Spirit Tiger
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The Spirit Tiger is a giant tiger superspecies which appears in the 2021 Legendary Comics graphic novel Kingdom Kong and the picture book Kong and Me. It is one of several monsters to have been cut from the 2017 film Kong: Skull Island but subsequently appear in other Monsterverse media.
Name
In a bio for the creature included in the Chinese marketing for Kong: Skull Island, the Spirit Tiger was classified as Icarus Tigris. Its Chinese name, 圣虎 (Shèng Hǔ), roughly translates to "Holy Tiger." It is referred to as simply Tiger Creature in some concept art.
The comic Kingdom Kong finally revealed the creature's English name, Spirit Tiger, and retconned its cryptozoological classification to "Tigris Spiritus." The Spirit Tiger's scientific name comes from the Latin words tigris, meaning "tiger," and spiritus, meaning "spirit."
Development
In the book The Art and Making of Kong: Skull Island, writer John Gatins describes the planned scene for Kong: Skull Island involving the Spirit Tiger:
[The characters] had landed on the island and spent the night on the beach before they traveled inland. They sit around and drink beer by a fire and sing sailor shanties. I just loved it, but it was a bit kind of tangential to having to get to the meat of the matter. In the morning after this raucous night, two saber-toothed tigers come out of the jungle and sniff around the camp. Someone says, "Don't shoot and they'll go away," but the guy takes the shot and kills one. They were a pair, a male and a female, and the other one just goes nuts. It kills the guy who took the shot. It's like the inciting incident of a war, a kind of harbinger; you're in a place you don't know, and now you've awakened more than you know. It was the first indication that we're not in a normal place. There's no such thing as a saber-toothed tiger and it's enormous.
Design
The Spirit Tiger resembles an abnormally large Bengal tiger or white tiger with antlers. The serrated stripes running down the Spirit Tiger's body are composed of epidermal leaves that shimmer in the soft breezes.[1] Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts cited the video game Okami as an influence on its design.[2]
Behavior
Spirit Tigers are elegant, ethereal and mysterious creatures.[1] However, they are also shown to be aggressive, as seen when Wallace and Cooper observed one before it attacked them.
Tabletop games
- Kong: Skull Island Cinematic Adventure (2023) [profile]
Books
- Kong: Skull Island - The Official Movie Novelization (2017) [mentioned, indirect]
- Kong and Me (2021)
Kong: Skull Island - The Official Movie Novelization
Conrad observed the tracks of a feline, estimating them to be at least one-and-a-half meters long, although the creature itself was never seen.
Kong and Me
The Spirit Tiger lounged in a field of flowers with Jia and Kong as they watched a swarm of blue butterflies.
Comics
- Kingdom Kong (2021)
Kingdom Kong
While Wallace and Cooper were on watch, they noticed a Spirit Tiger moving in the distance. As they prepared to head back to base, they noticed the Spirit Tiger had disappeared, only for it to reappear and kill Cooper. The tiger chased Wallace down, but before it could devour him, it was grabbed by Kong who snapped its neck and tossed it aside.
Abilities
Hallucinogenic aura
Humans in close proximity to a Spirit Tiger reported "dizziness, euphoria, and the ability to hear the creature's heart audibly beating at the center of our heads."[1]
Gallery
Concept art
Kong: Skull Island
Kong: Skull Island - Isle of the Damned
Profiles
Online profile from the Chinese viral marketing for Kong: Skull Island
Profile from Kingdom Kong
Trivia
- Giant saber-toothed cats previously appeared in The King Kong Show's episode "Tiger Tiger."
- The first half of the Spirit Tiger's original cryptoozological classification, Icarus, is shared with the Leafwing (Icarus Folium).
Notes
- ↑ The Chinese Monarch profile for the Spirit Tiger instead listed its length as 14 feet.
References
This is a list of references for Spirit Tiger. 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]
Bibliography
- Anello, Marie (6 April 2021). Kingdom Kong. Legendary Comics. ISBN 978-1-68116-080-1.
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