Erin Ryder
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
“
|
I'm Erin Ryder. I've spent years exploring the mysterious and unexplained, and I've learned that fact can be much stranger than fiction. Now on Myth Explorer, I'm searching for the biggest find of all time: Skull Island, the legendary home of King Kong, and you're coming with me.
|
„
|
— Ryder's opening monologue during the introduction to Myth Explorer: The Quest for Kong |
Erin Ryder is an American documentary video producer and director. She plays a fictionalized version of herself in the 2016 web series and marketing campaign Myth Explorer: The Quest for Kong, to advertise the Universal Studios Orlando attraction Skull Island: Reign of Kong. The series presents itself as the latest season in the ongoing "Myth Explorer" series, in which Ryder and her team investigate legends to assess what truth may be behind them.
History
Myth Explorer: The Quest for Kong
Erin Ryder was a documentarian and director who starred in the web show Myth Explorer. At some point, she became aware of evidence that filmmaker Carl Denham had not been the first explorer to visit Skull Island. Despite Denham's claims that the island had been destroyed by earthquakes as late as 1948, new infrared satellite footage revealed a strange weather phenomenon directly over where Skull Island was located, making her question if he had fabricated his accounts. This led her to seek out the island and investigate for herself, hoping to gain more insight into the legendary story of King Kong.[1] She soon set off in a Quantas Airbus 3080 to get to the ship which would take her and her crew into the Indian Ocean in search of Skull Island.
"Journey to Skull Island"
Aboard the BIO Hespérides, Ryder and company voyaged across the ocean to discover the still-extant Skull Island. There, she left teammates Jessica Stapleton and Cesar Ruiz to act as support, while she and cameraman Mike Murray went ashore. Despite technical difficulties possibly costing them their landing boat, Ryder and Murray reached the shore, where they quickly pushed into the jungle to establish a base camp. On their way in, Ryder narrowly avoided being caught in a strange, slimy spider web, but Mike stopped her. She tried documenting it, but faced difficulties with her camcorder. After setting up camp, they returned to the ship for the night, and returned in the morning for their second day of exploration.
Erin wore herself out by bushwhacking a trail for them, but just as she stopped to rest for a moment, she found a piece of metal that turned out to be a steering wheel. She took it into a nearby clearing to send photographs for Cesar to analyze, but while taking the photos she saw in the background an even bigger piece of debris: The door from a vehicle bearing the logo of "Eighth Wonder Expedition Co." She was baffled by what a car could have been doing on Skull Island, but was also frightened about what could have happened to leave such wreckage behind.
"The Lost Expedition"
Ryder spied the remains of a road, and followed it into a swampy riverbed. Murray then discovered an old trunk bearing the name "Eighth Wonder Expedition Co," which Erin supposed was cargo on the destroyed truck. She forced it open with her knife and discovered supplies from the expedition, including 16mm film cans and a satchel with the diary of expedition member Kate McCaffery. She brought them back to base camp to take back to the ship at she and Mike's nightly extraction. Back at base camp, she opened her laptop to see that Cesar had already found a patent for the vehicle they had discovered and sent the image to her. It revealed a massive "exploratory vehicle" based on an "Opel Blitz" truck. Given its remarkable size, Erin wondered all the more what could have happened to it to leave only a door behind. She then began flipping through the journal, filled with detailed notes about the expedition starting from its beginning. She then found photographs of McCaffery and two other explorers alongside a crew manifest listing McCaffery as the expedition's "Attendant in Charge." Ryder likened her to "Amelia Earhart with a machete," and was inspired by the feeling that she was "walking in her boots."
In the mid-morning of their fourth day of exploration, they entered the jungle once more, and Erin walked into a hidden spider web, which she joked was the reason Mike had her walking ahead of him. She then spotted a game trail cutting through the bush, and just a bit further ahead found the freshly disemboweled corpse of a large bird. Mike encouraged them to move on, as the size of the bird implied that its killer could likely kill them as well. Erin planted one of the 360-degree cameras they had brought in the hopes of catching footage of the predator, but quickly spotted a strange and elusive creature in the sky.
"We are Not Alone"
The creature flew away, but Mike did not believe he had been able to catch it on film. They continued into the jungle, and searched for a safe spot to cross the nearby river. After coming upon some shallows, she discovered a desiccated bat-like wing in the water. She put on a glove to examine it further, but soon heard creatures calling out in the distance, headed their way. They left the wing, and soon came into a dense fog. Still following the river, she discovered the body of a foul-smelling maggot-like creature with many pointed teeth and left another 360-degree camera at the site before continuing along.
At the start of their sixth day of exploration, Ryder revealed Cesar's findings about the creatures they had documented the day before. He was able to identify what Erin referred to as a "huge-ass slug monster" as Carnictis sordicus, and the wing as that of a Terapusmordax obscenus. After finding a hand-drawn map with locations not present on the ones they had been using in the back of McCaffery's journal, they followed it into the thick fog, through bug-ridden jungles, and finally to a steep embankment, with at least three human skulls embedded in its soil. Ryder imagined that this had to have been left as a warning, and climbed up the bank, where she proclaimed to Mike that the two of them were not alone.
"Beyond the Skulls"
Ryder could hear animals lurking in the surrounding foliage, and tried to lead Mike slowly through the jungle, but he soon spotted something watching them, and they ran away. Mike spotted a cave, and the two prepared to take refuge there, but in the process, Erin dropped her bag in the water. They sheltered in the cave, trying to wait out the predators, but all of Erin's equipment had been damaged, including her flashlight, backup camera, and the main camera's backup batteries. Despite this, she was still able to use the main camera to film a brief check-in, where she established her intention not to use their emergency extraction beacon to get out, but understood that if they missed their nightly extraction rendezvous, they would be forced to use it. After expressing her dismay at the island's many bugs, they left the cave. Due to the dense fog, they found it hard to navigate, but Mike soon saw the legendary Skull Island wall. Erin insisted they could not turn back at that point, despite Mike's fear of missing their extraction. She insisted they push through, and that evening they arrived at the foot of the wall's giant gate. She immediately began searching for a way to get to the other side, and quickly found an opening into a dark cave, which she entered without hesitation.
"Myth No More"
Within the passage, they found catacombs piled with human skulls. Erin took advantage of Mike's fear to prank him by shouting for him to "watch out" when there was no actual danger. They passed under a gigantic skull carving, and she had Mike put his light on a statue of an emaciated figure holding two snakes. They admired it for a moment before Erin heard a noise within the tunnel, and they were suddenly set upon by a colony of bats exiting into the dusk outside. Eager to leave them behind, they went deeper into the catacombs, and saw more gigantic stone figures, each one skeletal, and with their hands and legs bound, leading Erin to suggest they held sacrificial significance. Following a perceivable change in the cave's air, she left Mike to examine the statues, and went further ahead into the darkness, where she soon came upon the near-complete skeleton of a Megaprimatus, which she had initially mistaken for a whale carcass. Observing that they were bones and not fossils, and that its layout suggested that it had been brought into the catacombs and laid there intentionally, she became convinced that there would be more around and began searching the darkness. Mike was not eager to let her wander off, but she insisted, as she was just turning a nearby corner. There, she became aware of a new smell, and a strange panting sound. Mike had just come around to find her, but she ran back toward the exit, urging him to run as a creature in the darkness roared angrily at the intruders. She hit the extraction beacon and ran though the jungle, all the way to the shore, where she examined her unfocused camcorder footage of what she claimed was a living Megaprimatus. With a newfound conviction, she expressed her desire to return to the island with a bigger crew.
After their extraction, the two were able to view the few seconds of the 16mm film they had discovered, which had survived the elements. The grainy reel showed the shape of Kong, alive and well, beating his chest defiantly, definitively answering the questions about his existence.
Gallery
Screenshots
The jaw of an unknown predator
The Myth Explorer crew
Erin Ryder seeing Skull Island for the first time
Erin before the slimy web
Erin finding the steering wheel
Erin finding the door
Erin finding the trunk
Erin discovers the wing in the water
Erin holds the wing
Erin poking a Carnictis
Erin with McCaffery's map
An unknown cave bug on Erin's shoulder, presumably eating her
Erin seeing the Skull Island wall
Erin and a Megaprimatus skeleton
Erin and a Megaprimatus
Advertising
Advertisement for the series
Trivia
- Ryder is credited as "producer" in descriptive text. While the real Ryder does have numerous production credits to her name, it is unknown if she was really a producer for the show, or if this was an embellishment designed to give the series more authenticity.
References
This is a list of references for Erin Ryder. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
|
Comments
Showing 0 comments. When commenting, please remain respectful of other users, stay on topic, and avoid role-playing and excessive punctuation. Comments which violate these guidelines may be removed by administrators.
|
|
