Peter Jackson's KING KONG

[JG]

i didn't expect this movie to do well.  everybody i talked to didn't wanna see it.  a 30 foot gorilla no longer sounds cool.  it's sounds corny and cliched.   people don't want corny action movies.  they want cornyindependent movies.  i'm not saying this movie is corny, but that's what a lot of the general public thought it looked like. 

this movie will do all righ though.  it will grow by word because it really is a great movie.  it will make money back.  theres no real big releases coming up.

my main gripe with the movie was not how long it took to get to the island.  i think the movie is paced great until toward the end of the island sequence.  the dinosaur fight was a little long in my opinion.  i think they could have cut about 20 minutes out of the second act.   then toward the end i thought there were too many scenes where ann and kong look at each other.  they juts felt redudant.  all were great when looking at them by themselves, but it did not work with the overall pacing of the movie. 

[©brad]

i said god damn this was BADASS!

favorite scene: ann doing her comedy act trying to make kong laugh, and he yawns! HAHAHAHAH.

how can you not love this? how?

i know i'm going to sound cheesy and naive and fanboyish in saying this, but isn't it amazing what we can do now in cinema? did you see, i mean, really see some of those shots? manhattan skyline, empire state, times square, the fucking dinosaur sequence-- JAW-DROPPING my friends! and KONG! his face! p is right-- it's worth the price of admission. kong and ann scenes were sooo wonderful it blows my mind.

my only beef (and it's a minor, thinly sliced piece of salami kinda beef) was with the whole Jimmy reading heart of darkness schtick and then his relationship with the black guy. those few exchanges of dialogue btwn the two of them elicited many a laugh in my theater. wtf was the point? anyway, i soon forgave and forgot once we got to the island.

PJ needs to take a nap and eat something for fuck's sake. he deserves it.

[cron]

i also think the backlash is partly retaliation at the huge spectacle of the whole thing, including what i mentioned on the previous page about the overhype.

also, peter travers said: I've heard gripes from jolt junkies about the hour it takes for the tall, dark and nontraditionally handsome leading man to make his entrance. Jeez, people, that's what they call building a rooting interest in the characters.

[RegularKarate]

I just saw it again (My wife wanted to see it) and I still feel that the beginning is too long.  Not because I'm in desperate need of fast-paced action, but because it feels awkward.  The score for the first third sucks and sounds completely forced as does the humor and pacing.

Everything after that is fantastic... and C-Brad, I think the Jimmy scenes were supposed to be kind of tongue and cheek.  at least a little.

SPOILER

This time I watched Kong's eyes right as he dies (right before the fall) and his PUPILS DIALATE!!!  That's just fucking amazing.  Loks so real.

[grand theft sparrow]

I'd rebut what I think Losing The Horse is trying to say but Pubrick already covered it. 

The score for the first third sucks

There were portions through the whole film where I thought to myself, "Hopefully they realize the rush job it was and fix it up for the DVD release or at least the inevitable extended version."  It was the only thing that ever took me out of the film.  So I have to slightly amend what I said before.

There is nothing not to love about this movie except the score.

[killafilm]

I can't help but think that people are ahem 'punch-drunk' with old PJ. 

How can you overlook the pacing/secondary character/score/compositing issues?  While all of the scenes between Anne and Kong may be pure joy, I find that said issues really hold the film back from being great.

[w/o horse]

I didn't feel like Pubrick rebutted me (though I do wish he wouldn't make such a concerned effort at pointing out my typing blunders, u know), as much as he agreed with me:   

it's all kong could ever be.  if u don't like it, u don't like the king kong story.

Me:

It was a glitzy Hollywood-style movie through and through.  I can understand why people love it, and I can understand why people don't love it.  There wasn't a lot of meat to it.

Yeah.  It's all Kong could ever be.  And for some of us, plain and simple, much like I connected to Brokeback while it appears many are not, the Kong just isn't our cup.  It doesn't particularly have to do with the score or the slow as fuck first act (I think the short attention span theory needs to end, I think most of the people here can sit through long movies with little happening until the end), or any other failed element.  The twenty nine eye lights in every characters' eyes, including Kongs, are all there to tell the story about a giant misunderstood ape.  Personally I think Raging Bull did that story better, although there wasn't a T. Rex I know.

So there really isn't an aggressive argument coming from me here, I'm just saying I like a different kind of movie.

[72teeth]

i might be stretching a little here, but: did anyone else get a little chill when the ship's captain was pointing that harpoon at Kong....for me it just implanted the idea of a Pete Jack version of Moby Dick...like way down the line, after he's made a couple serious movies and MD could be like a throw back toward his more "epic" past...idunno, just throwing that in...

but yeah, this fuckin' rocked...best cinema experience in a long time....

[Pubrick]

I didn't feel like Pubrick rebutted me

the only part of my post directed at u was about the made up word. so yeah, no gripes here either. tho for the record your original post didn't make clear that you were saying the same thing as me, i think kong is more than pure hollywood-glitz. at the very least it's the best the "genre" offer, if that's how u wanna think about it. my main target was anyone who thinks the original is better, they're kidding themselves.

I can't help but think that people are ahem 'punch-drunk' with old PJ. 

i think both LotR and PDL were wildly overrated, if that makes any difference to you. 

How can you overlook the
1. pacing/
2. secondary character/
3. score/
4. compositing issues

1. as soon as they get to the island the real movie begins and the pacing is perfect. a vast improvement from the original in which even the island was boring and it took an hour to get to new york where the fun began, finally, in the last 15 minutes.

2. who cares, the story was about kong and darrow. the secondary characters served their purpose, to get the main characters together (or keep them apart as it turns out). i would also say jack black did a great job, the only one lacking is adrien brody.. at first i cared for driscoll and darrow, but it's testament to the film that in the end you'd rather see kong get the girl.. as "sick" as that may sound.

3. it could've used a theme or something, if that's what you mean. otherwise it was a decent score and the sound was fucked up in parts for my screening, so again i have to say it didn't bother me at all.

4. didn't notice anything wrong with the compositing of kong, or the other creatures. the dinosaurs fell with weight, the crazy bugs and sucking things were convincingly buggy. there was a consistent look to the picture, the creatures may have been stylized but so was the whole movie to compensate as i noted in my original review.

[NEON MERCURY]

As I said before... Box Office is NOT looking good for this one...

9 million Wed, 6 million Thursday, and only 15 million yesterday... which means it wont be even close to 100 million for the 5 day openning. Far from any LotR, or Harry Potter, or any comparable blockbuster... considering this was the most hyped movie of the year and it cost over 200 million to make... Studio is going to be pissed!

And the Box Office is ending the year with a 6-8% decline from last year... which is gonna make these fuckers realize something is wrong...

i havent seen it yet...i want to..i think i will love it but..that is wierd that its not doign "like it was suppose to" at the b.o.    maybe p is right ..its was overhyped to titanic porportions....i think it has soemthign to do w/ the fact that its 3 hours and its a remake....if it was soemthign completely new....then that would eb another story..

[killafilm]

I can't help but think that people are ahem 'punch-drunk' with old PJ. 

i think both LotR and PDL were wildly overrated, if that makes any difference to you. 

Just being cheesy.  Sorry.

How can you overlook the
1. pacing/
2. secondary character/
3. score/
4. compositing issues

1. as soon as they get to the island the real movie begins and the pacing is perfect. a vast improvement from the original in which even the island was boring and it took an hour to get to new york where the fun began, finally, in the last 15 minutes.

As soon as the REAL movie begins? I stand by what I said.

2. who cares, the story was about kong and darrow. the secondary characters served their purpose, to get the main characters together (or keep them apart as it turns out). i would also say jack black did a great job, the only one lacking is adrien brody.. at first i cared for driscoll and darrow, but it's testament to the film that in the end you'd rather see kong get the girl.. as "sick" as that may sound.

It could still have been tightened up.  Jimmy went nowhere.  The black dude went nowhere.  My caring about them/them progressing darrow and driscoll nothing.

3. it could've used a theme or something, if that's what you mean. otherwise it was a decent score and the sound was fucked up in parts for my screening, so again i have to say it didn't bother me at all.

Yeah, I guess the score was alright.

4. didn't notice anything wrong with the compositing of kong, or the other creatures. the dinosaurs fell with weight, the crazy bugs and sucking things were convincingly buggy. there was a consistent look to the picture, the creatures may have been stylized but so was the whole movie to compensate as i noted in my original review.

Yeah, the Animation is good.  But all of the elements do not come together.  The backgrounds + CGI elements do not always match up with the live action.  Maybe I just wish that Weta and all VSX companies would have improved upon that matter by now.  I mean it's not really any better than TTT and Ents.  This issue might just be nit-picking by myself, but it's possible that something is wrong with the movie if I wasn't able to suspend my disbelief and just accept everything as is.

[SHAFTR]

I want to point out that I watched the original immediately before I saw the new one.  So, I know that I'm not exagerating how good it is, or using nostaliga in my defense.

[Pubrick]

I want to point out that I watched the original immediately before I saw the new one.

so did i.

who to believe..

[elpablo]

this was fun. it was almost more like being on a ride than watching a movie.

-some spoilers

the only part of the cgi that bugged me was the brontosarus stampede scene. some of it looked really akward and almost as cheesy as the 1933 version.

but i did love the tiny scene where darrow is about to step onto the boat and there is a really slow, overly dramatic shot of her foot stepping forward while the music hangs and then she steps and the music explodes and it was like jackson was saying "you know what comes next, and i know you know what comes next, but watch this."

i also enjoyed that the one part that he copied right out of the original was Kong ripping the T-Rex's jaw open and then playing with it.

[The Perineum Falcon]

There are movies I see that return me to a sense of wonder I thought lost.  Not only with the world surrounding, but with film as well.
In recent years, there has been a noticeable decline in the quality of the Big-Budget Hollywood product. Big Million Dollar Pictures are always lacking something. There was a time before, or so I've come to believe, when Big, Epic Action-Adventure films were intense, exciting and gratifying.
The last being the most important that we've lost. Or so I'd thought.
King Kong, in all honesty, has restored my wonder in film. It is a spectacle, pure and simple. Though it is a very modern production, it has a sense of the spectacular that grew out of Early Cinema.

I was genuinely excited throughout this. It was awe-inspiring; at times just plain inspiring.
I think I have a sense of what Jackson felt once when first seeing the original as a child.

There is a chunk in the middle that is the most intense that I've felt in a while. And I feel this is, easily, one of the best films I've seen in a while. The action hardly rests; it brings you just to the point of exhaustion but makes every second exhilerating.

And his eyes.

There are some problems. The delivery of certain lines bothered me, and lines in general rubbed me the wrong way. And if he (Peter Jackson) had to end with a very telling line, I wish he would've chosen to leave, at least, a little up to the viewer. Why not just have said:

"It wasn't the planes that killed him......"

But, I think with such a grand story, and having everything else done beautifully, I think he can afford these weaker moments without hurting the overall film.

So, no, it's not perfect, but it's close enough.