You read Mr. Sleep's reports from the MIGHTY JOE YOUNG set, well now another spy has stepped forward to reveal what is going on. And he did a pretty cool report giving some interesting details into how they hope to accomplish some of the 'larger than life" gorilla work. Sounds interesting. I hope it works. Anyway here's Mr Stealth, who also has a small tidbit on Lethal Weapon 4 at the end....
I read a couple of recent reports about Mighty Joe Young on your site that have compelled me to contact you with more information. You may call me "Mr. Stealth," and you may also trust that what I tell you is the gospel truth.
Regarding the giant monkey movie, yes, it's true that Ron Underwood and his crew were taking advantage of the movie's latest rescheduling to shoot some additional footage recently. The shoot referenced by "Mr. Sleep" was only part of the total package of what the Might Joe crew are up too, though, and Mr. Sleep's mention of putting in computer-generated helicopters conflicts with the very real choppers I saw the crew spend an entire night filming. It may be that the real choppers with be artificially inserted into the soundstage footage, but I don't think the choppers themselves will be CGI.
The work on the Disney lot involved shooting down in and around an incredibly realistic set of the LA river, built to 40% scale. They had a guy in a very lifelike Rick Baker-made ape suit, but since MIghty Joe is supposed to be a lot huger than even the largest ape, and since making a giant fake ape looks, well....fake, the Hollywood wizards pulled a little trick by building the set at only 40% the size of the real LA river, thus making a man-sized ape look that much bigger. Clever, huh?
The other two big sequences they've shot, though, include some hair-raising helicopter scenes (which will mesh with the 40% set piece described above) and a gnarly freeway wreck, which I also think will be part of the same extended sequence.
On the helicopter sequence, the crew was in City of Industry (about half an hour from LA proper) shooting in the real LA river this time, using real helicopters. They had three choppers on hand for this shoot, two that were in the shot, and one a camera copter doing the filming. They filmed late into the night, repeating some pretty intense copter chases. They even landed these big birds right down in the LA river (which is a concrete channel -- not really a river -- for your non-LA-familiar readers), with maybe only six feet of clearance on each side of the rotors. The sequence involves police helicopters and some scary looking SWAT types chasing after the poor, misunderstood giant ape, guns at the ready to take him out.
I was impressed with the precision and professionalism of the whole thing -- it wasn't nearly as chaotic as some other action sequences I've seen filmed. They were obviously all concerned with bringing the whole thing in on budget and on time, but most of all doing it safely. There was some very complex stuff involving car chases along the edge of the river with three copters overhead and cranes and lights and telephone poles all in a close area, and it was poetry in motion as I sat and watched these pros execute the whole sequence again and again throughout the night.
As for the freeway wreck, they staged a pretty impressive "near wreck" on the 710 freeway, locking up the brakes on a giant tanker truck and nearly jack- knifing it -- which I think will play in the script as a tanker driver trying to avoid Mighty Joe as he bolts across the freeway. It's all part of a continuing sequence showing Joe on the run through LA's concrete jungle, and once the three sets -- the 40% river set, the real river set and the freeway wreck -- are edited together, it should make for a decent chase sequence.
I haven't read the script for the rest of the movie and they're generally keeping this project pretty hush-hush. I'll forward any more tidbits as I get them, but if the rest of the movie features action as cool as those three sequences, it will be worth watching, at least from a "blowing stuff up" and "chasing cars and helicopters" standpoint.
Another tidbit I'll throw out there for you, just because I know you're a fan of John Woo style Hong Kong action stuff: the Lethal Weapon 4 team will be working this weekend (April 17-19) with a purported total of 65 (count 'em -- 65!) martial artists to film a gigantic Kung Fu-style fight scene featuring, among others, Jet Li.
That's all for now. It's time for Mr. Stealth to disappear from radar again until further news warrants breaking radio silence. Till then, keep up the great work with your site!
