Newswise — The hype surrounding Peter Jackson's remake of "King Kong" —scheduled to debut in theaters on Wednesday, Dec. 14—is almost as big as the fictional giant ape. But while the story sticks to the script for the 1933 sci-fi classic, the 1930s images of New York City will be very historically accurate, according to an art professor from Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa who worked for Jackson on the film—doing design and architectural research in New York for his art department in New Zealand.
"They (Jackson and his design team) often needed things the next day, so I worked with them for four to five months, basically gathering much photographic and architectural research; and drawings, documents, or whatever details they needed," said Matthew Wilson, assistant professor of art at Wartburg, who initially was referred to Jackson's team by a friend for another project.
"One of the first assignments I had was a taxicab. But they didn't want just any old taxicab. They wanted one that was in service back in 1933. They wanted such things as what did a driver's license badge look like, and what did everything look like involving that taxi ride. They even wanted the mixture of paint that was used on the cab."
The period detail was important, according to Wilson, because today's multi-million dollar blockbusters rely on high-tech computer special effects to recreate any past historical artifact. He reports that Jackson's design team believed historical accuracy was critical to this film's success.
"They held two principles, which I believe were important. One was to shoot the film as a period piece, the other was to film this event as though it really happened in 1933," he says. "Firstly, Peter Jackson rightly pointed out that the early part of the 20th century is the last time one could believably conceive that an uncharted island could exist. With GPS, satellite photography, and exploration, it is hardly possible that such a discovery could be made today. So the time period became very important as a window into the mythology of Kong.
"Secondly, the intense level of detail involved in constructing a period film is very high. The designers at Weta (Weta Digital Ltd.) wanted everything to be as it really was. This commitment to historical detail again serves to honor the mythology of Kong as it was conceived at the time."
Wilson is looking forward to seeing the finished film, since he's already seen the taxi he provided historical details on in the film's trailer. He believes other moviegoers are also anxiously awaiting the modern adaptation of the 1933 classic, which he calls "an early cinematic attempt to depict a deity onscreen in a kind of modernized mythology that has since become commonplace."
"Kong is a God, similar to the animistic deities in many hunter/gatherer cultures—such as Paleolithic, Native American, African, etc. Kong represented another order of reality—one which existed here in our modern world—on an undiscovered mysterious island lost in time. On this island were dinosaurs and other fantastical creatures, but it was Kong who was worshipped as a deity," says Wilson.
He believes that Kong became a sort of archetypal figure and precursor to much fantasy, horror, and sci-fi genres in film.
"While we can project symbolism onto his character or allegory into the storyline, at base, his attraction to our psyche operates at the level of animistic fascination—the awe of the modern consciousness at being placed in the position of a devotee," he says. "We know it is an illusion yet it somehow places a question into our imagination as to whether the gods of cinema might somehow reflect an order of reality that might truly exist."
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