LSD Jellyfish wrote: ↑Mon Mar 08, 2021 6:12 am
As part of my marathon leading up to Kong vs. Godzilla, I re-watched the original King Kong 33'. Solid flick, and easily way ahead of it's time.
I see we were on similar wavelengths: I'm also doing a Kong/Godzilla marathon, and of course the 1933 original had to be the starting point.
I honestly have grown to love this movie, whereas I don't think I gave it much credit as a kid. There's definitely a lot going on in the film, even if a lot of it is subtle; and it's genuinely exciting to recognize how much the film was making history in the decisions made for production, music, special effects, etc.
I get a kick out of some of the dialogue, too - when Carl is warning Jack about falling in love, and stops himself because he "feels the opening theme coming on" (or something like that), my first thought was you could put a line like that in a modern, self-aware Disney musical, and no one would bat an eye. It's great.
Also I want to talk about something I realized about how it might relate to Godzilla. While minor, I couldn't help but notice how there's some similarities: An Island with it's own superstitions and natives, and a group of outsiders go there. They encounter the monster, and the monster winds up in a big city. Fairly standard stuff by todays standards, but I recognized a similar pattern to 54. Additionally, Kong must be the first movie monster to destroy a train? The way Godzilla destroys the train in 54 must have been inspired by Kong attacking the platform train in 33...
I recently also watched
Godzilla 1954 with the Classic Media commentary, and Ed Godziszewski and Steve Ryfle, and they point out some of those similarities as well. Those similarities hadn't ever considered to me, but I totally see them now, and I really like it; I really get the sense of not only how
King Kong deeply inspired
Godzilla, but how
Godzilla naturally evolved from
King Kong into a new era for film and a new standard for the genre.
I do have to say something controversial though: I don't remember the film's characters being so bland. Jack and Ann are iconic, as is Carl, but that's about it. The rest of the characters are either stereotypes or do nothing, and it's all very surface level. It's fun though...but still!
Yeah, the rest of the cast is just kind of there. They do their parts well enough, but they're ultimately little more than background characters.
On a slightly random note, on my latest viewings it occurred to me that Bruce Cabot kind of acts and sounds like a precursor to Harrison Ford. Is it just me? I know it's coincidence at best, but still...