Jack Driscoll
Jack Driscoll was the heroic first mate of the S.S. Venture, and he appears in nearly all versions of the King Kong universe.
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King Kong (1933)
Jack was a mildly sexist man who didn't like the idea of Carl Denham bringing a woman aboard the Venture when the documentarian revealed he'd hired Ann Darrow to be the star of his film. Regardless, during the voyage to Skull Island Jack began to become fond of Ann when he discovered that she was not precisely what he'd built up in his mind as the idea of a woman, and once they'd reached their destination it was clear that the somewhat clueless first mate had fallen for the girl, and fallen hard.
When the natives of the island abducted Ann so that they could give her to King Kong, Jack, Denham and a party of twelve of the Venture's crew grabbed rifles and gas bombs and ventured into the steamy, dinosaur-infested jungle beyond the great wall in order to get Ann back from the enormous ape. The party had encounters with a stegosaurus and a brontosaurus, the latter wrecking their makeshift raft as they crossed a lake after Kong. Jack and seven of the surviving sailors managed to catch up to Kong at a deep canyon (identified in the comics as Devil's Chasm), and while they were crossing a log bridge Kong appeared and shook all the men off and to their deaths in the canyon. Jack was the sole survivor.
After sending Denham (who'd fallen behind) back to the wall, Jack continued to follow Kong's trail, which led him to the giant ape's lair high atop Skull Mountain. After witnessing Kong battle a plesiosaurus, he managed to sneak in and grab Ann while the gorilla fought with a pteranodon, and the two lovers jumped off a ledge and into the river, then made their back to the coast to meet up with Denham and Captain Englehorn. Kong followed them and Denham knocked him out a gas bomb, and hatched his hairbrained scheme to take the ape back to New York and put him on display.
And when Kong broke free and recaptured Ann, climbing to the top of the Empire State Building, it was Jack's idea to send a squadron of biplanes to shoot him down. This tactic worked and Ann was saved and reunited with Jack once more. And since, prior to Kong's escape, the two had announced plans to wed, it can be readily assumed that they eventually married.
King Kong (Novelization & Monster Comics)
The Jack Driscoll of the 1932 novelization and 1991 comic book series is more or less identical to the one in the film, except that in the comics appears to be slightly older and in both has run-ins with more dinosaurs than his 1930s movie counterpart did.
The Mighty Kong
King Kong (2005)
Jack Driscoll is a famous New York playwright, hired by Carl Denham to write the script for his island adventure film. However, when Jack had only turned into the first act of the script and the Venture was ready to set sail, Denham tricked him into remaining aboard long enough for the ship to leave port, with Jack unable to get off except by jumping, something he did not like in the least. Since there were no available cabins aboard the Venture, Captain Englehorn was forced to make Jack stay in the cargo hold, where he finished writing the script during the voyage to Skull Island.
It was during the trip that Jack met and fell in love with Ann Darrow, although they had a rough start to begin with when Ann mistook Denham's sound man Mike for Jack. Besides writing the screenplay for Denham, Jack, who knew that Ann was an admirer of his work and liked to act in comedy stage plays, wrote a comedy just for her. Following the arrival on Skull Island, when the natives kidnapped Ann to sacrifice her to Kong, it was Jack who found the bracelet accidentally left behind by the native who had come aboard the Venture to abduct her, and he quickly informed Denham and Captain Englehorn.
Although officially Ben Hayes was the leader of the rescue mission, as per Englehorn's orders, Jack's determination to find and save Ann made him the heart and soul of the group. Jack, Denham, Hayes and their party had encounters with dinosaurs, finding themselves in the middle of a massive stampede of apatosaurs caused by attacking venatosaurs, before catching up to Kong while crossing a log bridge.
Jack and everyone else was shaken off and into the chasm below, where they fended off attacks from huge wetas, arachno-claws and leeches. Only Jack, Denham, Jimmy and Preston survived. Although the other three returned with Captain Englehorn, Jack pressed on and was eventually able to pull Ann away from Kong in his lair high on Skull Mountain. The playwright was almost killed by Kong, but it was while the giant gorilla was distracted fighting huge bats that Jack grabbed Ann and escaped by jumping into a river.
Once back in New York, Jack refused to have anything to do with Denham's scheme to exhibit Kong at a theater. Instead he produced his comedy, but dialogue he had written for Ann (performed onstage by another actress) inspired Jack to head to the theater to talk to Ann and tell her how he felt, only to discover that she, too, had decided not to participate in Denham's show - her role in a stage play introducing Kong to the audience was filled by another actress, who was killed when Kong broke free and began tearing the theater apart. Once Kong got outside, Jack lured him away from the crowds - saving an entire streetcar filled people - by commandeering a taxi.
Jack was knocked unconscious when the taxi crashed. By the time he awoke, Kong had reclaimed Ann (of her own free will) and had begun climbing the Empire State Building to escape pursuing army trucks. Jack ran inside the skyscraper and took the elevator, but by the time he reached the top of the building the military biplanes had slew Kong and Ann was alone. Jack comforted her.
