Headscratchers / King Kong (2005)

• Why don't the elephant & rhino enclosures at the zoo have winter barns? Elephants are likely tamed (since being Asian elephant females) and can be walked to winter quarters, but not the rhino.
• Also, the time of the year is autumn, but monkeys are among green foliage. There were no such indoor primate exhibits in the 1930s.
• In the insect-pit scene, the various Big Creepy-Crawlies only start to attack when the flare goes out, presumably because they were held at bay by the bright light. This is excusable for the various arthropods, but why would the Carnictis worms that devoured the cook avoid light? They don't even have eyes to sense it with.
  • Sensing the heat?
  • Worms have receptors that can "sense" light so that they can avoid it. This is because light can dry up a worm (remember that they must stay moist to survive). That is probably why these worms avoided the light.
  • Free-living worms do. But Word of God states that Carnictis were descended from gut parasites, which never encounter light.
  • It may well just be coincidence—the flare went out, and just then, the Carnictis roused themselves.
• Denham claims 17 of their expedition were killed, which doesn't add up. The natives killed three; four were killed in the chase scene, half a dozen at least in the spider pit, and a great handful more when capturing Kong. Ignoring the deleted scenes, including a journey by raft that kills at least three more sailors. The accurate body count should be closer to double.
  • That puzzled me too at first, but maybe a lot of them weren't killed when they captured Kong. Yes, they were thrown around and left behind when they ran, but after Kong was caught, the rest of the crew would have gone back for them and found most of them still alive.
  • From my memory, only one in the capture of Kong got killed definitively—the poor guy who got his head bitten off—and possibly two others were crushed when Kong smashed them against the cave wall. Still, the others could have conceivably only been injured when they tried to capture him. It's probably a case of Never Found the Body, but also likely would require some retcons.
  • Could be a case of Exact Words, and he's only counting the men who died after they set out expressly to pursue Kong. The three men the natives killed died before anyone but Carl had cause to suspect a giant ape was present; indeed, the first one expired before they even heard Kong's roar. So technically, those three died in pursuit of the beast's island, not the beast himself.
• How does Ann sprint through rough terrain and jungles barefoot without getting a splinter or scratch?
  • Rule of Sexy. Having Ann barefoot for most of the movie is clearly meant to be Fanservice, so having her feet covered in cuts and bruises would detract from that.
• King Kong's premiere presentation in New York takes place during what appears to be a snowy winter, with the pond even conveniently frozen for the skating scene. But shouldn't Ann suffer hypothermia when the airplanes kill Kong since she was wearing a light, sleeveless dress and atop the Empire State building to boot!?
  • Eight tons worth of tropical-primate body heat at her back might've helped a bit, plus the sun was coming up by then and probably brought the temperature up above freezing. She'd be cold, but not so much so that she wouldn't be more focused on the planes shooting at Kong (and her!) or on not getting swept off the roof by the wind than on how she was shivering.
  • For all we know, she did keel over from hypothermia as soon as Jack got her back inside the building. Barring submersion in ice water, hypothermia is usually pretty slow to set in.
• How did they get Kong on the ship for the trip back to New York? For that matter, how did they keep him restrained, and where would they fit him on that boat? (Also, I haven't seen the film in a while, but didn't the boat wreck on Skull Island? I can understand them getting it mostly operational again, but that makes it seem even more dubious that transporting Kong would be at all possible.)
  • The boat didn't wreck. Possibly they found a couple of giant trees near the island's edge, knocked them down with powder from the harpoon cannon, and lashed them together as a raft they could drag behind the Venture.
  • Wait....what?! Kong was lashed to a raft the entire way back to New York?! What did he eat/drink? He just laid there quietly? What?
  • The unmade 1976 remake by Universal is, so far, the only script to explain this part—they used one of the doors from the giant wall as a raft and tied him down with chains to keep him from moving. It doesn't explain how they fed him, though.
• While chained at the theater, Kong can tell that the blonde actress isn't Ann. Why'd he grab her and throw her away anyways?
  • Same reason why, when Ann refused to do more pratfalls for Kong, he knocked over a pillar and chucked its base over a cliff. When Kong is upset and can't bottle up his frustration, he grabs whatever's handy and tosses it around.
• At the end, Carl says beauty killed the beast, but Carl's the one who brought Kong to New York as a publicity stunt. Ann had nothing to do with it. Wouldn't it be greed and animal cruelty that killed the beast?
  • It's been a while since I saw the film, but I'm pretty sure nothing in Carl's characterization would let him make that kind of admission.
  • Or he's referencing how he'd never have been able to capture Kong in the first place if the ape hadn't pursued Ann to the island's shoreline.
• In all the scenes where Kong thrashes Ann around while clasping her in his hands and feet, particularly the fight sequences against the V. rexes, how doesn't Ann flat-out die of whiplash or sheer blunt force trauma? Kong must have a seriously steady grip.
• Why does Kong look scared and confused before leaving Ann on the cliff? The script and some supplementary material give heartbreaking insight into the expression on Kong's face after the boulder falls on his back after his temper tantrum. They explain that Kong now realizes something about him has changed. He feels something he hasn't felt often in his lonely life—an emotional connection with another creature. Kong nearly crushes Ann for refusing to perform for him anymore but can't bring himself to do it. The uneasy look on Kong's face is him realizing that a dangerous power shift has occurred; he feels humiliated knowing Ann has disarmed him and reduced his power, threatening his alpha-male status. Kong reclaims his power and restores his alpha status by defeating the V-rexes.
• Why does the juvenile V-rex chase after Ann when it already has bigger prey in its mouth?
  • That particular lizard-creature was a Foetoedon, a really repulsive crocodilian scavenger and giant-bug eater. It's possible that although its tail was a good morsel for the V-rex, eating its head and gullet with whatever noxious mess of rotten meat, toxic insects, and bone-digesting superacids they contained would be too gross even for a neotyranosaur.
  • The companion book states that Skull Island is "survival of the fittest" taken to its most extreme. The competition for food is so high that if you see something you can eat, you eat it—the book even cites that there are whole clades of smaller animals on the island living off all the carrion around because of this. The Vastatosaurus rex saw another animal in its immediate vicinity and acted. Ann could've been its last meal for all it knew—in fact, that Foetoedon in its mouth really was its final meal.
  • No reason it couldn't kill her with a kick or stomp, then eat her after it finished bolting down the dead reptile. It only took a matter of minutes, from when it killed the thing to when it slurped down the tail and resumed its pursuit alongside the second vastasosaur.
• Why do the V-rexes persistently target Ann when Kong provides more meat, and Ann would barely be a meal for them anyway? The World of Kong tie-in book explains they have been archrivals with Kong's species for as long as anyone can remember. The two species fought each other frequently for dominance of the island; their offspring often became collateral damage in the battles, with the V-rexes often targeting the young Kongs for food. Both species even killed the others' juveniles to eliminate future threats whenever they got the chance; it's also possible they went after the young merely to spite the other. The V-rex family probably saw Ann as a young of Kong's species, and noticing how protective Kong is of Ann gave the V-rexes more incentive to go after her. If that's the case, Ann was too tempting a target that the V-rexes ignored the chances Kong gave them to walk away, even when the odds were against them.
  • Ann might also not be the first human female that the V. rexes have caught Kong with, come to think of it. Kong's clumsy manhandling may not be the only reason none of the native maidens offered up to him have survived.