King Kong Anyone Seen It?
 

What'd you think of it??Write a review.I haven't But Will Over The Weekend.

Going in about 30mins ;)

Now how did I know Thor would be first in line to see this flick?? :lmao:

Mike

It will be another to add to the list.
1933
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...lance&n=404272

1963 This one had the King Kong robot
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...lance&n=404272

1976
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...lance&n=404272

1986
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...lance&n=404272

2005
King Kong...

By far the greatest King Kong and not just because of the special effects. Just an amazing movie! What going to the movies is supposed to be like. I only wish they could have changed the ending, it's so damm sad. I cried, I really did :(

On Thanksgiving I told my wife about a tradition they had here in NYC where WOR (Channel 9) would run King Kon, Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young presumably to keep kids occupied while the dinner was cooking. I was at a video store getting her a copy of Trains, Planes and Automobiles (her favorite movie) and saw all three movies in a boxed set! Not only that, they were the newly restored two disc version of King Kong, and newly restored versions of the other two! Being short on cash I didn't get it, but when I got home I noticed a strange bulge in my (Blue & white ;) )stocking. Sorry to say I peeked, and lo and behold, go tell it on the mountain, there it was! What a wife! Now I have to keep my hands off it for another week and hope I can act surprised. Now did she also act on the hint about the 18 year-old Glenfiddich?

Anyone know the reason director Peter Jackson chose to tell this new version of King Kong in the same era ( 30's) as the original?

Mike

I'm going tonight at 10:00pm

It's one of his favorite films and he wanted to keep it in the same era.

The new DVD of the original King Kong has an interview with Jackson that's pretty interesting. His production company even went so far as to recreate the lost "Spider pit" sequence as a DVD extra.

Well one reason I can think of is that with modern weaponry a 50' ape would last about 2 seconds ;) Would have made the movie a lot shorter :yes:

It really bugs me when someone decides to do a remake of a really excellent classic movie. The original was so good by any day's standards, but especially with the special effects available to them at the time. Ray Harryhausen was a genius. They remade War of the Worlds and I think the original was much better, especially the design of the martian machines. Now they've redone King Kong. Now I'm not about to condemn it without seeing it. I respect Peter Jackson, and I'm sure he did a fine job on it, and I intend to see it. But the Wallace and Grommit movie and "Rent" come first.

I plan to see it this week. I talked to a friend last night who saw it and says it's fantastic. He gave one piece of advice: Go to the bathroom before the movie starts; it's 3 hours long.

I just got back from this and while I liked it OK I think they accidentally spliced in a couple reels from Jurassic Park.

Seriously, this could stand to be cut by 45min to an hour.
The special effects are great but after about the 100th fight with some creature or another I started to lose interest.

It picked up again after they got back to N.Y. and I thought the film was great from that point on. The scenes on top of the Empire State building were vertigo inducing!

I understand that Jackson felt this was one movie that should never be remade and wasn't going to do it untill he heard they would remake it with or without him.He felt that he was the only one who would do it justice and decided to accept the project.
I always felt the Jeff Bridges remake was darn good...."Wasn't That A Travesty!"

Lose the 1st 30 mins of the film. All of the stuff in New York before they leave for Skull Island was way overdone and unecessary. My GF and I almost fell asleep. When I take my son and go see it for the 2nd time I will leave and go play some vid games in the lobby for a 1/2 hour or so then come back in to the movie ;)

Dinosaurs look like well.......dinosaurs what are you gonna do? It's like saying the Flipper in the movie remake looked like well.......flipper in the TV series ;)

Here's the latest version.
http://www.wmms.com/cc-common/tmtkong.html

I just got back from seeing King Kong. I think that the movie is a little long but I wouldn't cut any one scene in particular. I would cut a little of it all along the way. I think that this is the case of a very successfull director who was given his complete way and that results in a movie that isn't cut to the best length. But this is an excellent movie which is a lot of fun...until the end when you are rooting for Kong who dies.

Damd! Why did you have to spoil the ending for me! :)


Seriously, I'm looking forward to the movie. I have a lot of respect for Peter Jackson. Now if Speilberg had made the movie, I'd wait till it went to tape and I was bored. :D

I haven't seen it - would like to, but not 3 hours without an intermission. I'm declining to see the latest Harry Potter for the same reason.

I saw Harry Potter a couple of weeks ago too. Really a good flick and very little that could be cut. The thing with Harry Potter is that the books have become very long and the interesting side stories can't be told in the movie...and even with sticking to the main plot, it's 3 hours long. I think it's a little too long to sit for a movie too but in this case it was worth it to me. I'd love for each book to be shot as multiple movies. It would have been easy to shoot another hour+ of footage and turn it into two flicks. More flicks like this and Hollywood wouldn't be wondering why people aren't going to the theatre like they used to. Instead Hollywood is shooting Rocky 6 and Mission Impossible 3!! :screwy:

From what I've heard Mr.Jackson really wanted to keep those bi-planes in the movie and couldn't think of any logical way to bring the movie into modern times and keep those planes.

Mike

I saw it with my wife and both of us enjoyed it, Rach has not seen the original( as have I) and we both thought it was pretty good, no brainer and lots of fun!!

I think I'll wait for KK to come to cable. The last "big event" remake I went to see (War Of The Worlds) was a disappointment for me....I wanted Spielberg to work his magic and he did'nt quite do it. So, I'm not to thrilled for a Kong remake.

I think maybe one reason a Kong remake set in 2005 would'nt work is because a totally unknown unexplored island with a giant ape running around (not to mention dinosaurs), would not escape detection as easily as it might...I say MIGHT...in the 1930's. The Discovery channel has had a freaking camera crew EVERYWHERE except the moon & planets.

I will say the 1976 Kong remake was just Gawdawlful! A real stinker. It is kinda weird & haunting though, watching KK climb the World Trade Center in that film.

Russ

Is it just me or has it been a looooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnggggg time since Spielberg has worked any magic?

He kinda lost me when he quit making movies & started making Events. EVERYTHING in a Spielberg movie is just too "perfect"..you never forget you're watching a movie.-Sandy G.

It was on this end too.
example:
The whole idea that the alien war machines were burried
underground in storage rather than comming to earth like in the
original was a tough one to swallow.

Spielbergs magic...as I call it...is the fact that he is a truly gifted filmmaker but in almost EVERY single picture he makes he fumbles! Movie freak that I am it frustrates me. WOTW could have been a sci-fi masterpiece in his hands but it was a rushed production. His first mistake in WOTW was having David Koepp write the screenplay (Same screen writer from Jurrasic Park)

The guys that make movies like "Godzilla","Independance Day", "Pearl Harbour"...are hacks...Spielberg is no "hack" but he's becoming one and its a shame to see a guy with raw filmmaking talent like his and not apply it. Apply it to make a cool as hell sci-fi adventure/thriller to blow us all away!

Dammit Steve! Remember "Duel"? You made a semi-truck scare the hell out of us....go back to your roots!

Russ

I think Speilberg is suffering from Bakshi syndrome. The vast majority of Ralph Bakshi's movies were great, but always had some lapse in continuity that drove me batsh*t. eg:the hero of Wizards calling the baddie by another name, a bad dub in Hey Good Looking where a cop is talking about a gang. Sloppy.

Yeah, "Duel" worked for me because it was raw & gritty, unlike a lot of his megabuck later pictures. And who HASN'T had the dogchit scared outta 'em by a big truck at one time or another ? What's to keep that guy in that Peterbilt behind you from going berzerk ? Maybe his wife just left him. Maybe he found out he's got cancer. Maybe he just decided he's gonna get you for pulling in front of him, cutting him off...-Sandy G.

I wondered when someone would mention this - however, I haven't read the book - is there anything like this in the book, or is it more like the older radio and movie versions? I agree that burying the machines long ago is a really dumb thing - if the Martians could send war machines eons ago, why didn't they just move in on Earth then? :screwy:

You're quite right. Heck, you could look at it on "Google Earth" or whatever it's called!

wasn't Harryhausen, dr.audio
 

Willis O' Brian was the man in charge of the stop-action photography.Harryhausen was there as an assistant.I read a great book on the making of King Kong years ago-it had everything you wanted to know about how they did the original,with chapters on O' Brien's workl on the silent Lost World.But I can 't remember the book's title or author,drat .

I saw the movie just the other night and personally found it to be very frustrating. Frustrating in that I thought many parts of the film were very, very good while others where just more of the same over the top, in your face CGI garabage that now litters most other hollywood blockbusters. Sequences such as Kong's battle with three T-Rexs, the rescue party being caught in the middle of a huge stampede of terrified dinosaurs, or their again having to battle off countless giant insects....where just too much and utterly unbelievable. Not unbelievable in that they were encountering long extinct species, but in that physics was completely disregarded. I am tried of seeing people fall hundreds of feet and walking away. I mean Kong was bitten numerous times during his battle with the T-Rexs yet was neither impaired nor drew blood. Come on! On the other hand, I thought that the emotion that they were able to create with Kong's character and his relationship with Ann was terrific. Had the more ridiculous parts of the movie been edited out, leaving us with just the grand landscapes of Skull Island and New York along with the Kong/Ann relationship, it could have been a truly great movie. I walked away really wishing I had not seen the final cut.

Just saw King Kong this afternoon.
 

In short, kinda fun, kinda long and Jack Black was a poor choice for the part. He chewed up the scenery more than all the T-Rex's, Raptors and giant bugs combined. They shoulda shot him off the Empire State Building in he beginning.

Don't get me wrong. I like Jack in his type of movie playing his type of character. This wasn't one of them. All he did here was glare and overact, which works in School of Rock, but not here.

I agree that it's what he did, but that was the direction given to him. When PJ set out to make the movie, all he was going to do was shoot the original movie using todays CGI, etc. Thus, the over-acting, amazing physics defying stunts (I mean - Ann couldn't have survived all the abuse accidentally handed out by Kong - let alone all the falls, etc.)

The ape was a cracker. I've sat and watched the gorillas in our local zoo and the expressions and movement were superb. And even with the disbelief I still cried at the end (but I won't give away any more).

The movie definitely passed the wizzer test - I didn't need to go to the toilet from start to finish. I agree with one of the other posters, though - the first 30 minutes could be on the cutting room floor and we'd be none the wiser.

:banana: IMHO :banana:

Yeah, but do ANY of the remakes REALLY improve over the 1933 original ? -Sandy G.

Im an absolute movie fanatic(Im going to another one tonight,in fact),and Ive been waiting for King Kong a long time,but when I kept hearing about giant bugs,giant spiders,and giant worms,I decided to pass-a dena on this one.I just can deal with movies about bugs.
jimmy

IF it were recut, then this version could be better than the '33 version. Fay wasn't nearly the actress that Naomi Watts is and the relationship that is developed/shown in this version of KK is really wonderful. The special effects allow Kong to show more depth of character and yet sometimes absolutely get in the way of the story so....in the end, I guess this version isn't REALLY better but it could be with a good editor.

You know it's in trouble when Kong showed a greater range of emotions than the leading man.

Naomi Watts gets on my nerves.Shes a fine actress,but shes always complaining about doing serious work,then she does King Kong and the Ring movies and Le Divorce.Just wants it both ways,methinks.
Jimmy