Throughout the history of cinema, few monsters have remained as iconic as King Kong. Originally debuting in a 1933 film, the massive primate has been re-created multiple times using a variety of visual effects techniques: the painstaking stop-motion animation of the original film, the man-in-a-suit goofiness of King Kong vs. Godzilla, Andy Serkis’ motion-capture performance in Peter Jackson’s 2005 reboot. But when it came time for Kong: Skull Island, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts turned to Industrial Light & Magic to create a new version of the creature that could match his film’s shot-on-location aesthetics.
According to visual-effects supervisor Jeff White (Warcraft, The Avengers), the key to bringing the new Kong to life was a...
