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Mighty Joe Young
As a child living in Africa, Jill Young saw her mother killed while protecting wild gorillas from poachers led by Andrei Strasser. Now an adult, Jill cares for an orphaned gorilla named Joe -- who, due to a genetic anomaly, is 15 feet tall. When Gregg O'Hara arrives from California and sees the animal, he convinces Jill that Joe would be safest at his wildlife refuge. But Strasser follows them to the U.S., intent on capturing Joe for himself.
1998 · Directed by Ron Underwood · 114 min · Adventure · Family · Action · Fantasy · Screenplay in the scene database · 10 frames
Tagline
Survival is an instinct.
Plot
As a child, Jill Young and her primatologist mother, Ruth, study mountain gorillas in the Pangani Mountains in Central Africa. Jill names an infant gorilla "Joe". As Andrei Strasser leads a group of poachers to storm the mountains, Ruth's friend Kweli 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 trigger finger and thumb, and Strasser swears revenge. As Ruth dies, she has Jill promise to protect Joe.
Twelve years later, Joe is 15 feet (4.6 m) tall and weighs 2,000 pounds (910 kg). Other gorillas will not accept him and he is vulnerable to poachers. Gregg O'Hara, 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 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 henchman Garth uses a poacher's noisemaker to scare Joe into a frenzy. Joe trashes the gala and is imprisoned in a concrete bunker.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Mark Rosenthal, Lawrence Konner
- Cinematography: Oliver Wood, Donald Peterman
- Edited by: Paul Hirsch
- Music: James Horner
- Production design: Michael Corenblith
- Produced by: Tom Jacobson, Ted Hartley
Cast
- Charlize Theron as Jill Young
- Bill Paxton as Gregg O'Hara
- Rade Šerbedžija as Strasser
- Peter Firth as Garth
- David Paymer as Harry Ruben
- Regina King as Cecily Banks
- Robert Wisdom as Kweli
- Naveen Andrews as Pindi
- Lawrence Pressman as Dr. Baker
- Linda Purl as Dr. Ruth Young
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: Swahili, English
- Studios: Walt Disney Pictures, RKO Pictures, The Jacobson Company
- Budget: $90,000,000
- Themes: dying and death, gorilla, uganda, poacher, remake, primatologist, giant ape, king kong
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