Kong

October 11, 2010

(NOTE: Forgive me, I’m blatantly copying boom23′s review style. ^_^() )

Prologue:

I’m a giant monster fan. I adore King Kong, Godzilla, and all the rest – to me, they’re awesome fun! While I loved Peter Jackson’s take on King Kong, I’ve always felt he let himself indulge too much. I mean, seriously, there’s no reason he had to take three hours to tell a story that originally took only 100 minutes! When I discovered Fanedit.org, King Kong ’05 was one of the first films I thought of taking a crack at. So, as you’d imagine, finding The Man Behind the Mask’s attempt at reigning this bad boy in caught my eye: Kong ’05, in the same runtime as the original? His intentions were great, so I decided to take a look.

The Edit:

The first problem we ran into was the beginning.

While everyone agrees that Mr. Jackson took WAY too long getting to Skull Island, I feel this edit goes in the opposite direction: we get there WAY TOO FAST. The whole first act feels rushed now: we meet Carl, we meet Ann, and they leave New York in what felt like the blink of an eye. While I had no issue with the early Jack Black scenes that were cut (and removing the lame pretext for Adrien Brody joining the expedition was a great decision), at least part of Naomi Watt’s original introduction should have been retained – as it stands, I’m left wondering why I should care at all about her when Jack Black is obviously the main character now. This problem continues onto the ship portion. Again, while many of the cuts were good (removing the slo-mo “S-K-U-L-L…” nonsense was great and totally unmissed), I felt as if some important character development was missing. I still wasn’t sure why I should care about Ann Darrow, and the romantic subplot was so subdued/subtle it was easy to miss if you weren’t looking for at. I don’t recall Jack and Ann ever actually speaking to each other on the ship at all…it makes their interest in each other seem rather forced, when the original didn’t seem nearly as awkward.

Where this edit really picks up is on the island: almost all of the changes were for the better, although considering how much of a rush we were to get to Skull Island there is a substantial lack of either Kong or the dinosaurs once we get there. While I understand wanting to remove the Vaudeville scene (great job with that, by the way), the result ended up being Kong literally sitting around doing nothing for what felt like an eternity. Also, and this probably only for me ’cause I LOVED the original version, the T-Rex fight felt a bit too short (although, you did a good job cutting it up – I didn’t notice anything missing, I just felt it). On the other hand, I LOVE what you did with the Spider Pit scene: now it’s perfect!

The best overall was probably the final New York sequence. Nothing cut was missed, the new inclusions were great, and the shorter final battle didn’t feel any different – hell, I almost forgot that it was originally much longer!

Editing: 8 out of 10 (overall good choices, but the first act feels rushed and main characters aren’t developed enough.)
Entertainment: 6 out of 10 (As bloated as PJ’s cut is, I overall enjoyed the original more – the theatrical cut is 9 out of 10 for me.)

Video:

Excellent. I didn’t notice any pixelation or artifacts.

10 out of 10

Audio:

Overall, the quality is great. A few times I noticed the score change suddenly, though it was lessen by good use of audio transitions. Not really a fault of yours, there’s only so much that can be done, right?

9 out of 10

DVD:

Nice new menu and good bonus features! ^_^

10 out of 10

FINAL RESULT: 7 out of 10

I’m sorry, but rushing the first act so much just hurt the whole film for me and seriously lessened the entertainment value. A good try and worth watching, though it’s not replacing Peter Jackson’s cut just yet.

So, in short, this is the only version of King Kong I'll ever be watching again. It may sound vitriolic, but I found the theatrical version of King Kong bloated and boring, and while I would never call it bad, it was simply far too long for me to ever really want to watch again - let alone repeatedly. The story of King Kong is just simply not worth 3 hours of exploration. It's meant to be a quick little fantasy jaunt. That's part of it's charm.

This version of the film does a tremendous job of recapturing that sense of speed, excitement, and classic adventure. As others have noted, there are some plot holes, there are some underdeveloped character motivations, but unlike some other reviewers, I would not say you particularly have to have seen the theatrical version of King Kong to understand this version. Sure, the love story lacks some exposition, but the edit still delivers on its point and purpose and realigns the focus of the movie to what it always should be; monsters, mysticism, and morality.

The only particular flaw that I would say exists with this edit, is that its resolution is now unfortunately outdated. Maybe I'm more of a stickler than most, but 480p is brutal for me to watch. IMO, it would be well served for TMBTM or another editor to upgrade this version of the film to full 1080p.

February 28, 2010

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

March 1, 2010

I never saw this movie in the theater because of how terrible the other remake of the original “King Kong” was. So I had no frame of reference or pre-conceived notions for this edit. I was actually very excited to DL this FE and watch it.

As bobschebaldi said, the technical aspects of this one is excellent. No rough cuts etc noticeable and the audio/video quality is perfect – as I have come to expect from TMBTM. I saw no “plot holes” or “huh?’ moments via the editing. Great job!

As far as the movie itself, I just don’t care for it. (This has nothing to do with TMBTM’s edit or ability). I am not quite certain why, but this movie just couldn’t keep my entire attention (I found myself surfing the net and skimming through the FE forum while I watched this movie). Maybe it’s the “over the top acting” from most of the main characters; maybe it’s the script; and it’s probably a lot because of Jack Black – I’m just not sure why I didn’t care for the movie.

April 12, 2010

*This rating was given before reviews were required*