King Kong

Trivia: In the escape from the dinosaurs, one of the ship's crewmen lets out a Wilhelm scream when he is knocked off a ledge. (01:24:40)

Cubs Fan ★

Trivia: The 'natives' at Kong's feet, in the theater production scene, use the same costumes and the same music as the Skull Island natives in the 1933 original.

Trivia: The scene where the men who fall into the ravine are attacked by giant insects is an homage to the original 1933 King Kong, where a similar scene was omitted due to its (at that time) gross-out factor.

Trivia: The cheesy dialogue that Ann and Bruce Baxter are saying when the film is shooting on the ship is the actual dialogue from the original King Kong.

Trivia: Peter Jackson's cameo in this film is in one of the biplanes attacking Kong, when he stands atop the Empire State Building. This is an homage to the director/producer cameos in the 1933 film. His co-pilot is makeup-artist Rick Baker, who portrayed Kong in the 1976 version of King Kong.

Super Grover ★

Trivia: When Carl and Preston are in the car, after stealing the reels of film, they discuss leading lady replacement possibilities. They note that "Fay" is a size 4, but Preston then says that she is already filming something for RKO. The RKO feature they refer to is the original King Kong, starring Fay Wray.

Super Grover ★

Trivia: In the scene where Jack Driscoll is being shown his sleeping quarters among the cages on the Ventura, as he makes his way through the doorway with the Asian character, in the background there is a cage labelled "Sumatran Rat Monkey". This is a nod back to Peter Jackson's earlier Zombie film, 'Braindead' - the Sumatran Rat Monkey is brought to New Zealand, and with it comes the original source of the Zombie virus that affects the main characters within the film.

Trivia: The locust like insects that attack Jack Driscoll and are machine gunned off in the spider pit scene are called Wetas - which is the name of the special effects company owned by director Peter Jackson - Weta Digital. Also to be noted is that the weta is an insect native to New Zealand, where director Peter Jackson lives and where Kong was filmed - which is where the effects team got its name.

Trivia: The script pages that Driscoll gives to Denham aboard the Venture are actual pages from a copy of the original 1933 King Kong script that Peter Jackson owns. He mentions this on one of the production diaries.

wizard_of_gore ★

Trivia: During the first moments when Kong is outside in Manhattan, when he picks up the first girl and throws her, you can see a Universal Studios billboard on the wall behind him. (02:32:05)

Trivia: Fay Wray, from the original King Kong, was supposed to make a cameo, delivering the last line, "It was beauty killed the beast". Unfortunately, she died before this was possible.

Brad ★

Trivia: Kong's roar is a lion's roar and a tiger's roar combined, played backwards at half speed.

BigOLB

Trivia: The Morse Code message that the crew of the Venture receives which tells them of the warrant for Denham's actually says, "Show Me the Monkey".

wizard_of_gore ★

Trivia: Andy Serkis and Naomi Watts shot all scenes for King Kong and Ann together, whether it was Watts' shots or Serkis' motion capture ones. They chose to do it together to get the real emotion between King Kong and Ann. Confirmed by Andy Serkis.

Trivia: After the bugs attack the ship's crew, there is a triceratops drinking water from the river, a reference to the 1933 version where Kong fought with that dinosaur.

oswal13

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Kong does not fight a triceratops in the 1933 film. The rescue party does.

It was an erased scene but that fight was taken.

oswal13

Trivia: Naomi Watts' feet are bare for the majority of the movie. Going barefoot is a recurring trademark in many of her other movie roles as well.

Trivia: For her role as the Witch Doctor, Vicky Haughton had to spend nearly six hours in the make-up chair every day. In spite of this, she appears for only two minutes in the entire film.

Trivia: Although King Kong is the title character, he does not appear until 71 minutes into the movie, and has only 41 minutes of screen time.

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Mistakes

Factual error: Denham is obviously shooting a sound film - he has a sound recordist with him along with the bulky and awkward recording equipment typical for the era, and they discuss the problems of recording dialogue on board. But not once do we see him filming with sound. We see the crew recording dialogue - synchronised sound, recorded on location, which is utterly impossible given the equipment they have and the circumstances under which the fim is being shot. We never see a microphone, a boom pole or a tape recorder. His camera isn't even 'blimped' - soundproofed - and it's handcranked, which makes a racket. They can't be planning on adding the sound later - why have the sound recordist and his bulky and heavy equipment there with them if they are? We see the crew recording dialogue - synchronised sound, recorded on location, which is utterly impossible given the equipment they have and the circumstances under which the fim is being shot. The whole point of post dubbing dialogue is that you don't need a sound recordist in the first place.

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Quotes

Carl Denham: There are thousands of actresses out of work in this city. Somewhere out there is a woman born to play this role... A woman who will journey into the heart of the unknown... Toward a fateful meeting that changes everything.

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Questions

Question: Would it really be possible for an ape as large as Kong Kong to climb up the Empire State Building as shown in the movie?

Answer: I assume you mean, could the building take his weight, not whether an ape would really have the ability to climb a building (if that's what you mean, then it's definitely yes...apes are great climbers). Assuming Kong is proportionally as heavy as normal-sized gorillas, which tend to be in the area of 160kg (~350lbs), then he weighs over 80,000kg (89 tons, give or take). The average human weighs about 62kg, so that's about 1,300 humans, and the capacity of the ESB is over 13,000. So, assuming the building is mostly, or even half, empty while a giant gorilla scales it, the building could handle his weight.

Keep in mind, though, that the weight allowance for the building assumes people on the floors of the building, not climbing on the outside. The outer structure of a building isn't designed for massive creatures climbing on it. While the building as a whole would likely survive, there would be significant damage as Kong would be breaking windows and pulling stone off it as he made his way up.

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