Review Detail
8.9 23 10
(Updated: September 13, 2012)
Overall rating
9.4
Audio/Video Quality
10.0
Audio Editing
10.0
Visual Editing
10.0
Narrative
10.0
Enjoyment
7.0
April 15, 2010
Kong by The Man Behind The Mask
review by boon23
Prologue:
I am a bit late to the party, wanted to watch it last month, but just never felt the necessary motivation to do so. Why? Because it’s a King Kong fanedit. I don’t love that movie. It is bloated, superficial, has a lot of the “Emmerich Godzilla” effect and simply just tells the plot from the wrong point of view IMO. Other than that it has some truly great moments and a wonderful finale. More was possible, more did not happen. Now I really like TMBTM personally and I think he is a super talented faneditor, so of course I wanted to watch his new fanedit – even though it was King Kong. My expectations were mixed, because I simply could not imagine this movie suddenly being good, when there is still Jack Black in it.
As for all my reviews: this is just my personal opinion of this fanedit. I cannot tell anybody else, if he or she will experience it in the same way or the opposite. So my review is not objective and does not reflect the opinion of fanedit.org.
!!!!This review contains heavy spoilers!!!
The edit:
We get a wonderfully condensed version of the movie. Nothing is missing even though almost half the movie was deleted, which is a truly incredible achievement and just shows how bloated the original was. Gone are all the tedious moments in the beginning, where the characters get introduced for a long time without getting anywhere close to Skull Island, because that’s where we want to be. Well, not exactly, there are still too many dinosaurs and too many victims to rescue one person. The reasons for the actions of the people are as odd as they are in the original. But at least we are getting to Kong and Anne quickly, which is nice, because it is just there, where the movie starts to build an emotional atmosphere. What TMBTM took away from these moments was for the truly greater good, without losing one bit of impact. Kong saves Anne from certain death, he is protecting her and taking care of her. While his fascination in an ant-like creature can never be really understood, her reasons to like him are way more obvious. They shared the sunset.
The hunch for Anne is still not great, most of all because I still don’t know what I am actually watching. Is it a monster action movie? Is it a love story? Is it an adventure? The scenes are not bad, but what is missing in both the original and the fanedit is the emotional impact. I don’t think anything can be done about that, so I just thank TMBTM for making it all shorter.
The part of Denham gets the biggest improvement (by cutting a lot of his scenes). The part of Driscoll loses most of what it had and makes his reasons to do anythign for Anne very obscure. The part of Bruce Baxter almost does not happen anymore.
The New York finale is very well done and absolutely the highlight if this fanedit, except for the “it was beauty that killed the beast” line. I will always hate it and I still do.
editing: 10 of 10 (great editing decisions, no hard cuts, perfect plot even though half the movie is gone.)
entertainment: 7 of 10 (I enjoyed it a lot more than the original, but it’s still not a great movie and I hope I will never have to watch it again – the original got a 5 of 10 from me on imdb )
Image and video quality:
Perfect.
Video quality: 10 of 10
Audio editing and audio quality:
audio quality was perfect.
audio editing: 10 of 10
sound quality: 10 of 10
resulting in a 10 of 10 for overall audio
presentation:
The fanedit comes with about everything a good presentation needs. Cool title, self made credits (although not really informative for the changes, they just give us the name of tmbtm), cover art, trailer, a bonus feature (which could have been longer), nice menus.
Great!
9 of 10 for overall presentation
Final result: 8 of 10 (because I stick to my opinion of not rating a movie more than 1 star higher than the overall entertainment was for me.
It’s not a great movie now, but truly an improvement over the original. It’s a fast paced and entertaining watch and I can recommend this version to anyone who has the need to watch King Kong again. This is the best version there is.
Kong by The Man Behind The Mask
review by boon23
Prologue:
I am a bit late to the party, wanted to watch it last month, but just never felt the necessary motivation to do so. Why? Because it’s a King Kong fanedit. I don’t love that movie. It is bloated, superficial, has a lot of the “Emmerich Godzilla” effect and simply just tells the plot from the wrong point of view IMO. Other than that it has some truly great moments and a wonderful finale. More was possible, more did not happen. Now I really like TMBTM personally and I think he is a super talented faneditor, so of course I wanted to watch his new fanedit – even though it was King Kong. My expectations were mixed, because I simply could not imagine this movie suddenly being good, when there is still Jack Black in it.
As for all my reviews: this is just my personal opinion of this fanedit. I cannot tell anybody else, if he or she will experience it in the same way or the opposite. So my review is not objective and does not reflect the opinion of fanedit.org.
!!!!This review contains heavy spoilers!!!
The edit:
We get a wonderfully condensed version of the movie. Nothing is missing even though almost half the movie was deleted, which is a truly incredible achievement and just shows how bloated the original was. Gone are all the tedious moments in the beginning, where the characters get introduced for a long time without getting anywhere close to Skull Island, because that’s where we want to be. Well, not exactly, there are still too many dinosaurs and too many victims to rescue one person. The reasons for the actions of the people are as odd as they are in the original. But at least we are getting to Kong and Anne quickly, which is nice, because it is just there, where the movie starts to build an emotional atmosphere. What TMBTM took away from these moments was for the truly greater good, without losing one bit of impact. Kong saves Anne from certain death, he is protecting her and taking care of her. While his fascination in an ant-like creature can never be really understood, her reasons to like him are way more obvious. They shared the sunset.
The hunch for Anne is still not great, most of all because I still don’t know what I am actually watching. Is it a monster action movie? Is it a love story? Is it an adventure? The scenes are not bad, but what is missing in both the original and the fanedit is the emotional impact. I don’t think anything can be done about that, so I just thank TMBTM for making it all shorter.
The part of Denham gets the biggest improvement (by cutting a lot of his scenes). The part of Driscoll loses most of what it had and makes his reasons to do anythign for Anne very obscure. The part of Bruce Baxter almost does not happen anymore.
The New York finale is very well done and absolutely the highlight if this fanedit, except for the “it was beauty that killed the beast” line. I will always hate it and I still do.
editing: 10 of 10 (great editing decisions, no hard cuts, perfect plot even though half the movie is gone.)
entertainment: 7 of 10 (I enjoyed it a lot more than the original, but it’s still not a great movie and I hope I will never have to watch it again – the original got a 5 of 10 from me on imdb )
Image and video quality:
Perfect.
Video quality: 10 of 10
Audio editing and audio quality:
audio quality was perfect.
audio editing: 10 of 10
sound quality: 10 of 10
resulting in a 10 of 10 for overall audio
presentation:
The fanedit comes with about everything a good presentation needs. Cool title, self made credits (although not really informative for the changes, they just give us the name of tmbtm), cover art, trailer, a bonus feature (which could have been longer), nice menus.
Great!
9 of 10 for overall presentation
Final result: 8 of 10 (because I stick to my opinion of not rating a movie more than 1 star higher than the overall entertainment was for me.
It’s not a great movie now, but truly an improvement over the original. It’s a fast paced and entertaining watch and I can recommend this version to anyone who has the need to watch King Kong again. This is the best version there is.
B