Trailer
Plot summary
Jill Young lives in the Pangani Mountains of Central Africa, where her mother Ruth, a primatologist, studies the mountain gorillas. Jill gives an infant gorilla the name Joe. Andrei Strasser leads a group of poachers into the mountains, and Ruth is shot and killed, as is Joe's mother. Joe bites off part of Strasser's hand, and Strasser swears revenge. Before she dies, Ruth asks her daughter to look after Joe. Years afterward, Joe stands 15 feet tall and weighs 2000 pounds; the other gorillas will not accept him, and poachers remain a threat. Gregg O'Hara, who runs a wildlife refuge at a Los Angeles animal conservatory, tells Jill that she and Joe would be safer there. At the conservatory, Jill takes charge of Joe's care.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Mighty Joe Young (1998)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- During filming, cinematographer Donald Peterman suffered head injuries and a broken leg and ribs when his camera platform plunged 18 feet after the crane holding it snapped; camera operator Ray de la Motte was hurt in the same accident.
- Joe was mostly played on set by suit performer John Alexander wearing a radio-controlled animatronic gorilla mask and full body suit, acting on miniature blue-screen sets that special-effects house DreamQuest Images later composited into the finished footage.
- For shots of the digital Joe running and jumping, the effects teams didn't rely only on key-frame animation; they used motion-capture data recorded from an actual infant chimpanzee to drive the gorilla's movements.
