King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

[Terasawa]

For some reason it's funny to me that you zeroed in on the nose stroking what, is the butt-slliding not good enough for you?!?
In all seriousness though, I'm not sure I agree completely. I think the Ann/Kong scenes got a little too close to (human) anthropomorphization compared to '33. That's not to say I don't think Andy Serkis didn't create a Kong that was believable as a gorilla mind you. Just that it started venturing into Gamera/Toshio (or Kennnyyyyy!) territory with how heavy it was laid on by the end there.
That's just my opinion though, not knockin' you at all bud.

Jackson's film erased any subtly and ambiguity in the original. Whether you consider that a success or not is dependent on your tastes, I guess, but that's one reason why I can't stand it. Kong and Ann "ice skating" was the straw that broke the camel's back for me: I totally agree with you, his version was just too on the nose (pun intended), especially in their dynamic.

That, and that it took an hour to get to the fucking island. And the ridiculous green screen dinosaur stampede. And the...

[SoggyNoodles2016]

Said it before, say it again: the sheer love and creative drive Jackson put into his Kong is so admirable, but it's dragged down by him trying to hard to evoke the same feelings he had watching it or showing off all of his ideas on making his Skull Island to the point he's basically just shoving in action sequences for the next design he had.

A good edit and it would be the perfect remake.

(This is not saying it's bad, far from it, I personally love a lot of stuff in it. It's just a film I've grown to find needed more polish before I can call it perfect, even if it is in my top 10 or so films of all time)

[Major sssspielberg!]

on the nose
And the...

You know they added the skating scene in post because Petey decided his 9 hour film reaaaaaallly needed it?
I wasn't broken til the end when he got shot and they just kept cutting back to Kong leaning on the tower and Ann kept staring into his eyes sadly.
I came to the conclusion that Kong '05 is a movie made for unemployed motherfuckers. I said above I enjoyed it much more than I ever have but I can't help but feel like I'd be pissed off at wasting so much of my day on it if my life had more urgency going on

Said it before, say it again: the sheer love and creative drive Jackson put into his Kong is so admirable, but it's dragged down by him trying to hard to evoke the same feelings he had watching it or showing off all of his ideas on making his Skull Island to the point he's basically just shoving in action sequences for the next design he had.

A good edit and it would be the perfect remake.

Unfortunately I think that the "ultimate director cut" or whatever which ADDS time is the way to watch. It's a huge movie that has a lot of moving parts. Not only is it trying to be a love letter, it's trying to be a slam-bang cutting edge special effects picture, but also this viewing gave me the impression that there was some kind of attempt at a meta-narrative about moviemaking, entertaining your audience, and the Kurtzian/Fitzcarraldo-ish pursuit of your creative "beast" when making a film. I think Pete just put too many ingredients in his stew, and if you trimmed it down it might lose a lot of that substance. I think that much is kind of admirable in a way.

[The Octopus]

^No. But when O'Brien asked Marcel Delgado to build the Kong model he told Marcel to "Make the ape almost human".
When Cooper saw it he laughed and said "It was the funniest damn thing I'd ever seen". He described it as looking like a man with really long hair. I've never seen a photo of it and I doubt one was ever taken.

[omgitsgodzilla]

Unfortunately I think that the "ultimate director cut" or whatever which ADDS time is the way to watch. It's a huge movie that has a lot of moving parts. Not only is it trying to be a love letter, it's trying to be a slam-bang cutting edge special effects picture, but also this viewing gave me the impression that there was some kind of attempt at a meta-narrative about moviemaking, entertaining your audience, and the Kurtzian/Fitzcarraldo-ish pursuit of your creative "beast" when making a film. I think Pete just put too many ingredients in his stew, and if you trimmed it down it might lose a lot of that substance. I think that much is kind of admirable in a way.

I kind of like Peter Jackson's Kong, but the extended cut adds almost nothing of any real substance -- it's mostly extra creature encounters on Skull Island. Looking at an in-depth comparison between the two cuts, the only new scene I can see that adds more than some extra CGI action seems to be a bit at the end of the spider pit sequence. Nearly everything else is redundant.

[SoggyNoodles2016]

Off topic but randomly thought about how despite the fact "Kong vs dinosaur" is the most famous iconography from Skull Island, Kong fighting a snake/snake derivative has been the more common theme thought the adaptions.

in 1933, we had the Elasmosaurus in KK and the Sea Serpant/Nothosaurus in SOK, the giant sea serpant of Escapes, the obvious one in 1976, the Skullcrawlers and now Warbats in the Monsterverse...

Hell, we could probably even count Oodako if we limit it to "Kong fights constricting monster from the sea".

[Bluezilla]

^No. But when O'Brien asked Marcel Delgado to build the Kong model he told Marcel to "Make the ape almost human".
When Cooper saw it he laughed and said "It was the funniest damn thing I'd ever seen". He described it as looking like a man with really long hair. I've never seen a photo of it and I doubt one was ever taken.

From what I’ve read this concept eventually turned into Prometheus. Which eventually gave us KKvsG.

https://images.app.goo.gl/ZoLVr6vxTLdepbzf8

[daveblackeye15]

Huh the whole humanized Kong thing reminds me of how originally the director of 70s Kong wanted him to be more like a Neanderthal so people could relate to him easier or soemthing. You kind of see that design in the King Kong poster, the one where Dwan is 11 feet tall in Kong's hand. I thought the mechanical Kong sort of had that look too.

[JAGzilla]

Off topic but randomly thought about how despite the fact "Kong vs dinosaur" is the most famous iconography from Skull Island, Kong fighting a snake/snake derivative has been the more common theme thought the adaptions.

in 1933, we had the Elasmosaurus in KK and the Sea Serpant/Nothosaurus in SOK, the giant sea serpant of Escapes, the obvious one in 1976, the Skullcrawlers and now Warbats in the Monsterverse...

Hell, we could probably even count Oodako if we limit it to "Kong fights constricting monster from the sea".

And if Oodako is included, we may as well throw in the Mire Squid so he doesn't feel left out. Also, wasn't there a scene in KKL where he tries to give his girlfriend a snake as a present?

So Kong routinely fights things that tie him up... and constantly gets captured and tied up... and has the whole thing with holding women prisoner for, um, reasons... I dunno, maybe we don't want to look too closely at this franchise.

[Spuro]

Off topic but randomly thought about how despite the fact "Kong vs dinosaur" is the most famous iconography from Skull Island, Kong fighting a snake/snake derivative has been the more common theme thought the adaptions.

in 1933, we had the Elasmosaurus in KK and the Sea Serpant/Nothosaurus in SOK, the giant sea serpant of Escapes, the obvious one in 1976, the Skullcrawlers and now Warbats in the Monsterverse...

Hell, we could probably even count Oodako if we limit it to "Kong fights constricting monster from the sea".

And if Oodako is included, we may as well throw in the Mire Squid so he doesn't feel left out. Also, wasn't there a scene in KKL where he tries to give his girlfriend a snake as a present?

So Kong routinely fights things that tie him up... and constantly gets captured and tied up... and has the whole thing with holding women prisoner for, um, reasons... I dunno, maybe we don't want to look too closely at this franchise.

Kink Kong.

[The Octopus]

Huh the whole humanized Kong thing reminds me of how originally the director of 70s Kong wanted him to be more like a Neanderthal so people could relate to him easier or soemthing. You kind of see that design in the King Kong poster, the one where Dwan is 11 feet tall in Kong's hand. I thought the mechanical Kong sort of had that look too.

That's right. In fact when they started building the giant robot Kong that was the plan. That's why the robot has human looking legs. It was Rick Baker who pushed for the ape and they listened to him. "I saved them from themselves" he remarked.

[Terasawa]

Huh the whole humanized Kong thing reminds me of how originally the director of 70s Kong wanted him to be more like a Neanderthal so people could relate to him easier or soemthing. You kind of see that design in the King Kong poster, the one where Dwan is 11 feet tall in Kong's hand. I thought the mechanical Kong sort of had that look too.

According to John Berkey, who did the poster, "I was given no guidance on the ape—just do an ape, basically," so any resemblance to the Neanderthal Kong concept in that initial poster is coincidental. Kong looks so weird in it because Berkey only had a day to draw a sketch (for Paramount's approval) and only a few days after that to translate that sketch to a painting. He reworked the art into the final form for Paramount throughout 1976.

[Gigantis]

Wasn't one of Universal's concepts for The Legend of King Kong a more human/ape hybrid monster?

[The Octopus]

Wasn't one of Universal's concepts for The Legend of King Kong a more human/ape hybrid monster?

[Gigantis]

Wasn't one of Universal's concepts for The Legend of King Kong a more human/ape hybrid monster?

Welp, that's horrifying.

[Al Diplodocus]

I love the archaic human species look to it, personally.

[UltramanGoji]

I think making Kong anything other than a giant gorilla/gorilla-adjacent monster is just...wrong. That Neanderthal look feels like a completely different character. It's not Kong.

[_JNavs_]

Looks like the offspring of a dude who smashed an ape

[SoggyNoodles2016]

The thing that makes this worse is Delaurentis initially planned it for his film solely because quote " he wanted to make the Kong-Dwan story more appealing and less creepy"

So yeah, deal with that y'all

[Al Diplodocus]

I think making Kong anything other than a giant gorilla/gorilla-adjacent monster is just...wrong. That Neanderthal look feels like a completely different character. It's not Kong.

TBH, I'm quite interested in seeing what Kong could be like as other primates. The Toho films actualluy did a similar thing by taking inspration from the native Japanese Macaque. Some others I've come up with are:
- A giant Aye-Aye, complete with the massive middle finger real aye-ayes have in real life. Just imagine it hunting for the huge insects of Skull Island and casually eating them by skewering them on it, or impaling the V-Rexes.

- A giant gibbon, at home in the canyon vines and trees and runs around like its on crack.
- A giant derived Plesiadapiform

Others I've seen are based on or take inspiration from:
- Orangutans

- and Baboons/Mandrills