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King Kong: The Movie

Moof1904 said:
I've not seen the movie and from everything I've heard, it's superb; however, for some reason, it's not opening well.
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Well, I can't speak for others but I didn't even think it opened until today, so that could account for poor box office

Jaffa Cake said:
We went out to see it last night – and very impressed we were with it too. One complaint though – as a severe arachnaphobe I'm getting annoyed with all the big spidery stuff Peter Jackson seems to like putting in his films...
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I actually read somewhere that Peter Jackson has extreme arachnaphobia as well, I think on those silly fact slideshows that they show at theaters before the previews.
 
Laslo Panaflex said:
I actually read somewhere that Peter Jackson has extreme arachnaphobia as well, I think on those silly fact slideshows that they show at theaters before the previews.
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In that case, I don't envy him having to direct and oversee those scenes... :eek:

Luckily, I'm as blind as those bats that tried to snack on Kong, so if I'm faced with spidery horror at the cinema I just push my glasses down my nose and get my girlfriend to tell me when they're gone. :eek:
 
jayscheuerle said:
The musical score sounds like it could have been directly lifted from LOTR. Yes, I know the composer's the same, but John Williams was able to differentiate between the themes of his films extremely successfully.
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Not quite. Howard Shore got the axe at the last minute and Peter Jackson bought in someone else to replace him who's name currently escapes me.

As far as opening numbers go, it's gonna take some good word-of-mouth to spread to undo the 'Godzilla' effect, where audiences have been put off by a bunch of half-hearted monster and big event pics... give it time, I reckon.

It opened earlier than LOTR, it's a funny time of the year leading up to Xmas... maybe there will be stronger figures over the Xmas-New Year week.

And as far as running time is concerned, anyone who sinks 30-million plus of their own money into a film can cut it anyway they want. :D

A friend of mine who saw it, adored it. Especially the pond sequence. Horses (or apes) for courses, I suppose.

I'm seeing it on Tuesday night at one of the biggest and best screens in the UK so will reserve judgement until then.

And no, there will be no 90min studio cut... there is some talk of an extended cut for a special edition DVD. Apparently, there's tons of unused dinosaur stuff... if you like that kinda thing.
 
jayscheuerle said:
I'm guessing female friend, eh? :p
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No. :D

The word 'adore' was mine.
And he is a huuuuuge massive Kong fan who treasures the 1933 version immensely. Go figure.
 
jayscheuerle said:
Right. Cut the Spider Pit sequence. Cut the Pond skating sequence. Cut half the brontosaurus and 75% of the Tri-rex sequences. Cut a bunch of the first third character development..

When this comes out on DVD, I'm ripping it to a high quality Quicktime, editing it down and putting it back on DVD. Save the extended fight scenes as extras.
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Good analysis. Also, the whole Ann doing the dancing thing to King Kong - yes, its necessary, and yes, it was funny at first.. but there must have been 5, 10 minutes of that.

Also, the korny "Jimmy" moment. "Get back Jimmy..!" and then.. "Run Jimmy, run!", I thought we pretty funny.. Not sure if they were meant to be. :p

This was the first film I had to walk out of for 2 mins to go to the toilet. 30 mins of ads + 3 hours and 8 of film is a long time to hold it in.

Another thought.. I'm sure I will be going to see this again - it just feels very epic to me.. very watchable again. Whenever I think about it, I keep thinking it was better and better. Overall, highly recommended.. if you can put up with the length.
 
Laslo Panaflex said:
I actually read somewhere that Peter Jackson has extreme arachnaphobia as well, I think on those silly fact slideshows that they show at theaters before the previews.
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Geek that I am, I watched all the extras on the extended LOTR DVDs :)o) & you are right - he is very arachnophobic. Shelob in 'The Return of the King' was designed as best to frighten him, and I guess that this has carried on - if it scares him then it should scare other people too.
 
I just got home from seeing it (in Gold Class to save the ass :p), and I must say I enjoyed it more than I had expected. The effects, costumes and settings were excellent and I thought it was really well acted. There were quite a few things that I didn't like though.

1. Too many of the fighting/action scenes dragged on and on...it's called editing Peter!
2. The style in which the action scenes were shot was a little too chaotic for my liking, and gave me a little bit of a head spin.
3. It was a bit of a cop out not showing HOW they actually got Kong onto the boat and all the way back to NY, but I suppose that was to be expected.
4. The final half of the movie seemed to lack dialogue, and many of the characters from the island were not see or spoken of again.
5. Some of the sound effects were a little overdone.

That's just my opinion for what it's worth. Go along and see it on the big screen, I don't think I'd bother watching it if it was just on a regular TV.
 
max_altitude said:
It was a bit of a cop out not showing HOW they actually got Kong onto the boat and all the way back to NY, but I suppose that was to be expected.
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Yeah, my girlfriend commented on this. To be honest, as they were trapping him I was kind of expecting they wouldn't show them getting him onto the Venture... ;)
 
Jaffa Cake said:
Yeah, my girlfriend commented on this. To be honest, as they were trapping him I was kind of expecting they wouldn't show them getting him onto the Venture... ;)
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Ya, amongst my group me made a few comments about how he wouldn't be able to get on the boat, and how he would sink it.. And then they didn't show it. :p

Jack Black acted well in this.. very strong I thought.
 
personally i don't know anybody who has interest in watchin it ... me included

i always had the feeling that he only rason they put so much dinosaur scenes in the movie to get more people in the cinema
sadly it would be the only reason for me to watch the movie... watching ape-movies isn't my kind of thing
 
takao said:
personally i don't know anybody who has interest in watchin it ... me included

i always had the feeling that he only rason they put so much dinosaur scenes in the movie to get more people in the cinema
sadly it would be the only reason for me to watch the movie... watching ape-movies isn't my kind of thing
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Its not really that ape orientated... I know its focused around King Kong, but there is a lot of.. human.. stuff before and around it. I think you should see it.. Who knows - you may even enjoy it. :p
 
XIII said:
Its not really that ape orientated... I know its focused around King Kong, but there is a lot of.. human.. stuff before and around it.
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Which makes it sound like 1 step from a beastiality flick. heheh.
 
You know, to each his own, YMMV etc.... but this is one extremely dumb, overlong, corny b-picture on cgi steroids. Kong looked believable, Naomi Watts is pretty good, that's all there is to like about this disaster. The dinosaur stampede was absolutely ridiculous, the spiders/bats/gazillions of scary creatures complete overkill and Jack Black is absolutely horrible. A fitting end for an extremely crap-tastic year for movies.
 
I did enjoy the movie (we saw it Friday night), but it seemed to me that Kong was the most believable character in the movie. I thought the facial expressions and physical behavior throughout the movie were incredibly realistic; props to Andy Serkis and the animators for that.
 
To much of King Kong reminded me of Jurassic Park and The Lost World Jurassic Park.

Why do I say this:

TLW JP had the T-Rex shipped to San Diego on the S.S. Venture same as King Kong was shipped to NY on the Venture.

Majority of the Kong in NY reminded me of Rex in San Diego, with Anna's love interest writer sitting in a car trying to lure Kong to chase him. As the same formula was used with the Baby Rex, Sarah, Ian to draw attention to the Mother Rex to get lured back into the S.S. Venture.

There was more... however I will leave that for people to compare.

Either Steven Spielberg taken portions of the original King Kong movie and put it into his movie or Peter Jackson taken portions from TLW JP and implemented into his NYC scenes.

Just me comparing.........I found dinosaur scenes the best. :D
 
maya said:
To much of King Kong reminded me of Jurassic Park and The Lost World Jurassic Park... Either Steven Spielberg taken portions of the original King Kong movie and put it into his movie or Peter Jackson taken portions from TLW JP and implemented into his NYC scenes.
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The IMDb trivia page for The Lost World: Jurassic Park lists several references to King Kong, including (as you mentioned) the name of the ship, "The Venture". It is definitely the case the case that both Spielberg and Peter Jackson were paying homage to the original King Kong movie.
 
the future said:
corny b-picture
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I too was also disappointed. I went into the cinema expecting to see a profound and moving portrayal of the human condition but was astounded to witness a film about a 25' gorilla living somewhere called Skull Island and then tearing up New York.

Saying that, my experience of seeing this was marred by the uncomfortable and cramped seat I was in and the poor projection and sound quality.

And I don't know why people are so down on the pond sequence. It was less than a minute and I thought it was suitably tacky but in a good way.

Full of plot holes but they're not relevant to the story. I didn't care where Jack Black's character was supposed to have got the map from... it's just a corny device to get them to the island — a slight 'MacGuffin' as Hitchcock would have called it.

Overall, enjoyed it immensely but it could have done with a little tightening in the first hour but not as much as some people claim. Naomi Watts was excellent, Jack Black enjoyable although broad, and the rest did well considering the largely thankless roles they had. But looking back, so many good scenes and the last stand atop the Empire State Building was worth the price of admission alone.

Perhaps not the sum of it's parts but still a hugely crowd-pleasing entertaining effort with a big heart and with some lovely touches. It drew a round of applause in the theatre with the closing titles and I haven't heard that at the movies for a while.
 
I saw it again last night. :p

I stand by my first thought that some of the fighting scenes are just too long and drawn out.. its called editing Peter.
 
i saw it last saturday....well some saturday at least, and i must say i was really impressed. the ending was really good, especially. i do agree with a lot of the posters though that there was entirely too much dinosaur stuff. and i *really* could have done without the spider scene. overall my reactions were "wow" and "how the **** did they animate that gorilla thing"
 
Although I've yet to see King Kong, both myself and the better half are thoroughly looking forward to our venture!!

I noticed a number of cries about Jacksons' apparent obsession with spiders; as another poster rightly pointed out Peter is a serious aracnophobe -- in fact the Shelob is based on a particular spider [don't know which one!] that frightens the ***** out of Jacko.

Also don't forget that King Kong was the movie pitched to the studios prior to LOTR -- but for some reason he was knocked back. Basically it's the film he's always wanted to do...

As I read somewhere [think it was Empire] "Christmas isn't Christmas without a Peter Jackson film..." and "All hail the return of the king" [re. Peter Jackson]

Here's to The Hobbit... :D
 
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