King Kong (2005) - 7 questions

Question: When Jack and Carl are looking at the map, and one of them says "What's that?", we get a close-up of what looks like a blob to me. What do they see in the image?

Answer: They see what looks like the face of a gorilla, but they conclude that it must be a skull for Skull Island.

Question: Does Howard Shore the composer for the Lord of the Rings trilogy make a cameo appearance as the orchestra conductor at King Kong"s theater debut?

Answer: Yes, he is the conductor.

Question: How in the world did they get Kong onto the ship?

Answer: Since it was not shown, there can only be speculation. However, I would assume they used an elaborate pulley system, possibly with one or more of the rocks taking the Kong weight. There seems to be plenty of room on the deck for him and, with a lot of the ships load jetissoned, it would be lighter. Then it would simply be a case of securing him and making sure he didn't wake up... no problem with the amount of chloroform on board.

Question: In a trailer for this movie that was shown in theaters we see Jack and film crew shooting a scene on the shore of the island when Jack tells Ann to scream and while she does, we hear Kong's roar. However, in the movie that scene is missing. We get to see Ann screaming while Kong roars when the film crew encounters the natives for the first time and one member gets shot by an arrow. What's the deal with that? That cannot be the deleted scene as if it was like in the trailer, the movie would have a totally different plot?

Answer: Trailers often have scenes that don't make the final cut of the movie. There was a shot in the trailer for Lord of the Rings III where Merry tells Pippin, "We will see the shire again." That scene did not make the final cut of the film either (not even in the extended edition). It's not unusual (although the Kong example is a fairly extreme one: such an elaborate set-up).

Question: What nationality are the actors that play the "natives" of Skull Island?

Answer: Several of them were native New Zealanders, such as the young girl (Jacinta Wawatai) and the old hag (Vicky Haughton).

Question: If the wall around Skull island was built to keep Kong and presumably other creatures such as the dinosaurs in, why was the gate made large enough for them to get through?

Answer: The original creator of King Kong, Merin C. Cooper, wrote a novel adaption of the movie in which it was explained that the gates were built by a earlier culture of islanders that were friends with the "Kong" race. The "Kongs" helped the original islanders to build their village and the wall (thus meaning the gate had to be big enough for the giant gorillas to walk through). By the time of the events of the movie, the original islanders have "died out" and their old village had been taken over by a race of more primitive natives who became enemies with the Kongs, and were trying to use the gates for safety.

Question: Does anyone know, or has anyone noticed if Peter Jackson makes a cameo in this film?

Answer: He appears as one of the biplane gunners in the closing sequence. Other cameos in this sequence include Rick Porras, Jackson's co-producer on The Lord of the Rings, and Frank Darabont, writer and director of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, also both playing gunners, and Rick Baker, make-up artist extraordinaire who played Kong in the 1976 remake, appearing here as one of the pilots.