By Gill Pringle
It’s been over ten years since the famous gigantic marauding gorilla tore his way across the screen courtesy of Peter Jackson in the impressive King Kong, but in this era of high-recognition blockbusters based on existing, instantly accessible material, it was only a matter of time before he returned. And Kong: Skull Island looks like it could deliver the hairy, chest-beating goods, boasting a sensational cast (Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John C. Reilly), an interesting director in Jordan Vogt-Roberts (The Kings Of Summer), a refreshingly contemporary-ish 1970s setting, and a trailer that ticks all of the action-excitement-menace-adventure-humour boxes.
Another big plus for the project is the presence of Brie Larson, who picked up the Best Actress Oscar in 2016 for her astounding performance in the acclaimed drama, Room, and is next to headline Captain Marvel. Playing Weaver, a war photojournalist and peace activist, Larson forms part of a team of soldiers, explorers, and scientists who travel to an uncharted island in the Pacific, unaware that they are crossing into the domain of monsters, including the mythic ape, Kong. The deliverer of Brie Larson’s blockbuster stripes, Kong: Skull Island was shot in Vietnam, Hawaii, and Queensland, Australia.
So how was Australia?
“Oh, it was great! We were on The Gold Coast. It was so beautiful! I really enjoyed it there a lot! I could have stayed a lot longer.”
Was this the first time that you’d visited there?
“Yeah, it was. It’s nice for the first time that you visit there to be able to spend quite a bit of time there. A cool thing about my job is that you really feel like you’ve lived in a place, because it’s not like you’re there for ten days, and you’re trying to see all the sights. You’re actually rooted. You have an apartment… you’re grocery shopping. Going to the market is one of my favourite things when I’m in a new place, because products are completely different. Completely different! I became obsessed with Twisties! I’d eat Twisties every day! Every day!”
Did you come face to face with any deadly species?
“Well, Australia is…really intense. We had people that were combing everything, to make sure everything was safe. I got fooled with the drop bears? There’s the fake thing that you tell tourists, they’re basically like evil looking koalas. ‘You better watch out, because they hang out in the trees, and they’ll jump on you and tear your head off’. And you’re like ‘Oh my God!’ And there’s signs on the side of the road. It took me a while to realise that it’s a joke!”
You play a war photographer in Kong: Skull Island. What’s driving her? What attracts her to this mission?
“She’s on the frontlines, and it’s all about getting the shot. She is self-described as an anti-war photographer, and is interested in telling the truth, which is why getting onto this mission is so important, and interesting to her. She’s not afraid to be part of this mission. Every character in this movie has their own reasons for going on this mission, and for searching for glory. They want to be noticed, and they want to have their time. And then it’s not until they’re actually on the island when you realise, ‘Oh, there is no such thing as glory in this space. We’re in nature, and it’s just survival. There’s nothing beyond that.’ Weaver learns a lot about what it means to be a hero, and what it means to be a journalist. Where do we draw the line? That’s a really interesting question now as well. We’re in a world where there’s just so much going on now… There’s so much information happening, and I think that it poses these really early questions, of when is it enough? Or, when have we been given enough? Or when can we just let something be? When is there nothing to be exploited anymore?”
What was your relationship with the previous Kong movies? “I’d seen them, and I grew up, weirdly enough, with the vintage 1933 movie poster in our living room. It’s weird that my parents had that, not
“I’d seen them, and I grew up, weirdly enough, with the vintage 1933 movie poster in our living room. It’s weird that my parents had that, not knowing however many years later that I would be doing this film. But obviously, Kong is an icon.”
What does Kong represent now, in Kong: Skull Island?
“It’s about this idea of trying to assert dominance over something that is not ours. And really, what does it prove, to take another thing down, another beautiful thing like him? Also, we’ve created a world of so many comforts and luxuries, so what happens when you’re thrown back in amongst nature, and all of these tools that we’ve created that apply really well back at home, now don’t apply. This is a whole other code. The closest thing that I could relate it to is when I scuba dive. It’s an incredible feeling to go underwater for the first time, when you go, ‘Oh my God! I’m a guest, and I need to be…very polite.’ There’s something really thrilling and mortal about having that type of experience. We’re very disconnected. We drive around in a car, live in a home, and get something from the market that we don’t have to search for…it’s just there, year round, and we just go and pick it up. There’s something very interesting about then experiencing all of these very different people, with very different backgrounds, all being forced to try and survive again. What does that look like?”
Did you have to get quite physical for the role?
“A lot of running, but kind of running through obstacle course like situations. I figured how to run on Scott Pilgrim, Edgar Wright started calling me ‘Spaghetti arms Larson’! It was still very spaghetti arms the first couple of weeks of shooting Kong. It was like ‘Oh, I’ve got to learn how to al dente!’ So, I had to really focus on that. I also had to learn how to throw. It came time to shoot, and they were like ‘Ok, so I want you to throw it in this little area between where the camera is and where the crane is.’ I’m like ‘How?’ I didn’t grow up with that. I didn’t have a dad who was like ‘Ok, let’s go play catch’. I didn’t do that. I was drawing. So I got to learn how to do that, which I know seems like a silly thing, but they’re big accomplishments when you have hundreds of people on a set going ‘Is she going to make it?’ Because if not, we’re going to be here all night. And it feels really good to make the shot.
You were famously recently cast as Marvel Studios’ first headlining female superhero in the upcoming Captain Marvel…
“I’m really honoured, and I take that commitment really seriously. It’s very important to me, and I really love the people at Marvel. It’s become very important to me about who I work with. They are so smart, and so caring, and so understanding of the importance of these films, and the imagery that they are creating. My hope is that we make something that’s very powerful and meaningful!”
Kong: Skull Island is released in cinemas on March 9.
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