King Kong

[Your Paragon of Virtue 0]

So it said Serkis played King Kong. What did he do exactly?

He also plays a characer named Lumpy, who is also awesome.

 

I know he played Lumpy, but it said he also played King Kong. What would he have done for that, the growls?

[AmericanDragon 0]

So it said Serkis played King Kong. What did he do exactly?

He also plays a characer named Lumpy, who is also awesome.

 

I know he played Lumpy, but it said he also played King Kong. What would he have done for that, the growls?

 

...Doesn't everyone already know what he did for Gollum? Well it's not hard to guess what he did for Kong.

[Guest JMA]

I saw the movie Friday and thought it was great. I didn't really have a problem with the last line, either. I prefer it being said as if the revelation suddenly came to the character rather than him stating it in a "matter of fact" tone of voice.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Saw it tonight. Good, but I really felt the length. I liked most of the scenes, but the movie was a bit glutted overall. Kong was wonderful, as was the Anne/Kong interaction. I buy the Stockholm Syndrome idea, but there's also a gentle inquiry about what makes people people; is it being a human, or is it taking care of others, or what? Nothing brilliant, but a lot of quiet moments put together very well with the help of both Naomi Watts' face and Kong's. Kong on ice was wonderful. I dug Jack Black. Sleazy and only occasionally goofy. The natives were fantastic and imposing, and were used just the right amount. Jimmy is the worst name you can give to a character who's always going to be taught life lessons or given advice: "Well, you know Jimmy"; "You can't do that, Jimmy!" Oh, the passage from Heart of Darkness was really well-used too.

 

I still don't think Peter Jackson is a particularly good filmmaker, though. I didn't like any of the Lord of the Rings movies (with Two Towers being the least offensive), and while this was better than any of them, it still suffered. His slo-mo is atrocious.

[PLAGIARISM! 0]

All of Kong's facial expressions and movements were motion captured directly from Andy Serkis, he studied Gorillas in their habitat and at zoos etc but everything on screen was from him. Which is truly brilliant.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

That guy's good at what he does. Gollum moving around was the best part of the LotR movies. Kong was even better.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

This post might contain some spoilers if you haven't seen the movie yet:

 

I saw King Kong last night and thought it was a really great movie. I thought the pace was fine. This was probably the quickets three hour movie I've ever seen honestly. I thought the pacing was pretty good, although I agree things got a little hectic with all the dino scenes on Skull Island (but that was kind of the whole point of that part of the movie).

 

I thought the appearance of the natives was kind of interesting. In the original, the natives have basically a Polynesian appearance, where as here they are much more primitive, which makes sense if we're supposed to buy that this is some "lost civilization." BTW, if anybody missed it, the "native" actors in the scene with Kong at the theater in New York are made to look like the Skull Island natives in the original King Kong.

 

The only part that really bugged me was the scene with the three T-Rexs...the fight scene was cool, but then they all get tangled in the vines, and the T Rex is still trying to eat Ann Darrow? I know they're cold blooded, but you'd think they'd be more concerned with escpaing the vines at that point...

 

The effects were really awesome overall. If I didn't know better, there were times I would've sworn Kong was a real ape.

[iggymcfly 0]

Just thought I'd bump this since I just rented it and saw it last night. Anyway, I get the impression that it was a lot better in theatres, but watching the DVD, it was awful. The inane action sequences went on forever and damn near put me to sleep.

 

I mean, an ape fighting a T-Rex is fine, but do we really need to add iguanas, centipedes, raptors, brontosaurus stampedes, bats, giant mosquitos, and man-eating worms to the mix too? Whatever story was there just seemed to get lost in a never-ending stream of CGI.

 

Also, I thought that the female lead (forgot her name already) overacted everything times about 100. She had the same amazed stare on her face for pretty much the entire movie whether she was auditioning for an acting part or surprised by the boat crash, or enjoying the sunset with the ape.

 

This seemed like a movie that had some potential if they'd cut off about an hour, but by the time the story got moving, you just couldn't wait for it to be over. After all the good things I've heard, I'd have to call this the most overrated movie since Return of the King.

 

Maybe that's just my problem right there. I like a story instead of endless CGI battles. When people say they want to watch ROTK over for the battles, I just want to slap them across the head and say WHY? A bunch of pretend creatures are going to run into a bunch of other pretend creatures, accomplishing nothing. Shit, I'd rather watch someone play a video game.

[SuperJerk 0]

Naomi Watts has been very good in just about everything else I've seen her in.

 

I really strongly disliked this movie, though. None of the relationships between the characters seemed genuine. I just didn't buy that any of these people cared about each other the way the subplots needed them to in order to work. And since no one was ever developed that well, I did not care about any of them. Why does Darrow care so much about Kong? Is it just because he saved her from the dinosaurs, or was there something else? Why does Driscoll care about Darrow? What's going on between the crew boy and the first mate exactly? And do we really need to spend the first 1/3 of the movie telling the story of Carl Denham when the only reason he's even in the movie is to give the characters a reason to go to Skull Island? He's played entirely too sympathetically in the rest of the movie to serve as a stand-in for the evils of the entertainment industry (or whatever point his inclusion was trying to make).

 

All of the CGI looked fake. Dinosaurs were handled better in Jurrassic Park (which was 13 years ago), and the lighting of the live-action characters never seemed to match the lighting of the CGI characters and backgrounds, so everything just screamed "sound stage" the whole movie. Since gorillas (the non-25 foot variety), biplanes, and the Empire State Building all exist in the real world, they should've figured out that the ending sequence looked terrible.

[cabbageboy 0]

I said it back in Dec. I hated the way Denham was portrayed in this film. It's like on some level Peter Jackson had no grasp of the original character at all, and thus just portrayed him as a sleazebag movie producer who conned everyone, sent his men out to die, didn't care, etc.

 

Denham in the original is basically our main protagonist. He made some mistakes in his attempts to seek adventure and get rich, but he had a certain cameraderie with the crew that was lacking in the new film. And I know it's a cheesy sequel, but Son of Kong is worth seeing for some interesting Denham characterization showing his guilt ridden he was over the whole debacle in NYC.

 

Think about this for a minute: I actually think the effects in the 1933 film are more realistic looking! Some of the dinosaurs in that looked about as real as they could for that time.

[SuperJerk 0]

I think the problem with CGI is that they try to add too much detail and it ends up looking more detailed than the other stuff in the frame, and sticks out like a sore thumb. Jurassic Park was on TV today, and the animators knew when to stop adding microscopic detail to every inch of skin (plus their were more limitations in picture resolution back then).

[Yuna_Firerose 0]

Maybe that's just my problem right there. I like a story instead of endless CGI battles.

I highly recommend "Red Eye" -- can't recommend it enough, actually. It's short (76 minutes) but never seems like it -- things have a nice pace to them, the story happening realistically (well... save for the damned last fifteen minutes).

[Mole 0]

Good God, I watched Red Eye last night and I kept on screaming at McAdams' character. I was very disapointed with that movie.

[iggymcfly 0]

I've seen Red Eye actually, and I didn't like it at all. The dialogue was terrible, and the acting from the two leads wasn't much better. I felt like I was watching a bad Lifetime movie.