KING KONGS

I freakin' loved this movie. I just thought it was really good. The worst part, by far, was the asshole with the laser pointer pissing off the audience on 4 seperate occasions. The effects were mostly spectacular, the emotional aspect was heartbreaking and the action non-stop.
Which brings me to by only true complaint. There was too much action on the island. It was like an hour of continually trying to outdo the last scene. It got to the point where I was totally removed from any realism the action might have had. And the disgustingness of the monsters was way gratuitous. I'd heard the first hour is slow, as Kong isn't in the film yeat and it's all setup. I disagree. I thought it was very effective and not too slow at all. I will agree, however, that the kid on the boat was completely pointless. He could have been removed and saved me 20 minutes of the film. That said, I didn't mind it until the movie was over and I began to rethink it all.
Yeah, there are som leaps of faith you have to make, like why isn't Ann freezing her nuts off on top of the Empire State Building? But who cares? It was a fun film with fantastic effects.


The following night I rented the original, as I'd never really watched it before. I settled in for comparison viewing, rather than to fully enjoy it on its own merits. You know when you read a book and then see the movie and they've shortened it and sucked all character development and emotional interest out of it? That's how I felt about the original Kong. There was so little plot and no sympathetic characters. It was pretty tedious to watch. The effects are mostly terrible by today's standards, as you can imagine. But I mean, look at the picture above. Does it even resemble a gorilla? I know, I know, it was 1933 and audiences actually fainted when it was released. All I can say is it didn't age well. I was amused to see some scenes and some dialogue lifted completely from this version to the 2005 version. I don't remember the 1976 version at all. The funny thing is, the dialogue and scenes taken from the original are played off as corny or purposefully badly done in the 2005 version. For example, the natives' dance in the 1933 version is used in the 2005 version to show the bastardization of the culture on the stage show in NY. Very clever, I thought.

Anyway, I highly recommend the new remake and the original for curiosity's sake.