him to stand upright, I want a throwback to the 1933 film where he is a biped, because he is a monster. He’s not just a big silverback gorilla, he’s a movie monster.” So I wanted to stand him upright, I wanted to make him tall, and part of that is because I wanted him to feel like this fusion between a god, a man, and a beast. I wanted to make him big enough that, if any of us stood at this table and we looked up at this thing, towered over us, how big does that thing have to be for the first thing that your brain says is, “That’s a god. I’m looking at a god.”

And it was super challenging, because I also shot anamorphic, because I love widescreen frames. So, for this, not only are you widescreen, but then you’re extra widescreen, and then you’re trying to fit humans in a frame with this ape, so it was all incredibly challenging. But I loved the idea of that challenge, so it was very difficult, but I’m very proud of a lot of the frames and the way that we use the frame, or break the frame, to have him look so god-like.

Did you research Gigantopithecus or any other potential bipedals?

Jordan Vogt-Roberts: Yeah, we looked into just about everything. We did real research into a lot of extinct creatures, a lot of rare cases of gigantism and things like that. I did a deep dive. I deleted important childhood memories in my life to make room for random facts on flora and fauna from around the world. My initial thing was to do a real heavy research dive in terms of what this world is and what it can be, and how you make it feel grounded and like a crazy acid trip, too, without it having to be a fantasy.

The movie’s very heightened and very stylized, but I still wanted it to always feel real. So, how do you do that? How do you find that threshold? That’s why we shot practically in a lot of places, like in Vietnam, so it didn’t feel like a matte painting, or like a piece of concept art that was just a fantasy land. It needed to feel like it was real, and could somehow exist in 1973, but still be stylized and feel heightened.

Obviously, when you’re making a Kong movie, Kong is the central figure, even when you have an amazingly talented cast like you do here. He has a great sense of humanity to him, and I was hoping you would discuss how you approached the challenges that may come from trying to humanize a character that doesn’t even exist in the traditional way.

Jordan Vogt-Roberts: It’s especially difficult because for the most part, we never cut to Kong’s POV [point of view]. You don’t really ever cut to the Aliens in James Cameron’s movie, right? You’re generally with the people and those things show up. So, to me, there’s always first and foremost this human journey, where these things keep popping up, so that makes it even more difficult because there’s no time to cut away from their POV to his [Kong’s], so he’s always showing up in the course of their story, as opposed to breaking POV, so that made it extra challenging.

It’s a huge thing, because you’re dealing with not just the 1933 version, but Peter [Jackson]’s version and everything, where they are like case studies on how you make people care about something fictional. That’s a huge challenge and a huge burden and responsibility, so if you screw that part up, you’re screwing up one of the more important things in a Kong movie.

Kong, I think represents a classic cinematic case of being misunderstood. And so, tapping into that is a very, very pure way of breaking down his character and then getting into him being this lonely protector, and the sad plight that he has is a totally different thing than we’ve seen before. Was it difficult? Sure, but it was necessary.

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In case you missed it, check here for our previous coverage of Kong: Skull Island.