How Video Games And Pokemon Influenced Kong: Skull Island

The next Kong movie, Kong: Skull Island, comes to theaters this Friday, March 10. Ahead of that, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts spoke to Den of Geek about a number of things, including how video games and Pokemon influenced the movie and its massive monsters.

Vogt-Roberts, who is also also attached to the upcoming Metal Gear Solid movie, said Team Ico's critically adored PS2 game Shadow of the Colossus had a major influence on the tone of Skull Island.

"Shadow Of The Colossus was a huge influence on me on this movie. It's such a beautiful thing to have a boss fight where you feel sad after you've killed the boss," he said. "And the way those creatures lumber around was such a huge, huge part for me... the colossi in those games have such a slow, melancholy, morose quality to them. And the sense of scale. Honestly, Shadow Of The Colossus was one of the biggest influences on this film. Just the vibe the creatures have. I think and I hope that Kong has a similar vibe in the film."

A Shadow of the Colossus movie is in the works, but it's been a long time since we've heard anything about it.

Also in Den of Geek's interview, Vogt-Roberts talked about how one of Skull Island's monsters is at least partially inspired by the Pokemon Cubone for the Skull Crawler monsters.

"As we were designing it, I kind of gave a handful of references to people, and my best friend in the world came and did some concept work with me--this was my friend where we'd have LAN parties as a kid and, like, didn't know how to talk to girls and spent our time in a basement playing video games, drinking pop and eating junk food.

"And we're looking at this creature, and we're like, 'What does this remind us of?' Because I was, like, 'I want it to have this white face; this weird, bone-white face, and this black, scaly skin.' Both he and I were staring at it, and we had this weird moment where we were like, 'Oh my God.' We realized that we'd created this unintentional fusion of all of our nerdy childhood influences.

"Because I love Cubone. Cubone has the saddest story of him wearing his dead mother's skull on his face."

You can read the full interview here at Den of Geek.

Skull Island opens on March 10. The movie stars Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, John C. Reilly, and John Goodman. It features the biggest Kong in movie history.