August 18, 2009
King Kong Takes on Dinosaurs in Hollywood
Cover of The World of Kong, courtesy Pocket Books
For the 2005 remake of King Kong, the special effects team at the Weta Workshop imagined what dinosaurs would be like if they survived into modern times. In fact, the artists created an entire menagerie that ended up filling the pages of The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island, including many creatures that did not make it into the film. Of those who did grace the silver screen, though, none was more imposing than the enormous imaginary descendant of Tyrannosaurus called “Vastatosaurus rex.”
In one particularly memorable scene from the 2005 movie, a trio of Vastatosaurus take on King Kong, and now Universal Studios Hollywood wants to place visitors right in the middle of this titanic confrontation. According to the LA Times, the director of King Kong, Peter Jackson, is working with the theme park to create a new attraction in which guests are placed right in the middle of a battle between the giant gorilla and toothy dinosaurs. The ride will feature a wraparound screen, tram cars that react to what is on screen, and plenty of special effects like wind, fire, and dinosaur drool. It is set to open in 2010.
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
2 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
That movie was just so huge and long that I kind of pushed it to the back of my mind… but this reminds me of how enormously cool that fight was. I just took a look at this book’s wiki page, and it looks like they did a really nice job of imaginary science. Guess I’ll have to block out a night sometime soon to watch this one again.
2005 remake was boring and disappointing; too many visual effects, but weak screenplay.
Although I didnt like the movie, the idea of a “Lost World” with descendants of dinosaurs sounds fascinating. What would be the origin of Skull Island fauna?
Skull Island was near Andaman, the Indic Ocean, so we can presume its dinosaur fauna came from: 1) from Asiamerican Cretaceous; or 2) from Gondwanan Cretaceous.
What would be the origin of giant ape from skull island (Let’s call it Basileopithecus cranionesius)? From some Gigantopithecus-like ancestor who reached the island by accident (island-hopping)? From hominids who reached the island and became even more gigantic and herbivorous, gorilla-like? From Paleocene-Cretaceous Plesiadapiformes ancestors, becoming ape-like by convergence to Euprimates?