Posts Tagged ‘King Kong’

Library Addition: Two PS Publishing Firsts

Wednesday, June 14th, 2023

Two PS Publishing titles, both bought from the publisher at the usual discount.

  • Hughes, Matthew. Ghost Dreams. PS Publishing, 2022. First edition hardback, #55 of 100 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket.

  • Wallace, Edgar (Stephen Jones, editor). Kong: An Original Screenplay. PS Publishing/Electric Dreamhouse, 2023. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. The original screenplay for King Kong, which evidently differs considerably from the final film. Slightly oversized (10 1/2″ high) and profusely illustrated, with a good 90 pages of notes from Jones, who worked from “Wallace’s personal copy of his original draft script with his own corrections and interpolations” plus “a boys’ story-paper adaptation of the film, preliminary production stills and art-work, and a colour portfolio of King Kong posters from around the world.” A couple of production sketches are from the lost spider pit scene.

  • I have both of these available through Lame Excuse Books.

    Godzilla vs. Kong Pitch Meeting

    Saturday, April 24th, 2021

    As you can tell, I liked Godzilla vs. Kong, but I can’t deny that there are a few, ahem, scientific implausibilities in the film, and Screen Rants Pitch Meeting guy digs into those with gusto:

    Of course, remember what franchise we’re talking about. Compared to “He must have programmed himself to get big!” (Jet Jaguar in Godzilla vs. Megalon), Godzilla vs. Kong‘s leaps in plausibility are mere hopscotch…

    Movie Review: Godzilla vs. Kong

    Tuesday, April 20th, 2021

    Godzilla vs. Kong
    Directed by Adam Wingard
    Written by Terry Rossio, Michael Dougherty, Zach Shields (story), Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein (screenplay)
    Starring Alexander Skarsgard, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Julian Dennison, Kaylee Hottle and Demian Bichir

    This is the best of the Monsterverse movies. The people at Legendary Films seem to have finally figured out what viewers actually want (hot kaiju-on-kaiju city-destroying action) and what they want left on the cutting room floor (boring human backstory).

    The movie opens with King Kong contained within a Truman Show-type dome over Skull Island and Godzilla attacking the Florida research facility of sinister Apex Cybernetics (think Yoyodyne or Weyland-Yutani). The movie quickly splits into two strands: Millie Bobby Brown’s character (a bit less useless than in Godzilla: King of the Monsters), her tubby geek friend (Julian Dennison) and a conspiracy theorist (Brian Tyree Henry) try to penetrate Apex systems to learn The Real Truth, while Kong, along with his deaf Child Monster Whisperer companion (Kaylee Hottle; think Kenny from Gamera, but much less annoying) and guardian Rebecca Hall (the bank-teller from The Town) help Alexander Skarsgard take Kong to Antarctica on an Apex-underwritten mission to the hollow earth to uncover a new power source.

    If the last part sounds extremely unlikely, you’re right, but they’ve cannily kept explanations to a bare minimum to keep you moving on to the next monster scene. (You know that 5-15 minute segment where they have to knock out Kong to get him on the ship? They snipped that sucker entirely out and cut to him already in giant chains mid-voyage.) The first battle between Godzilla and Kong takes place at sea, with round one going to our reigning lizard champion.

    There’s some delightful stuff with Kong reaching the hollow earth, where he roams the verdant green-and-purple landscape, fights some Quetzalcoatlesque giant flying serpents (which this rundown dubs “warbats”) and finds a giant ancestral throne room and (plot point alert) a Kong-sized Zilla-spined axe.

    In the other plotline, the Scooby Gang discover that Apex is breeding Skullcrawlers (from Kong: Skull Island), and are promptly whisked via high speed underground tunnel to Hong Kong (Monsterverse tech seems to be advancing much faster than our own), where they discover that Apex head honcho Walter Simmons (Demian Bichir, basically playing Evil Tony Stark) has built to his own Mechagodzilla to put man back at the top of the food chain.

    If you watched the Toho Godzilla films, you pretty much know how this is going to turn out.

    We finally get Godzilla and Kong smashing up neon-lit Hong Kong in a truly epic battle royal that Mechagodzilla later joins. Legendary really makes use of the possibilities of CGI to make you feel like you’re in the middle of a battle between two giant monsters, with the viewpoint frequently swooping in and around the action. There’s even a scene where Mechagodzilla emerges from a hillside that I would swear is an almost exact lift from a Toho hillside monster emergence scene.

    This is the Godzilla movie where Hollywood finally figured out how to get out of its own way. No “reinvented” Godzilla, no tedious backstories, no time wasted on pointless human drama, no 15 different studio executives having to stick their dicks in the soup to justify their salaries. Just compelling kaiju on kaiju action rendered with top-notch modern CGI that puts you in the middle of the city-stomping. (And none of the “they make their own weather so everything is dark and stormy” effect used to excess in Godzilla: King of the Monsters.) It bests all previous Moinsterverse films in just about every area (except Kong: Skull Island in cast; Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman and Tom Hiddleston beat Eleven, Ben Affleck love interest and a random Skarsgard hands down).

    And it’s light-years better than the 1962 King Kong vs. Godzilla, which features perhaps the saddest Kong ever committed to film. (Banglar King Kong doesn’t count.)

    If you like Godzilla movies, this one is well worth catching while it’s still in theaters.

    Movie Review: Kong: Skull Island

    Friday, April 2nd, 2021

    Kong: Skull Island
    Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts
    Written By Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein, Derek Connolly and John Gatins
    Starring Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, John C. Riley, Brie Larson

    With Godzilla vs. Kong upon us, I finally watched Kong: Skull Island. Even though I’m a Godzilla partisan, overall I think it’s the best executed of the Monsterverse films. (I’m seeing Godzilla vs. Kong this weekend.)

    In 1973, with the Vietnam War winding down, LANDSAT has discovered Skull Island in the South Pacific, previously hidden because it’s perpetually ringed by storms. An Air Cav force, lead by Samuel L. Jackson in the Samuel L. Jackson role, escort a group of ostensible scientists to the island, including John Goodman (head of barely-funded Monarch, secretly looking for monsters), Tom Hiddleston (an ex-SAS pathfinder/tracker mercenary) and Brie Larson (a photographer). Soon they run into Kong, who crashes their helicopters a lot quicker than the Viet Cong. Jackson immediately goes full Ahab while another group runs for their life and right into John C. Riley, playing the American version of Sir Basil St. Exposition as a stranded WWII American flyer, along with the silent but friendly native tribe. Riley quickly explains to them that not only is Kong king, but he’s the good king, saving people from the monstrous subterranean “Skullcrawlers,” which look like giant tatzelwurms with vaguely possum-ish snouts.

    The plot unfolds more or less the way you would expect.

    This seems the best of the monsterverse movies because it has the best cast, and director Jordan Vogt-Roberts (who’s primarily worked in TV) seems to have come closest to realizing his vision for it. It quickly and efficiently gets the ensemble to the island with a minimum of character exposition accompanied by a great classic rock soundtrack that runs the gamut of CCR, Jefferson Airplane and Black Sabbath. Jackson, Goodman and Riley all turn in their usual solid work in roles that might seem trite with less stellar performers (see: everyone who’s not Brian Cranston in the previous Monsterverse films). Larson is less annoying than her Marvel role. The support cast of mostly redshirts also do good work. Only Hiddleston comes across as Johnny Onenote And His Pet Stoic Gaze, but the script doesn’t give him much to do.

    The special effects work on Kong is extremely solid (which you would expect from Industrial Light & Magic), even if not as expressive as the Andy Serkis version from Peter Jackson’s remake. The Skullcrawlers are appropriately menacing. But it’s the Huey flight sequences where the effects really shine. It’s obvious from the shot composition that Vogt-Roberts watched Apocalypse Now a whole bunch of times…

    By jettisoning the “Kong takes Manhattan” plot from the previous versions, and dialing the Beauty and the Beast bits down to a bare whisper, Legendary Films has created a swift-moving kaiju film that even casual fans of the genre should enjoy.

    Elvis vs. King Kong vs. Godzilla

    Wednesday, January 10th, 2018

    Mark Finn reminded me that Elvis Presley’s birthday was this week, so to celebrate I thought I’d put up this very, very silly video…

    King Kong Burns

    Friday, March 10th, 2017

    In Vietnam, they had an elaborate premiere for the opening of Kong: Skull Island, with fire dancers and a large mock-up of King Kong.

    Pro-tip: Try not to let your fire dancers get too close to your giant flammable King Kong facade.

    They didn’t follow that guideline.

    (Edited to add: There were originally two videos here, but the first video removed from YouTube, so I deleted that. Skip to about 3:45 into this one to see things start to go wrong.)

    Behold the Wonder That is Banglar King Kong!

    Thursday, March 26th, 2015

    Did you ever say to yourself “You know what King Kong needs? Worse special effects, slapstick humor, stock footage, and singing!”

    Then Banglar King Kong is for you!

    High points:

  • A Kong whose fingers seem incapable of flexing.
  • Soldiers that don’t know how to hold rifles facing off against savage tribesmen who don’t know how to hold spears.
  • Kong tearing apart a city that’s obviously made of cardboard boxes.
  • A Bangladeshi Fay Wray who Kong must have kept extremely well-fed during her captivity.
  • Digital fire that has to be seen to not be believed.
  • In short, it makes every previous version of King Kong (including the Dino De Laurentiis version) look great by comparison…