Surprise: we know exactly where King Kong's Skull Island is located

Sorpresa: sabemos exactamente donde está la Isla de King Kong

Surprise: we know exactly where King Kong's Skull Island is located

There is no question of where the island is located or about its shape, because a map with coordinates appears clearly in the 1933 version; it is west of Sumatra and the film even mentions a monsoon season:

 Source: kingkong.wikia.com

Can an island in that location look like the one in the film? 

Well, yes. Because of the location, the monsoon that would affect Skull Island is the Indo-Australian Monsoon, a seasonal change of wind direction that starts in September, bringing stormy weather and floods; even though it is not common in tropical Pacific coasts, the fog that hides the island is a geographic possibility. In real life, islands in this area have large populations of mosquitoes, which we do not see in the film pestering Kong or villagers: there the film is not realistic.

The 1933 map shows a coral reef ring around the island; a sand bar in the south, where people live protected from Kong by a wall; and a larger area that is mostly lowland but has Skull Mountain in the northwest. The coral reef is typical of the region and heavy rains explain the erosion that produced the skull image when softer material was eroded from volcanic rock (Lindsey, 2011). All of this makes scientific sense, and if you look at the lower right of the screen in Kong’s cave you will see that the volcano that built the island is still active and has boiling mudpots. 

Source: Californiaherps.com
 

Also correctly, the lowlands have thick undergrowth and the highlands grow mosses; the island’s vegetation includes bananas, ferns, palms and bamboos, and differs from lowland to highland. Overall this island is credible even though a botanist might notice particular species that do not naturally grow on Pacific islands (have you ever asked why Tarzan rides Indian elephants in the films, instead of African ones? If you have, it shows that you have never tried to tame an African elephant!).

Even if we feel satisfied with this analysis about the ecology of Skull Island, bear in mind that the sets were not made specifically for King Kong, they were from The Most Dangerous Game, a film about an adventure in South America (Dohm, 2007).

In the next post we will find out why the Island natives had a bamboo cage full of chickens; and then move on to the DINOSAURS.

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https://skullislandandkingkong.blogspot.com