“The Host” and “The Good The Band & The Weird”
“I think ‘The Host’ is a masterpiece made by a genius filmmaker [Bong Joon-Ho],” he said. “I think bar none, that South Korean filmmakers put everyone else to shame right now. ‘The Host,’ and I include ‘The Good, The Bad And The Weird’ here, they’re so good at taking Western tropes, conventions and genres, archetypes and stereotypes, and understanding them and executing them to such a high level. But then they reinterpret them, twisting and morphing them. ‘The Good, The Band & The Weird’ is the closest thing I’ve seen to ‘Raiders of The Lost Ark.’ It has so much life to it and has that sense of adventure.”
” ‘The Host’ I adore for so many reasons, but it’s amazing at playing with tone and I also love that creature for how weird it is and how inelegant it is as it stumbles over itself,” Vogt-Roberts continued. “It has so much personality. One of the big things for me was that the movie wasn’t afraid to show the monster in the beginning and a big thing for me in this movie was rejecting the idea that you need to play this game where you hide the creature [and] very slowly reveal the monster. In so many ways ‘The Host’ is a monster movie, but like much of South Korean cinema, they’re willing to defy expectations and tropes and really reinvent the rules of those genres. ‘The Host’ gave me the confidence to say, ‘You know what? You can do this.’ ”
“Akira” and Dr. Steve Brule
The movie is filled to the brim with weird references. The back of John C. Reilly’s jacket is a double whammy to both ‘Akira’ and [Reilly’s Adult Swim comedy character] Steve Brule,” he explained. “The top portion of the jacket is from ‘Akira,’ and the ‘For Your Health’ logo is from Steve Brule. And the front side of his jacket has a patch that say ‘Lizard Company’ and no one has picked up on the fact that it’s a riff on Travis Bickle’s jacket in ‘Taxi Driver’ that has a patch on it that says, ‘King Kong Company.’ But there’s references to ‘Taxi Driver,’ ‘Oldboy,’ ‘Aliens,’ ‘Legend Of Zelda‘ and ‘Metal Gear Solid,’ and there’s everything in this film.”
Hayao Miyazaki & Anime
“Anime and video games in general rewired my brain and rewrote my DNA as a kid,” the filmmaker remarked. “And they were equal loves to me with cinema. Hayao Miyazaki and ‘Princess Mononoke‘ in particular were a huge, huge influences on this. It broke open the mandate of what the creatures would look like. Because I didn’t want to do dinosaurs, we’d seen them in ‘Jurassic World‘ recently and Peter Jackson’s version did dinosaurs exceptionally well, and I didn’t feel like competing. ‘Mononoke’ was the movie that made me go: if Kong is the god of the island, then these creatures are the gods of their individual domains. I wanted the creatures to have this mythic quality and much like Miyazaki’s work, to have a beauty and a wonder and darkness at the same time.”
“The other anime influence is the series ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion.’ Think of Kong and the way that he moves and the stylization of the physics of how things work have way more to do with manga and anime like ‘Evangelion,’ ” Vogt-Roberts added. “It was tricky working with Industrial Light And Magic, I mean they are artists, no doubt, but big VFX company’s first instinct is to make things as realistic as possible. A year in they said, ‘Oh I think we finally get your sensibilities.’ ‘Cause Kong is more stylized and the way they fight is like a big brawl. There’s something about the visually striking scale, the hyper kineticness and the way they animated the mechs and creatures in ‘Evangelion.’ It was a huge influence on me as a kid, but being able to implement visual exaggeration, that iconic visual printability, like a frame you could hang up, that was huge.
Werner Herzog
“There’s weird shit from ‘Fitzcarraldo,’ he revealed. “And Werner Herzog overall too. I don’t know if anyone’s going to find that. I would love to think they would. ’Fitzcarraldo’ was actually a huge influence in a strange way because of the vibe — it’s another going up the river movie. And just how sweaty and palpable everything felt and how difficult the journey was, but the journey into the unknown was a big reference to me.
“Aliens”
“I didn’t look at much horror, but ‘Aliens’ in particular had such a simple narrative: you go down, you need to rescue people, shit gets fucked up and you need to get out. Then your ship crashes so it’s about survival. And we have a very simple narrative as well. Brie Larson’s also named Weaver after Sigourney Weaver cause you know, it’s great to have a strong female action heroine.”
John Boorman‘s “Hell In The Pacific” starring Lee Marvin and Toshirō Mifune
“ ‘Hell In The Pacific’ was a huge inspiration!,” he explained. “You know the opening scene on the beach, I loved the idea of two people who wanted to kill each other and two countries who wanted the same, but in the end came together. I love how that movie starts, they don’t even try and explain how they got there. But it’s not ‘Hell In The Pacific’ in the same way this movie isn’t ‘Apocalypse Now,’ its riffing on those ideas. In the same way that I wanted to make a fun house mirror movie out of say, ‘Apocalypse Now,’ it’s similar to the idea I had with [my previous film] ‘Kings Of Summer.’ With that film I was like, ‘I wanna see if I can make a really dumb Terrence Malick movie.’ Can you make something ethereal and lyrical, but still be funny? And so ‘The Thin Red Line‘ is another influence when you think about the beauty of war and the beauty of these people, but the horror too.”
Video Games
“[On top of things like ‘Metal Gear Solid’] a huge touchstone was this video game called ‘Shadow Of The Colossus‘ which was a Playstation 3 game. And there was something about the way the creatures moved and lumbered. And it was such a beautiful game that had sadness in taking down bosses. It was the rare game where you’d have a boss fight and you’d feel bad when you won. There was something melancholy about it and I loved the idea of giving Kong that same pain and moroseness. He’s bad-ass, but he’s the lonely god and protector and totally isolated without any family.”
“Raiders Of The Lost Ark”
“Action is not what it was back in the 1980’s or 1990’s,” Vogt-Roberts said with dismay. “[Back] then you had self-contained, streamlined action pieces. Now, you go to theaters and literally the last 30 minutes of the film, 45 minutes or more is just sprawling and ever-evolving set pieces, but they are endless. I’m proud that the movie feels a little throwback and yet modern at the same time. Spielberg was firing on all cylinders with that stuff and directed the hell out of that movie. The shots, the movement that carry you from one scene to the next, and I just wanted the film to have a sense of adventure and that’s what ‘Raiders’ had, the Harryhausen films had, that many of these inspirations have.”
Want to know every reference in the film? You might get that. “I wanna just make a list,” Vogt-Roberts remarked. “Just on Twitter screenshot a word document that lists every reference and see if people can find them.”
Below, you’ll find the very first piece of concept art that Vogt-Roberts created for ‘Kong,’ that he was gracious enough to share with us. Obviously it was the inspiration for some of the final posters and the entire idea of the movie itself. “Kong: Skull Island” opens in theaters nationwide on March 10th.
