comment #1

p.Vice says ...

I would love to say just how much more engaging and interesting this is compared to The Incredible Hulk... except I won't be seeing that one.

Does liking this because it actually looks like there are physical objects being filmed as opposed to actors in a room surrounded by digital effects make me a sentamentalist? If so, sign me up!!!

comment #2

DarthCorleone says ...

AGREE 100 PERCENT.

The last time I rewatched King Kong I asked: Why the hell has there not been a better monster vs. monster battle made in the last 80 years?

Certainly there have been as good or better humanoid vs. humanoid fights, but this one still reigns supreme.

comment #3

dangovich says ...

Always loved how Kong opens and closes the beast's mouth a few times after he kills it, like he's trying to figure out how it works.

comment #4

Dan says ...

I like that fight. But...now don't hurt me, Jeffy...I like Peter Jackson's better!

comment #5

nemo says ...

I love the way T-Rex stops to scratch his left ear before he goes after Fay Wray. A moment of reflection? Ear mites?

Several things make this fight more convincing and realistic. One is the cautious way that Kong and T-Rex square off against each other early in the fight. They're wary of each other, even a little afraid. They each act is if they know they have a lot to lose.

Another is the way their energy flags after even the first minute of fighting. You can feel the sweat. Kong and T-Rex are fantasy figures, but they feel like real flesh and blood. Neither one is a bottomless well of fighting energy.

Besides the ear-scratching, another detail that "humanizes" T-Rex is the way he lashes his tail back and forth after the first grappling as he prepares for the second assault. My cats do that every time they have a face-off.

I can't remember the last time I saw that kind of attention to little details in a CGI fight between superhumans.

comment #6

nemo says ...

"Always loved how Kong opens and closes the beast's mouth a few times after he kills it, like he's trying to figure out how it works."

There you go! Another detail that really makes this fight work.

comment #7

MarkVH says ...

Had the pleasure of seeing the original Kong on the big screen a couple of weeks back in a relatively packed house, and the audience was whooping and hollering when Kong took down the Rex, even more so when he opens and closes the mouth and beats on his chest in victory. Totally agreed, still the gold standard of big beastie fights.

comment #8

Ray says ...

While I certainly think this fight was (and remains) revolutionary for its time, I think this was one area that Jackson improved in his unneeded remake. Kong here shows a lot of character in this fight, yet Jackson kept the character while improving the dynamics tremendously. It's hard to watch that fight and not get vertigo.

I will add, though, that Jackson's version of the fight definitely strains credibility; Naomi Watts would have suffered a broken neck within 2.3 seconds of the start of the battle.

comment #9

Ray says ...

And if we're going to start tossing off great monster battles, then it begins and ends with this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msnr5Tx9eIs&feature=related

Look at the choreography! Look at the attention to detail!!

comment #10

Rich S. says ...

I think p.Vice perfectly captures what's wrong with special effects today. I noticed the same thing when comparing Raiders of the Lost Ark to Indy IV the other day. The old movies were actually filming a physical thing. It may have been a model, or a painting, or a puppet, but it was real. It had weight and mass.

The new special effects are just moving pixels on a flat screen. And you can always tell. Besides the T-Rex battle, Jackson also did a wonderful job with the battle atop the Empire State Building. But, try as he might, it still looks like a video game cut scene. In a way, it looks more realistic, which makes the mind rebel against it (uncanny valley?). But the old physical special effects somehow permit the mind to make the leap more easily.

Rambling now, but Jeffrey's right. This scene never ever gets old.

comment #11

Chase Kahn says ...

I know it's a great fight, especially given the time frame, but Peter Jackson's 3 vs 1 take is really amazing to me. I think when the fight goes to the vines its an absolutely brilliantly choreographed scene. That scene gets my heart pumping, this one doesn't...

comment #12

D.Z. says ...

If you want some good monster action, check out Godzilla vs Destroyah and Godzilla vs Megaguiras.

comment #13

Undercover Brother says ...

I am so sick of every film snob romantizing the old "Kong" and it's effects. It's an awful movie, damn near unwatchable. I've seen it at three times in my life and everytime it seems like an increasingly archaic and painful experience. The acting is horrible, the story silly, the dialogue wretched. People, especially adoring film historians, love to gloss over those little annoyances. It's continued championing as some kind of great example of pre-CGI effects is misguided to say the least. Just becasue the effects look like physical objects, that inherently makes them better? What a bunch of bullshit. I've never found a single thing about the old "Kong" to be remotely engaging on an effects level. It looks like a bunch of stop-motion, silly putty monsters, nothing more. Just becasue it's 'physically real' doesn't make it automatically wonderful or inherently empowered with a transcendent quality. It's that leap in logic that always chaps my ass. I give it credit for innovation, but nothing more.

Jackson's movie may have problems a plenty but his 3 T-Rex vs Kong scene is amazing. Maybe his Kong is bloated and egotistical, but some of it is damn impressive. The old Kong stopped being amazing a long time ago. It is at its core the first big, dumb special effects movie. Wooden characters, a stilted screenplay and a bunch of action carnage pushing the story along. I will never buy into this old, ludicrous pro Cooper "Kong" argument.

comment #14

Ray says ...

Amen, Brother!!!!!!

comment #15

gnosis says ...

I feel a little wimpy, but I agree with all sides here.

The '33 Kong WAS a big dumb special effects movie - but it was the best of its time by far. I had not seen it in years, and I was actually stunned at how good it was - take out the leering Kong faces and it gets better.

On the other hand, Jackson's Kong vs. 3 T-Rex scene is I think the best CGI sequence yet created (fantasy division), because Kong does look like he has some mass and weight. It is damn exciting, and being the geek he is Jackson knew to keep the good stuff there - like opening and closing the mouth afterwards.

I recall one reviewer saying something like, "After Sunday night's screening at the Academy theatre I called the better parts of this monkey movie "damned exciting in an emotional, giddily absurd, logic-free adrenalized way... I offered a limited apology to its creator, Peter Jackson... "You aren't that bad, bro," I said. "You got a few things right this time. The movie is going to lift audiences out of their seats... there's no denying that it wails from the 70-minute mark until the big weepy finale at the three-hour mark. Monkey die, everybody cry."

Can't remember who it was...

comment #16

D.Z. says ...

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117988395.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i28d63d0cf815bdc308f7cd2abef65303

comment #17

oranthal james says ...

RESPECT THIS CLIP

comment #18

Arizona Joe says ...

Wells said, "a refrain of the "old films are better than the new" crap that the sentimentalists run up the pole from time to time. "

Maybe old films are better than the new, but that's beside the point. Basic film production has not changed as much as society has changed. And I just don't mean in terms of moral degeneration.

Films were perceived differently, way back when. People sensed that going to a movie theater could be a life changing event. Society viewed a film as a product from venerable stars, directors and producers.

Now, a film is perceived as ubiquitous digital content that can be seen on a home screen, a computer, or a telephone. And as Robert Downey, Jr. recently pointed out, in the digital age anybody with a ball cap and $500K can make a film.

We no longer have artists working frame by frame like in the original King Kong, we have CGI; there are few directors like the trenchant Hitchcock, storyboarding a kiss after being inspired by a piss in France; nor gifted everymen like Frank Capra hitting a tennis ball against a studio wall until the solution to a script problem comes to him, or her.

As Mr. Downey said, it's a bunch of wannabe's in ball caps, or hedge fund traders trying to muscle in on glamour.

Most everything is about the bottom line, luxury fever, and getting rich. Whether it be in the film industry, the finance business, home construction, or automobile manufacturing. In general, artisanal work and craftsmanship are secondary or tertiary to financial leverage and marketing.

And my friends, that is why most movies suck, why the country is in trouble, why the dollar is low, and why in the near future we might be forced to throw over American values for something from the Orient.

comment #19

nola says ...

Arizone joe your comment was so depressing because it's true.

comment #20

moorish says ...

I'm sorry, but if anyone *genuinely* belives that Jackson's Kong is better than the original, they are deluded.

The phrase "self indulgent" does not even begin to do justice to the breathtaking parade of overblown bullshit that is King Kong 2005.

comment #21

Krazy Eyes says ...

I had forgotten how much violent the log scene is compared to either of the remakes. There's not nearly enough footage of bodies smashing into the ground like there used to be.

comment #22

Glenn Kenny says ...

You know, I was just gonna come in and leave an "amen" to Wells for the clip and the sentiment, but my exposure to the undiluted stupid that is Undercover Brother's comment has made me feel like Tiger Woods just hit a golf ball into my eye socket. Ouch!

comment #23

joncro says ...

my 5 year old loves the '33 Kong. I don't think he knows there are other versions.

He also loves Buster Keaton and that Popeye DVD set that just came out.....

Marx Brothers next.

comment #24

h.krinkle says ...

I would think filming one object on screen using stop-mo would be a chore within itself. Two (or more) seperate objects interacting and synchronized must have been an unbelievably tedious process. Great scenes like the one mentioned here deserve serious props, no question.

comment #25

T. S. Idiot says ...

The original Kong is an amazing technological achievement and lots of fun. My only significant complaint against it is the screechy way Bruce Cabot says, "Ann."

I like almost everything about the Jackson version, too. Don't care for Watt anywhere else but developed a profound erotic longing for her here. Me and Kong, we know a cutie when we see one.

As Rich S. says, the ESB sequence is breathtaking. The building seen in the background after the big fella bites the asphalt is the Jacksonian re-imagining of the edifice in which I toil.

comment #26

Valerie Cherish says ...

Why has AUNT SASSY been BANNED???

I miss her insightful comments on film, and her bitchy commentary. She added a refreshing viewpoint to this site.

FREE AUNT SASSY!!!