Mighty Joe Young (1998 film)

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, who in this version, is much larger than the original. The film received mixed reviews and was a box-office bomb, grossing $50.6 million in the United States against a $90 million production budget.
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, Gregg O'Hara (Paxton), a wildlife refuge director at a Los Angeles animal conservatory, comes to Africa to study and catalog animals near the Pangani mountains. During his expedition, his guides help him capture a leopard for blood sampling. When the locals attempt to poach the animal, Joe, now grown nearly 15 feet tall, and weighing over 2,000 lbs, emerges from the jungle to free the creature. After the men regroup, they use their vehicles to pursue Joe across the plains, hoping to secure a blood sample. Joe uses his immense size to disable the vehicles and nearly kill his pursuers, after which they collect what remains of their gear and retreat back to civilization. O’Harra chooses to follow Joe into the jungle further however. Once inside, Joe ambushes and terrifies Gregg, until he is saved by a now grown Jill, who calms Joe. O’Harra awakens a day later back in town, with the local doctor trying to convince him he mistook what he saw on the mountain. Jill, while initially untrusting of Gregg, is finally convinced by him to relocate Joe to the institute in Los Angeles for his own safety. At the conservatory, the refuge staff place Jill in charge of Joe once the director sees how she manages him so well. Strasser, now running a fraudulent animal preserve in Botswana, secretly selling animal organs on the black market, sees Joe in a news report. He and his henchman from years past travel to America with plans on capturing Joe. Joe recognizes one of the men after he taunts Joe at his exhibit, causing him to destroy the landscape and behave violently. Jill tries to convince the conservatory director to postpone the upcoming gala, which is set to showcase Joe to a large venue of donators, but he remains convinced she can calm Joe. Jill, meeting Strasser, does not recognize him as he poses as a conservationist, telling her that Joe would be better off in his wildlife refuge in Africa, claiming he would have more space and freedom.
During the gala, Strasser's South African henchman, Garth (Firth), uses a poacher's noisemaker to enrage Joe into a frenzy once again. Joe rampages at the gala, injuring many and nearly killing Strasser; whom he recognizes. After being sedated, Joe 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 and Jill part ways in an heartfelt goodbye. Once they leave, the poacher's noisemaker is found and Gregg realizes Jill and Joe are in danger, as he races 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 unknowingly 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, Strasser again attempts to shoot Jill, but Joe throws Strasser onto a powerline, electrocuting him to death. Joe then sees the boy stuck in the burning Ferris wheel. He climbs it, and rescues the boy, only for the wheel to collapse from the fire and his weight. He jumps as the wheel tips over, and saves the boy. Jill believing him dead, is distraught, as are the onlookers who saw Joe save the young boy. Joe awakens however, to everyone’s relief. Jill remarks that they still need to raise money in order for Joe to be safe, prompting the crowd to begin donating on the spot, as thanks for what Joe had done.
Joe is returned to the Pangani Mountains where Jill and Gregg open the "Joe Young Reserve." The film ends with Joe running off into the jungle.
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.
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.
The music for the film was composed by James Horner. The soundtrack was released on December 8, 1998.
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."