Kong
Hot
Updated
User reviews
23 reviews
Overall rating
8.9
Audio/Video Quality
9.0(11)
Audio Editing
9.6(11)
Visual Editing
9.7(11)
Narrative
8.0(11)
Enjoyment
8.3(23)
23 results - showing 1 - 5
Ordering
Overall rating
7.4
Audio/Video Quality
9.0
Audio Editing
10.0
Visual Editing
10.0
Narrative
3.0
Enjoyment
5.0
There are a number of things I liked about this edit but ultimately I think the narrative is ruined by overzealous cutting of too much backstory. Motivations for most of the characters are gone, and it's almost impossible to appreciate the story without keeping in the back of your mind the full version as released theatrically.
I re-watched Jackson's extended version of the film the other night, and although I still enjoy it very much the length does start to wear on you. Hoping to get an idea of how the movie might play out in the hands of a fan editor, I checked the data base and found that this cut was available. The reported length sounded promising, as did many of the positive reviews, so I took a look at it last night.
Some of the editing choices here are simply brilliant. The shortening of the T-Rex fight is masterful. Most of the stuff from Jackson's version that struck me as being self-indulgent has been cut and the technical aspects of the editing are fantastic. But--
Why is Jack Driscoll on this voyage? It's mentioned that he's the scriptwriter, but we never see him write. The fact that the picture starts without a finished script isn't adequately explained, so there doesn't appear to be any reason for Jack to have tagged along.
Why do Jack and Ann fall in love? We get a couple of scenes of their apparent annoyance and awkwardness around each other, then suddenly they're making goo-goo eyes at each other and holding hands. We need something to show why Ann would suddenly turn to Jack in a crisis after the cool reception they've been giving each other previously.
Why is Jimmy so distraught over Hayes' death? The edit gives us no clue as to the relationship between the two characters, so he seems pretty overwrought compared to his reactions to the deaths of others in the party. Cutting the whole Heart of Darkness stuff was a good idea, but we really need to see something of the relationship between the two to understand the impact that Hayes' death has on Jimmy.
How did the crew learn that Denham had no intention of going to Singapore? There's nothing left in the narrative to explain how they knew when confronting Denham about his real plans.
Why are Jack and Ann estranged after their return to New York? We see that she's a bit miffed when Jack holds her back from Kong during the capture scene, but without knowing that he wrote a play for her and she is missing from its cast when it appears on Broadway it comes as a surprise to learn that Jack doesn't know that Denham was forced to replace her in his show.
How did Ann know that Kong meant "beautiful" as he watched the sun rise over New York and patted his heart? The bit where Ann taught him the gesture while watching the sunset on Skull Island has been cut.
A couple of other editing choices also strike me as odd. I like the cutting of the Brontosaurs falling over the cliff edge, but I think it was a mistake to cut Denham discovering the Brontos and forcing Baxter into a scene with them. The later joke where Baxter forces his way out of the Alhambra Theater suffers by cutting the similar way he forces his way off camera when the Brontos start to get restless.
I do like the cutting of the underwater scenes from the encounter with the giant catfish (or whatever), but I probably would have omitted the entire sequence. It wasn't missed in the theatrical version, so cutting it here might have left some more time for adding back some narrative backstory and character motivation.
The DVD file I downloaded had some strobing-type effect in the early scenes on board the Venture so I'm knocking off a star for the video quality. However, I haven't seen anyone else comment on it so perhaps this is an artifact from my own computer.
Although I'm extremely impressed with the technical quality of the editing here, the cuts to the narrative unfortunately strike me as much too extreme, so I cannot really recommend this edit for others. I seem to be in a minority among the reviewers on this, however, so your mileage may vary.
I re-watched Jackson's extended version of the film the other night, and although I still enjoy it very much the length does start to wear on you. Hoping to get an idea of how the movie might play out in the hands of a fan editor, I checked the data base and found that this cut was available. The reported length sounded promising, as did many of the positive reviews, so I took a look at it last night.
Some of the editing choices here are simply brilliant. The shortening of the T-Rex fight is masterful. Most of the stuff from Jackson's version that struck me as being self-indulgent has been cut and the technical aspects of the editing are fantastic. But--
Why is Jack Driscoll on this voyage? It's mentioned that he's the scriptwriter, but we never see him write. The fact that the picture starts without a finished script isn't adequately explained, so there doesn't appear to be any reason for Jack to have tagged along.
Why do Jack and Ann fall in love? We get a couple of scenes of their apparent annoyance and awkwardness around each other, then suddenly they're making goo-goo eyes at each other and holding hands. We need something to show why Ann would suddenly turn to Jack in a crisis after the cool reception they've been giving each other previously.
Why is Jimmy so distraught over Hayes' death? The edit gives us no clue as to the relationship between the two characters, so he seems pretty overwrought compared to his reactions to the deaths of others in the party. Cutting the whole Heart of Darkness stuff was a good idea, but we really need to see something of the relationship between the two to understand the impact that Hayes' death has on Jimmy.
How did the crew learn that Denham had no intention of going to Singapore? There's nothing left in the narrative to explain how they knew when confronting Denham about his real plans.
Why are Jack and Ann estranged after their return to New York? We see that she's a bit miffed when Jack holds her back from Kong during the capture scene, but without knowing that he wrote a play for her and she is missing from its cast when it appears on Broadway it comes as a surprise to learn that Jack doesn't know that Denham was forced to replace her in his show.
How did Ann know that Kong meant "beautiful" as he watched the sun rise over New York and patted his heart? The bit where Ann taught him the gesture while watching the sunset on Skull Island has been cut.
A couple of other editing choices also strike me as odd. I like the cutting of the Brontosaurs falling over the cliff edge, but I think it was a mistake to cut Denham discovering the Brontos and forcing Baxter into a scene with them. The later joke where Baxter forces his way out of the Alhambra Theater suffers by cutting the similar way he forces his way off camera when the Brontos start to get restless.
I do like the cutting of the underwater scenes from the encounter with the giant catfish (or whatever), but I probably would have omitted the entire sequence. It wasn't missed in the theatrical version, so cutting it here might have left some more time for adding back some narrative backstory and character motivation.
The DVD file I downloaded had some strobing-type effect in the early scenes on board the Venture so I'm knocking off a star for the video quality. However, I haven't seen anyone else comment on it so perhaps this is an artifact from my own computer.
Although I'm extremely impressed with the technical quality of the editing here, the cuts to the narrative unfortunately strike me as much too extreme, so I cannot really recommend this edit for others. I seem to be in a minority among the reviewers on this, however, so your mileage may vary.
User Review
Do you recommend this edit?
No
Format Watched?
DVD
B
(Updated: March 08, 2013)
Overall rating
9.6
Audio/Video Quality
10.0
Audio Editing
10.0
Visual Editing
10.0
Narrative
9.0
Enjoyment
9.0
September 17, 2011
This was just fantastic! It’s about as perfect as King Kong could be. The main problem with Peter Jackson is his story-telling. He’s an incredible filmmaker but he’s decided to just throw out the tried and true Three Act Structure. His King Kong was amazing to watch… once. When I watched it a second time I skipped a lot of scenes. The way you put this together really follows a proper structure.
I was incredibly impressed by how well the first Act came out (the first 25 minutes or so). We understand essentially who the characters are and what puts them on the boat without making a big deal out of it.
As well, I was glad that you toned down the idea of Ann falling in love with Kong. That always disturbed me about Jackson’s film. Here you make it that she’s just a good person and doesn’t want to see him harmed.
This was just fantastic! It’s about as perfect as King Kong could be. The main problem with Peter Jackson is his story-telling. He’s an incredible filmmaker but he’s decided to just throw out the tried and true Three Act Structure. His King Kong was amazing to watch… once. When I watched it a second time I skipped a lot of scenes. The way you put this together really follows a proper structure.
I was incredibly impressed by how well the first Act came out (the first 25 minutes or so). We understand essentially who the characters are and what puts them on the boat without making a big deal out of it.
As well, I was glad that you toned down the idea of Ann falling in love with Kong. That always disturbed me about Jackson’s film. Here you make it that she’s just a good person and doesn’t want to see him harmed.
User Review
Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
DVD
N
Overall rating
9.4
Audio/Video Quality
10.0
Audio Editing
9.0
Visual Editing
10.0
Narrative
9.0
Enjoyment
9.0
Well, this was a great edit. Nicely paced, seamlessly edited... achieved everything it set out to do. Well done.
User Review
Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
S
(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
Overall rating
9.2
Audio/Video Quality
9.0
Audio Editing
9.0
Visual Editing
9.0
Narrative
9.0
Enjoyment
10.0
This was a fun edit.
I enjoyed the original film immensely the first time I watched it. Sadly, it didn't have the same charm for me when I tried to re-watch it. Upon subsequent viewings, I found the film tedious and overlong.
This edit removes most of those problems. We jump straight in to the meet of the production, the characters all feel a bit more alive and, when the movie is over, I do not feel I have wasted my time.
TMBTM delivers some of the best edits I've seen, and while this one is far more straightforward than some of his other efforts, it is still a wonderful thing to behold.
I enjoyed the original film immensely the first time I watched it. Sadly, it didn't have the same charm for me when I tried to re-watch it. Upon subsequent viewings, I found the film tedious and overlong.
This edit removes most of those problems. We jump straight in to the meet of the production, the characters all feel a bit more alive and, when the movie is over, I do not feel I have wasted my time.
TMBTM delivers some of the best edits I've seen, and while this one is far more straightforward than some of his other efforts, it is still a wonderful thing to behold.
User Review
Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
A