Mighty Joe Young (1998 film)

Mighty Joe Young
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Ron Underwood
Screenplay by	Mark Rosenthal Lawrence Konner
Based on	Mighty Joe Young by Merian C. Cooper Ruth Rose
Produced by	Ted Hartley Tom Jacobson
Starring	Bill Paxton Charlize Theron Rade Šerbedžija Naveen Andrews Peter Firth Regina King David Paymer
Cinematography	Donald Peterman Oliver Wood
Edited by	Paul Hirsch
Music by	James Horner
Production companies	Walt Disney Pictures RKO Pictures The Jacobson Company
Distributed by	Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
Release date	December 25, 1998 (1998-12-25)
Running time	114 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$90 million
Box office	$50.6 million (US)

Mighty Joe Young is a 1998 American live-action epic adventure film based on the 1949 film of the same name about a giant mountain gorilla brought to a wildlife preserve by a young woman who raised him and a zoologist to protect him from the threat of poachers until one decides to seek his revenge and capture and kill Joe. It was directed by Ron Underwood and starred Bill Paxton, Charlize Theron, Rade Šerbedžija, Naveen Andrews, Peter Firth, Regina King and David Paymer. Creature suit actor John Alexander played the title character. In this version, the ape is much larger than the original. The film received mixed reviews and grossed a paltry $50.6 million in the United States against a $90 million production budget, making it a box-office bomb (which was expected, given that it was released on Christmas).

Plot

As a child, Jill Young (Mika Boorem) and her primatologist mother, Ruth (Linda Purl), study mountain gorillas in Central Africa's Pangani Mountains. Jill names an infant gorilla "Joe." As Andrei Strasser (Šerbedžija) leads a group of poachers to storm the mountains, Ruth's friend, Kweli (Robert Wisdom), alerts her to the men as she is putting Jill to bed. Ruth heads into the mountains and Jill follows. Strasser kills Joe’s mother and shoots Ruth. Joe bites off Strasser's thumb and index finger and Strasser swears revenge. As Ruth dies, she has Jill promise to protect Joe. 12 years later, Joe is now a whopping 15 feet (4.6 m) tall and weighs 2,000 pounds (910 kg). As a result of his height and weight, not only will none of the other gorillas accept him, but he is vulnerable to poachers. Gregg O'Hara (Paxton), a wildlife refuge director at a Los Angeles animal conservatory, convinces Jill they would be safer to relocate there. At the conservatory, the refuge staff put Jill in charge of Joe. Strasser now runs a fraudulent animal preserve in Botswana, while secretly selling animal organs on the black market. He is eager for revenge after seeing Joe on a CNN news report. Jill does not recognize Strasser while he attempts to convince her that Joe would be better off in his wildlife refuge in Africa. During a gala, Strasser's South African henchman, Garth (Firth), uses a poacher's noisemaker to scare Joe into a frenzy. It works as Joe trashes the gala and is imprisoned in a concrete bunker. Jill discovers that Joe is to be euthanized and accepts Strasser's offer. She and the refuge staff smuggle Joe out in a truck. Gregg has fallen in love with Jill and kisses her goodbye. After Jill leaves, the poacher's noisemaker is found and Gregg realizes Jill and Joe are in danger. He drives after them. On the way to the airport, while being followed by Gregg, Jill notices Strasser's missing fingers and recognizes him as the poacher who killed her mother in Africa 12 years earlier. She jumps from the truck and tumbles onto Hollywood Boulevard. Joe tilts the truck onto its side and flees, chased by helicopters, before arriving at a carnival at the Santa Monica Pier. Gregg finds Jill and they track Joe to the carnival where he is playfully wreaking havoc. Strasser arrives and attempts to shoot Jill. Garth turns against Strasser and knocks the gun, causing Strasser to instead shoot a spotlight, which starts a fire that spreads to game stands and the Ferris Wheel. Gregg helps evacuate its riders, but a young boy named Jason (Cory Buck) is stranded at the top. After knocking Garth unconscious with the butt of his gun, Strasser again attempts to kill Jill, but Joe throws Strasser onto a powerline. Strasser falls onto a transformer and is electrocuted. Joe starts to climb the burning Ferris Wheel. Jill convinces the police not to shoot Joe as he is trying to save the child. Joe grabs the boy and jumps as the Ferris Wheel collapses, landing clear of the burning wheel, the boy unhurt. Jill says that they need to raise money to open a reserve for Joe, at which point Jason donates some change, prompting others to contribute. Joe is returned to the Pangani Mountains where Jill and Gregg open the "Joe Young Reserve." Joe runs off into the jungle.

Cast

• Bill Paxton as Professor Gregory "Gregg" O'Hara, a zoologist who finds Joe in the wild and develops a relationship with Jill.
• Charlize Theron as Jill Young, a young woman who is Joe's best friend and protector after they were both orphaned by the same poacher.
  • Mika Boorem as Young Jill Young
• Rade Serbedzija as Andrei Strasser, a ruthless Romanian poacher who is seeking retribution on Joe after he bit off his thumb and index finger when he was an infant. He is also the poacher who murdered both Jill's and Joe's mothers.
• Regina King as Cecily Banks, a zoologist and Gregg's friend working at the wildlife preserve who immediately befriends Jill and Joe.
• Peter Firth as Garth, Strasser's South African lieutenant who isn't as ruthless as Strasser.
• Naveen Andrews as Pindi, a local guide and employee of Strasser.
• David Paymer as Harry Ruben, the supervisor at the wildlife preserve that Joe is relieved to.
• Robert Wisdom as Kweli, a local African man who was a friend of Ruth and a surrogate father figure to Jill.
• Christian Clemenson as Jack
• Geoffrey Blake as Vern
• Lawrence Pressman as Doctor Elliot Baker
• John Alexander as Mighty Joe Young, a mountain gorilla who due to a rare form of gigantism is 15 feet (4.6 m) tall and 2,000 pounds (910 kg) and is the sacred guardian of the mountain. He is Jill's best friend since they were orphaned by the same poacher. Joe was designed and created by special makeup effects legend Rick Baker.
  • Verne Troyer as Baby Joe Young
  • Mighty Joe Young puppeteers: Mark Setrakian, Mike Elizalde, Jurgen Heimann, Steven Sherman
• Linda Purl as Doctor Ruth Young, Jill's primatologist mother, who was killed by Strasser.
• Cory Buck as Jason, a young boy who gets caught on the burning Ferris wheel.
• Liz Georges as Jason's mother
• Richard Riehle as Commander Gorman
• Ray Harryhausen as Gentleman at Party
• Terry Moore as Elegant Woman at Party
• Judson Mills as Impatient Driver
• Tony Genaro as Boxer Shorts Man
• Marguerite Moreau as Lisa
• Tracey Walter as Conservancy Guard
• Larry Brandenburg as Animal Control Duty Officer
• Damien Leake as Cop
• Richard McGonagle as Panda Owner
• Reno Wilson as Poacher
• Dina Merrill as Society Woman
• Lily Mariye as Hiroko
• Debbie Lee Carrington as Other Gorilla
• Scarlett Pomers as Charlotte

Production

The project was set up in March 1995 by studio chairman Joe Roth and Walt Disney Pictures president David Vogel. Pre-production started with Rick Baker designing the gorilla and DreamQuest in charge of computer graphics (CG). Theron was cast as Jill in April 1997.

A model of the trailer used in a scene from the film, as seen at a former attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida.

Cinematographer Donald Peterman suffered head injuries, a broken leg and broken ribs in a crane accident on the film set in 1997 when his camera platform plummeted 18 feet (5.5 m) to the ground when the crane snapped. Ray De la Motte, the camera operator who was sitting next to Peterman on the crane, was also injured in the accident. In most of the film, Joe was portrayed by creature-suit performer John Alexander, who wore a radio-controlled animatronic gorilla mask and full body suit created by special makeup effects artist Rick Baker and his crew at Cinovation Studios. To achieve those scenes, Alexander often acted on miniature sets surrounded by blue screen; special effects house DreamQuest Images then composited him into footage shot earlier. Joe as an infant was performed by Verne Troyer. For certain scenes, the filmmakers used three full-sized animatronics (one in quadruped, one sitting down, and one in a dead position) also created by Baker's crew. For the digital Joe, special effects houses DreamQuest Images and Industrial Light and Magic worked on different scenes, using the same model provided by Baker. Many of these performances were achieved by key-frame animation, but to portray the digital Joe running and jumping, motion-capture data from an infant chimpanzee were used.

Music

The music for the film was composed by James Horner. The soundtrack was released on December 8, 1998.

Mighty Joe Young: Original Score
Soundtrack album by James Horner
Released	December 8, 1998
Recorded	1998
Length	73:01
Label	Hollywood
James Horner chronology
Back to Titanic Mighty Joe Young: Original Score Bicentennial Man

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
SoundtrackNet

Release and reception

The film grossed a paltry $50 million against a $90 million production budget and holds a rating of 54% from Rotten Tomatoes based on 54 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The site's critical consensus is: "Beguiling effects transcend a predictable plot." Metacritic assigned a weighted average rating of 51 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 stars out of 4, saying, "Mighty Joe Young is an energetic, robust adventure tale: not too cynical, violent or fragmented for kids, not too tame for adults. After all the calculation behind "Godzilla" or "Armageddon," it has a kind of innocence. It's not about a monster but about a very big, well-meaning gorilla that just wants to be left in peace." Despite giving the film positive reviews, he also pointed out that the romance scenes and villains were only average and by no means exceptional. Common Sense Media gave the film 4 stars, finding that the "environmentally-friendly" film provides "serious food for thought [and] plenty of comic relief," as opposed to the original 1949 RKO film. The reviewer praised the effects and acting that went into Joe's rendition, saying that children will sympathize with the character, as well as with Theron's and Paxton's romantic pairing. James Berardinelli also gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and generally positive reviews: "Although Joe's size makes him a monster, his disposition makes him cuddly. Despite not being daring in style or story, Mighty Joe Young is nevertheless a charming and enjoyable adventure, and a rare remake that's better than the original. It may not have the box office punch to exceed the $100 million mark, but it's good enough to entertain an audience." Colin Fraser of eFilm Critic gave it 3 stars, saying, "Strictly for ten-year-olds, Mighty Joe Young has its ample heart in exactly the right place. After an opening sequence that will have kiddies reaching for Kleenex, the action soon picks up with many a thrill on the way. This is not Jurassic Park however and doesn't really deserve its Academy nomination for effects." Among those who criticized the film included Maitland McDonagh of TV Guide, who gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4, believing it would be too shallow for adult viewers and too serious for children, adding that "Joe himself is an amazing creation-- less personable, to be sure-- than the original lovelorn King Kong, but a far more fully realized character than any of the flesh and blood humans by whom he's surrounded." Paul Clinton of CNN gave it negative reviews, saying, "Great scenery, cartoonish villains, huge leaps of suspended belief and mouthwatering shots of Charlize Theron are in plentiful supply in Mighty Joe Young. And baby, can this boy travel. He goes from Africa to L.A. in just one dissolve. Then when he escapes, he goes from Hollywood Boulevard to the Los Angeles river to the Pacific Palisades in seconds. If you're not familiar with L.A... trust me... couldn't happen." and "The gorilla is pretty impressive and expressive, but overall it's much ado about-- not much. I have a feeling this film will be fairly low on the food chain of "must see" holiday films." Stephen Holden of The New York Times gave the film generally unfavorable reviews, saying, "Mighty Joe Young, directed by Ron Underwood from a screenplay by Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner, is saddled with dialogue so wooden that Mr. Paxton and Ms. Theron almost seem animatronic themselves. Little children won't notice. In Joe, they can identify with the biggest, cuddliest simian toy a 6-year-old could ever hope to own." Dustin Putman gave it 2 stars out of 4 and a negative review, saying, "Mighty Joe Young is an agreeable time-waster for older kids (it's much too violent for the youngest viewers) and perhaps some adults, but in a season when children could also choose to see the marvelous The Prince of Egypt and adults could pick any number of far superior films, Mighty Joe Young simply pales in comparison. Although you could certainly do much worse, there is only one really distinctive quality about the film and that is Charlize Theron's charismatic performance as Jill Young." Mighty Joe Young also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects, losing to What Dreams May Come. Later, director Ron Underwood said: "That experience was a really positive one for me, although it was lengthy; it was a three-year project for me. And I enjoyed all the visual effects work on Mighty Joe Young and it ended up getting an Academy Award nomination for that."

See also

• List of American films of 1998
• List of fictional primates
• King Kong, 2005 film

External links

• Official website
• Mighty Joe Young at IMDb
• Mighty Joe Young at Rotten Tomatoes
• Mighty Joe Young at AllMovie