Since The Pearl is the titular building in Skyscraper and the movie presents it with meticulous design details, viewers have been curious whether it is real. Starring Dwayne Johnson, Skyscraper, as its title suggests, revolves around a Hong Kong-based building called The Pearl, which is touted as the world’s tallest skyscraper in the movie’s opening arc. The film also reveals that, with a height of 3,500 feet, The Pearl accommodates as many as 225 flowers.
While Skyscraper‘s first arc focuses on establishing how impressive the central tower is, the second one gradually puts audiences at the edge of their seats by showing how a fire is spreading across its floors, putting the lives of many in harm’s way. This is when Dwayne Johnson’s Will Sawyer steps in, taking it upon himself to rescue his family from the ruins of the building. Although Skyscraper ends on a conclusive note, it leaves one with a nagging question: how real is its central Pearl building?
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The Pearl In 2018’s Skyscraper Is Not A Real Building In Hong Kong
The Pearl is only the tallest building in Skyscraper’s fictional world
The Dwayne Johnson movie tries to sell The Pearl as a real building by featuring a full-fledged commercial in its opening arc. The commercial walks through all the major features of the building and even lists all the records its construction has broken. However, as convincing as this opening sequence in the film may seem, The Pearl is not a real building in Hong Kong. What gives away that it is a fictional building only created for the film is that the opening advertisement mentions it dwarfs the Burj Khalifa, which is actually the tallest building in the real world.
How Skyscraper’s Pearl Building Was Developed For The 2018 Movie
Skyscraper is based on local Chinese myths
In an interview (via Dezeen), Skyscraper‘s production designer, Jim Bissell, opened up about his creative process for developing The Pearl. He revealed that even though an architect has to primarily focus on ensuring that a building is “beautiful, wonderful and celebrated,” he had to prioritize other elements so that the building would serve the film’s storyline. Instead of purely focusing on its appearance, “the real criteria was to give Dwayne Johnson access to a building that was on fire, higher than any other building on the skyline.”
Bissell further revealed that to give the building a sense of narrative and context, he and his team based it on cultural icons and local myths. For instance, they initially learned about the myth of The Dragon and the Pearl, which is known to be one of the oldest legends in Chinese folklore and often found in Chinese art. He explained that the pearl is considered a symbol of wisdom according to the myth, which brings more meaning and cultural significance to the fictional building’s name and design.
Since the dragon, too, is celebrated as an emblem of “strength and courage and fortitude, and resilience” in Asian culture, it made sense for the production designer to make it a key component in the building’s design. To ensure the building perfectly depicts the overarching Dragon and Pearl idea, nearly every detail in its design was meticulously crafted to evoke the symbolism. Owing to this, with a closer look at Skyscraper‘s The Pearl, it is hard not to notice that it looks like a Dragon crawling out of the water and holding the pearl of wisdom, representing its “strength and elegance.”
