Carlos Rambaldi deserved his Oscar for what he achieved with those full-scale mechanical arms. Fanboys like to give him shit for the full animatronic Kong, but that was mostly done for publicity purposes, and as misdirection to help sell the magic trick.
The arms had to be strong enough to support the actress, and dextrous enough to safely interact with her. In less capable hands, those things could've been lethal. On top of it all they had to give a performance.
No one else at the time could've done what he did.
1976 is great but 1933 is still the best Kong movie.
Mighty Joe Young (1949) is by the same creators as the original King Kong and it's also great, basically another Kong movie but with a different gorilla.
Pros >best Kong effects >great visuals on the island and in the climax at WTC >extremely brutal violence >Coombait Kong girl
Cons >no dinosaur fights >limited Kong action generally >annoying protagonist >weak Denham stand in
'33 is still the best, but I like the way this version took it and did something new, unlike '05 bloating the original out into a lumbering mess with a questionable cast.
>>best Kong effects >great visuals on the island and in the climax at WTC
Are you kidding me? FX not even close to amazing stop motion of the original. Just a dude in a monkey suit. They could’ve done that in the original but creators demanded new stop motion instead. No way WTC tower climax is even close to original Empire State Building
The only thing. 70s remake had which Jackson used in his remake is girl bonding with Kong. In the original, Fat Wray was horrified by him. Jackson didn’t go creepy beastality route long a ‘70s one. Shots of Kong leering at Jessica Lang is is just weird
>They could’ve done that in the original
NTA but they couldn't have done a monster suit that good in the 30s. The suitmation in Kong 76 is some of the best in the genre.
Agree that the 30s stop motion is better overall.
Merriam C Cooper was against the monkey suit. He wanted Kong to look like a realistic gorilla. Why what Jackson did in his remake. But Willis H. O'Brien wanted give Kong humanistic traits to make him more relatable. I heard they argued to point Willis temporarily quit. They reached a compromise. Why Kong walks upright and even takes a boxing stance when fights the T. Rex. Willis we’d a ex boxer
Both Kong suits (although 62 Kong had two distinct heads) looked the way they looked partially because of growing budget (the infamous piece of shit producer John Beck doublecrossed Toho and left them with the bill) but also because they legally couldn't make him look like the original Kong. And for King Kong Escapes they had to make him look like in the cartoon.
Their apesuit for the 1955 Half-Human is so much better. The man who made it and wore it also worked on the lost King Kong Appears in Edo and later worked on Planet of the Apes.
>Fat Wray
Rude. But I agree on the '76 WTC climax being a second rate rehash, although I maintain it is a good and memorable second rate rehash, befitting the modernisation of the premise.
Hard disagree on the Kong effects. The suit looks really good and gives Kong an emotional range that he lacked in the original, and that the remake uses in its expansion of the story. The effects in '33 are more technically impressive and groundbreaking, but for what '76 was trying to do ie the creepy bestiality route the monkey suit was necessary and worked brilliantly. I will actually walk back on calling the Kong effects the best because Kong does so much more action in '33 and it looks great, but I will settle for most lifelike and convincing Kong effects.
>The suit looks really good and gives Kong an emotional range that he lacked in the original
I think the human eyes add a lot to the emotional aspect of the film.
No. It added to the creepyness. 70s all about sex exploitation movies. So course he decade with beastality Kong. Jackson movie has a lot of flaws but they handled it a lot less creepy. Kong was like a pet loving his owner
'76 being the last proper modernisation of Kong is actually pretty striking, given that it's nearly 50 years ago; closer in time to the original than the present. A new modernisation would run into a lot of issues. For one thing, what building is there for Kong to climb in NYC now? '33 used the then new empire state building and '76 used the then new twin towers, both iconic. What could a new version use? 1WTC isn't iconic and would never be in the same shot as a plane. Empire state has literally been done before.
Kong has been played out. The 8th wonder was an 8th wonder because of the people back then hadn't travelled around the world or flown in a airplane. It could be real. That was the wonder.
Fast forward to the 50s. The scifi monsters became more fantasy as the science progressed and peoples knowledge improve. Then Kubrick made 2001. It's the sci-fi version of King Kong. That's why 76' had to spin the story politically and focus on the media-relationship. Naturally, Peter Jackson got lost in all this mess, thought he'd redo the '33, only to produce a shittier cgi-infested version. Its impossible to remake King Kong. You'd have to dumb it down to an action-flick like Skull Island which the nostalgic critics will hate. Or you'd have to build a newworld setting with trolls and faeries and shit, or aliens, but the trouble here is that the audience won't realise they're watching a King Kong-movie. It can't be done.
ive never seen the 70s one but my ex made me watch the original old king kong and the really bad queen kong movie and the long boring new kong movie. it was a total red flag but i didnt know it then. i said if i have to watch a movie like that i rather watch godzilla since i like things from japan like anime but he said kong is a classic so we watched it. it was fine i guess but i dont understand why in the old one and the new one the film maker guy says "it wasnt the airplanes it was BEAUTY KILLED THE BEAST!" at the end. first of all it makes no sense. it should be beauty that killed the beast but also she literally didnt even kill him if ann is the beauty. in the old one ann is scared of kong and in the long one she likes him but she didnt kill him the Airplanes did. i think if ann pushed kong it would be way sadder like the long one was still sad like he wanted to save her but he fell. but she didnt so why does the film maker guy blame her unless he means New York but a forest is way prettier then a city so kong knows natural beauty. also the first beauty and the beast movie didnt come out til like the 1940s in FRENCH and yes i do like that one so its about the beauty and the Beast fairy tale? but she never killed him at all so it makes no sense. like a better story will be if her bf was turned to a ape and she had to push him to save him from the airplanes or whatever. but i guess the real "APE" was my ex since it turned out he really liked monster movies and saw me as like the monster so yea we broke up
Wow. You really missed the point. If Kong wasn’t obsessed with girl he’d never been captured and taken to New York. He’d never escaped to capture her again. That’s why Denham says it was beauty that killed the beast.
Tried watching this after the last thread about it. It's bad. Not enough Kong fighting with other island monsters and creatures. Take out that scrap with the snake and you're left with a lame duck.
1976 Kong is awful. Everything looks as ugly as 70s America even Skull Island. Instead of a grand adventure they travel for oil in an ugly, rusty ship.Airhead Ann survives because of Deep Throat. There are political messages everywhere. From government corruption to the natives being exploited noble savages. Every subtext people wrongly believed the original had is there unironically. And it's boring too.
But she was too ugly. Jessica Lang stomps all over her in the looks department at the time. Streep IS a better actress in the right roles but she isn't looker and that's what they wanted for the kong movie. Just take the L and get over it
1. King Kong (1933)
2. King Kong (2005)
3. Kong: Skull Island (2017)
4. King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)
5. The Son of Kong (1933)
6. King Kong Escapes (1967)
7. Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
8. King Kong (1976)
9. King Kong Lives (1986)
1. King Kong (1933)
2. King Kong (2005)
3. Kong: Skull Island (2017)
4. King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)
5. The Son of Kong (1933)
6. King Kong Escapes (1967)
7. Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
8. King Kong (1976)
9. King Kong Lives (1986)
> we only post wrong opinions
He put skull island too high on the list. Kong skull island is trash.
It's not. Its main problem is that the last act is a bit predictable but it's beautifully shot and the walk through the island is pretty great. Finally Skull Island with interesting creatures.
Most if not all flaws everyone associates with the 2005 movie >bloated, bad pacing >Black miscast as Denham >really sappy and corny at places, which made Ann make idiotic decisions
Are true. And I still like it the way it is and soon after I rewatched the extended edition I felt like watching it again. Black's Denham is pretty bad at times but it's because they made him too unlikeable. In the original he represented Cooper himself. It's also too sentimental. It's what I don't like about MV Kong. They made him too sappy. Thankfully he's still a killer and we see he dismembered like hundreds of women in his lifetime.
It's mediocre at best. Awful characters, uneven effects, weird romance between Kong and the girl when the whole point of the story is unrequited romance. Only John Barry's score is good.
My ranking of the Kongs:
1. King Kong 1933- in a league of its own and one of the best movies ever made
(power gap)
2. King Kong vs. Godzilla- silly fun, very enjoyable
3. King Kong Escapes- sillier fun, not quite as enjoyable
4. Son of Kong- mediocre cash-in, barely memorable
5. King Kong 2005- overlong, bloated, poorly-cast, but with some great scenes here and there
6. King Kong 1976- already gave my opinion on this one
7. King Kong Lives- not quite as awful as most say, but still very dumb
(power gap)
8. Kong: Skull Island- crass and stupid
9. Godzilla vs. Kong- pure moronation from start to finish
Here’s the reason why Kong never has Godzilla success. First movie was so ground breaking and considered to this day one of the best movies ever made. So any lesser sequel wasn’t going to fly. See Son of Kong. Stop motion was too expensive and time consuming. Why Toho didn’t use it. But America audiences weren’t going to a movie to see a guy in a monkey suit. Godzilla was popular with kids ob TV. They rarely got US theatrical run. Soon became a running joke. Jap in the rubber suit.
King Kong vs Godzilla was by far Toho's most successful Godzilla movie, and the reason they made Godzilla into an ongoing series. They would've made an ongoing Kong series if they could've.
Even Peter Jackson's King Kong outgrossed every modern Godzilla movie, and Kong Skull Island outgrossed that.
There were supposed to be more sequels but RKO was constantly near bankrupt so only Son of Kong was made. Then Cooper was busy with developing technicolor and widescreen, O'Brien did other things and introduced his King Kong vs. Frankenstein concept too late for any American studio to be interested. But Japan had a booming monster movie business.
So timing killed Kong's chances. That and also that 1954 Godzilla is a genuine masterpiece. Even if nothing could compare to it other movies that Toho made were crafted with skill and they're genre classics to this day.
So yeah bad timing and also the competition successfully filling the niche because it always takes luck and real talent.
Again, RKO wouldn’t even consider making a Kong movie with a guy in a monkey suit even though it’d been cheaper. And could’ve gotten a better suit than Toho one. Fact is, if they made a Godzilla movie in the US with a guy in a rubber suit, it’d bombed. Japs weren’t that picky. Would Jurassic Park been a mass success if they used stop motion? Doubt it. Audiences were already done with stop motion after T2 and Spielberg damn near used it
It's not about special effects. Stop motion has its advantages and drawbacks and so do suits and miniatures. Godzilla looks great as it is in elegant black and white and great cinematogrpahy. I would never trade it for stop motion.
Just like people wouldn't want to see 1933 Kong colorized and with CGI Kong replacing the old one even though that would make him up to date.
I get that. I’m talking general audience not Goldizilla fans. Notice every American Godzilla movie they use CGI Godzilla. Only now is Toho using a CGI Godzilla
Sucks that digital revolution came as suitmation and miniatures reached their absolute peak in the 2000s. Not to take anything away from the old masters. Their work is incredible to this day and took staggering effort but technology moved. And then it had to be replaced with CGI and we're just getting out of this awkward early period.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>even the telegraph pole is electrified
Never noticed that before holy frick.
7 months ago
Anonymous
Check out this 70s King Kong VW commercial. The girl is Fay Wray’s daughter
7 months ago
Anonymous
I think it's David Allen's. This reminds me that The Primevals was released this year at last. 24 years after Allen's death his work was finished. If you ever had a dream that there would be some previously unseen O'Brien or Harryhausen movie that was discovered this is it.
7 months ago
Anonymous
Definitely checking out
7 months ago
Boco
Fun fact: Part of this is a pitch made by Hammer to remake Kong in stop motion back in the 60s/70s.
The rights owners shot it down ("no remakes"), so they added some more stuff to it and made that commercial.
7 months ago
Anonymous
Than we got shitty monkey suit remake sold over a lie it’d be 40 foot robot uh
7 months ago
Boco
My understanding is DeLaurenwhatever was a friend of whoever owned Kong, so he smoothtalked him into letting him make the 76 movie.
7 months ago
Anonymous
And Universal too. Then everybody sued each other and the judge ruled RKO didn't own the rights to Kong but the Cooper estate. Then the Cooper estate sold the rights (most of it anyway) to Universal but Paramount was still allowed to produce their Kong movie. Not sure where King Kong Lives fits into that.
Universal still has those rights so they can make all the Kong movies they want, actually call them "King Kong" and don't need to ask anyone's permission to use elements from the original movie.
7 months ago
Anonymous
Kong goes into public domain in literally a couple years. End all red tape shit
7 months ago
Anonymous
RKO was bankrupt and stopped making movies but they still had the audacity to do shit like that? I don't even know how Toho managed to make a deal with Universal and then Rankin-Bass to use Kong in their movies because the producer John Beck wasn't from RKO. But never mind then it bit them in the ass because they lost the rights after they let both Universal and Paramount produce their remakes of King Kong.
7 months ago
Anonymous
I think it's David Allen's. This reminds me that The Primevals was released this year at last. 24 years after Allen's death his work was finished. If you ever had a dream that there would be some previously unseen O'Brien or Harryhausen movie that was discovered this is it.
In the 1990s Dave Allen again animated Kong, this time filmed on large format 65mm film with an Imax camera for the documentary Special Effects: Anything can Happen.
I was lucky to see this on the Imax screen at the science museum and it looked incredible. It can only be seen today in a VHSrip.
Well they gave them a few months and almost no money. And that was it for Kong as a franchise for a while. It really became messy in the 60s and into the 70s when Cooper tried to prove he owned the rights. It was never meant to be. Kong was just too expensive for its time and its studio. Everyone started investing in cheaper gothic horror instead. It's so sad that War Eagles was never made.
This movie proves my point. To sell it and get people excited De Laurentiis brothers claimed Kong would be a 40 foot robot. Even put huge article in Starlog. Instead as we know, it was bullshit. Just Rick Baker in a monkey suit and robotic Kong was just a prop in a few scenes
What’s funny is Donkey Originally a Peopeye game. Pic related was the design. Couldn’t get rights. So switch Brutus out for Donkey Kong and Popeye out for JumpMan aka Mario. They than get sued by Universal for using Kong name and likeness and Universal loses. I think that’s when Univeral through up their hands bad gave up on Kong
Lmao that was a shitshow. Emmerich and Devlin were the biggest names in Hollywood at the time attached to every important project and this movie ended it all. It was also supposed to make Godzilla an international brand but that only happened after 2014. But it's ok. Jackson himself admitted that the hiatus made the movie better. So everything turned out ok.
One of the nice things about how much Hollywood sucks these days is that movies that seemed just meh when I watched them as a kid back in the 90s seem positively brilliant now compared to modern crap
Jessica Lange <3
It's okay
>doesn't go barefoot like the other Kong girls
dropped
Do footgays just not find any other part of a woman's body attractive?
I agree. It is a good movie.
Carlos Rambaldi deserved his Oscar for what he achieved with those full-scale mechanical arms. Fanboys like to give him shit for the full animatronic Kong, but that was mostly done for publicity purposes, and as misdirection to help sell the magic trick.
The arms had to be strong enough to support the actress, and dextrous enough to safely interact with her. In less capable hands, those things could've been lethal. On top of it all they had to give a performance.
No one else at the time could've done what he did.
1976 is great but 1933 is still the best Kong movie.
Mighty Joe Young (1949) is by the same creators as the original King Kong and it's also great, basically another Kong movie but with a different gorilla.
Pros
>best Kong effects
>great visuals on the island and in the climax at WTC
>extremely brutal violence
>Coombait Kong girl
Cons
>no dinosaur fights
>limited Kong action generally
>annoying protagonist
>weak Denham stand in
'33 is still the best, but I like the way this version took it and did something new, unlike '05 bloating the original out into a lumbering mess with a questionable cast.
>>best Kong effects
>great visuals on the island and in the climax at WTC
Are you kidding me? FX not even close to amazing stop motion of the original. Just a dude in a monkey suit. They could’ve done that in the original but creators demanded new stop motion instead. No way WTC tower climax is even close to original Empire State Building
The only thing. 70s remake had which Jackson used in his remake is girl bonding with Kong. In the original, Fat Wray was horrified by him. Jackson didn’t go creepy beastality route long a ‘70s one. Shots of Kong leering at Jessica Lang is is just weird
>They could’ve done that in the original
NTA but they couldn't have done a monster suit that good in the 30s. The suitmation in Kong 76 is some of the best in the genre.
Agree that the 30s stop motion is better overall.
>NTA but they couldn't have done a monster suit that good in the 30s.
Are you familiar with the work of Charlie Gemora, classic Hollywood's finest Apesuit man?
No question Rick Baker's work is also excellent, nd infinitely better than the kind of Kong suits used in the Japanese movies.
Merriam C Cooper was against the monkey suit. He wanted Kong to look like a realistic gorilla. Why what Jackson did in his remake. But Willis H. O'Brien wanted give Kong humanistic traits to make him more relatable. I heard they argued to point Willis temporarily quit. They reached a compromise. Why Kong walks upright and even takes a boxing stance when fights the T. Rex. Willis we’d a ex boxer
Both Kong suits (although 62 Kong had two distinct heads) looked the way they looked partially because of growing budget (the infamous piece of shit producer John Beck doublecrossed Toho and left them with the bill) but also because they legally couldn't make him look like the original Kong. And for King Kong Escapes they had to make him look like in the cartoon.
Their apesuit for the 1955 Half-Human is so much better. The man who made it and wore it also worked on the lost King Kong Appears in Edo and later worked on Planet of the Apes.
>Fat Wray
Rude. But I agree on the '76 WTC climax being a second rate rehash, although I maintain it is a good and memorable second rate rehash, befitting the modernisation of the premise.
Hard disagree on the Kong effects. The suit looks really good and gives Kong an emotional range that he lacked in the original, and that the remake uses in its expansion of the story. The effects in '33 are more technically impressive and groundbreaking, but for what '76 was trying to do ie the creepy bestiality route the monkey suit was necessary and worked brilliantly. I will actually walk back on calling the Kong effects the best because Kong does so much more action in '33 and it looks great, but I will settle for most lifelike and convincing Kong effects.
>The suit looks really good and gives Kong an emotional range that he lacked in the original
I think the human eyes add a lot to the emotional aspect of the film.
No. It added to the creepyness. 70s all about sex exploitation movies. So course he decade with beastality Kong. Jackson movie has a lot of flaws but they handled it a lot less creepy. Kong was like a pet loving his owner
Mostly correct take.
we had a thread about King Kong 1976 not so long ago
I'd rec this blogpost about the movie
https://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com/2012/07/cult-movie-review-king-kong-1976.html
It paints a pic of why its misunderstood.
'76 being the last proper modernisation of Kong is actually pretty striking, given that it's nearly 50 years ago; closer in time to the original than the present. A new modernisation would run into a lot of issues. For one thing, what building is there for Kong to climb in NYC now? '33 used the then new empire state building and '76 used the then new twin towers, both iconic. What could a new version use? 1WTC isn't iconic and would never be in the same shot as a plane. Empire state has literally been done before.
Have Kong get sent to the Middle East and climb the Burj Khalifa.
Kong has been played out. The 8th wonder was an 8th wonder because of the people back then hadn't travelled around the world or flown in a airplane. It could be real. That was the wonder.
Fast forward to the 50s. The scifi monsters became more fantasy as the science progressed and peoples knowledge improve. Then Kubrick made 2001. It's the sci-fi version of King Kong. That's why 76' had to spin the story politically and focus on the media-relationship. Naturally, Peter Jackson got lost in all this mess, thought he'd redo the '33, only to produce a shittier cgi-infested version. Its impossible to remake King Kong. You'd have to dumb it down to an action-flick like Skull Island which the nostalgic critics will hate. Or you'd have to build a newworld setting with trolls and faeries and shit, or aliens, but the trouble here is that the audience won't realise they're watching a King Kong-movie. It can't be done.
>You'd have to dumb it down to an action-flick like Skull Island which the nostalgic critics will hate.
Who cares about them. They dumbed Godzilla down from the original movie
ive never seen the 70s one but my ex made me watch the original old king kong and the really bad queen kong movie and the long boring new kong movie. it was a total red flag but i didnt know it then. i said if i have to watch a movie like that i rather watch godzilla since i like things from japan like anime but he said kong is a classic so we watched it. it was fine i guess but i dont understand why in the old one and the new one the film maker guy says "it wasnt the airplanes it was BEAUTY KILLED THE BEAST!" at the end. first of all it makes no sense. it should be beauty that killed the beast but also she literally didnt even kill him if ann is the beauty. in the old one ann is scared of kong and in the long one she likes him but she didnt kill him the Airplanes did. i think if ann pushed kong it would be way sadder like the long one was still sad like he wanted to save her but he fell. but she didnt so why does the film maker guy blame her unless he means New York but a forest is way prettier then a city so kong knows natural beauty. also the first beauty and the beast movie didnt come out til like the 1940s in FRENCH and yes i do like that one so its about the beauty and the Beast fairy tale? but she never killed him at all so it makes no sense. like a better story will be if her bf was turned to a ape and she had to push him to save him from the airplanes or whatever. but i guess the real "APE" was my ex since it turned out he really liked monster movies and saw me as like the monster so yea we broke up
breasts or gtfo
Wow. You really missed the point. If Kong wasn’t obsessed with girl he’d never been captured and taken to New York. He’d never escaped to capture her again. That’s why Denham says it was beauty that killed the beast.
Tried watching this after the last thread about it. It's bad. Not enough Kong fighting with other island monsters and creatures. Take out that scrap with the snake and you're left with a lame duck.
1976 Kong is awful. Everything looks as ugly as 70s America even Skull Island. Instead of a grand adventure they travel for oil in an ugly, rusty ship.Airhead Ann survives because of Deep Throat. There are political messages everywhere. From government corruption to the natives being exploited noble savages. Every subtext people wrongly believed the original had is there unironically. And it's boring too.
Only based part about the movie
But she was too ugly. Jessica Lang stomps all over her in the looks department at the time. Streep IS a better actress in the right roles but she isn't looker and that's what they wanted for the kong movie. Just take the L and get over it
Lange is vastly better looking, and a very fine actress to boot.
She was clearly the best choice for the role. If Streep had any humility, she would see this and get over herself.
>and then everyone clapped
1. King Kong (1933)
2. King Kong (2005)
3. Kong: Skull Island (2017)
4. King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)
5. The Son of Kong (1933)
6. King Kong Escapes (1967)
7. Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)
8. King Kong (1976)
9. King Kong Lives (1986)
It wasn't misunderstood. The reasons people hate it have always been valid.
>a good ranking on Cinemaphile
Get out, we only post wrong opinions on this board.
> we only post wrong opinions
He put skull island too high on the list. Kong skull island is trash.
It's not. Its main problem is that the last act is a bit predictable but it's beautifully shot and the walk through the island is pretty great. Finally Skull Island with interesting creatures.
2005 > '33 > the rest
>2005 above 1933
Nah. I'd even put 1976 above 2005, it's not bad but it's mostly a bloated retread of a better movie.
Most if not all flaws everyone associates with the 2005 movie
>bloated, bad pacing
>Black miscast as Denham
>really sappy and corny at places, which made Ann make idiotic decisions
Are true. And I still like it the way it is and soon after I rewatched the extended edition I felt like watching it again. Black's Denham is pretty bad at times but it's because they made him too unlikeable. In the original he represented Cooper himself. It's also too sentimental. It's what I don't like about MV Kong. They made him too sappy. Thankfully he's still a killer and we see he dismembered like hundreds of women in his lifetime.
What's that supposed to be in his hand? (not da white woman)
A big broken plane I think.
the rape scene was weird
Well in this movie Kong goes apeshit after sniffing Ann's discarded clothing.
I don't know, the size difference is too significant
would you get off on stripping someone the size of smurfette nude?
>would you get off on stripping someone the size of smurfette nude?
Yes. And on blasting her off her feet with my, to scale, firehose-like cum stream
It's mediocre at best. Awful characters, uneven effects, weird romance between Kong and the girl when the whole point of the story is unrequited romance. Only John Barry's score is good.
My ranking of the Kongs:
1. King Kong 1933- in a league of its own and one of the best movies ever made
(power gap)
2. King Kong vs. Godzilla- silly fun, very enjoyable
3. King Kong Escapes- sillier fun, not quite as enjoyable
4. Son of Kong- mediocre cash-in, barely memorable
5. King Kong 2005- overlong, bloated, poorly-cast, but with some great scenes here and there
6. King Kong 1976- already gave my opinion on this one
7. King Kong Lives- not quite as awful as most say, but still very dumb
(power gap)
8. Kong: Skull Island- crass and stupid
9. Godzilla vs. Kong- pure moronation from start to finish
I actually prefer it to the Jackson one tbh, though my memory is hazy, so I may re-evaluate that position on a rewatch
Here’s the reason why Kong never has Godzilla success. First movie was so ground breaking and considered to this day one of the best movies ever made. So any lesser sequel wasn’t going to fly. See Son of Kong. Stop motion was too expensive and time consuming. Why Toho didn’t use it. But America audiences weren’t going to a movie to see a guy in a monkey suit. Godzilla was popular with kids ob TV. They rarely got US theatrical run. Soon became a running joke. Jap in the rubber suit.
King Kong vs Godzilla was by far Toho's most successful Godzilla movie, and the reason they made Godzilla into an ongoing series. They would've made an ongoing Kong series if they could've.
Even Peter Jackson's King Kong outgrossed every modern Godzilla movie, and Kong Skull Island outgrossed that.
Kongchads, we won.
There were supposed to be more sequels but RKO was constantly near bankrupt so only Son of Kong was made. Then Cooper was busy with developing technicolor and widescreen, O'Brien did other things and introduced his King Kong vs. Frankenstein concept too late for any American studio to be interested. But Japan had a booming monster movie business.
So timing killed Kong's chances. That and also that 1954 Godzilla is a genuine masterpiece. Even if nothing could compare to it other movies that Toho made were crafted with skill and they're genre classics to this day.
So yeah bad timing and also the competition successfully filling the niche because it always takes luck and real talent.
Again, RKO wouldn’t even consider making a Kong movie with a guy in a monkey suit even though it’d been cheaper. And could’ve gotten a better suit than Toho one. Fact is, if they made a Godzilla movie in the US with a guy in a rubber suit, it’d bombed. Japs weren’t that picky. Would Jurassic Park been a mass success if they used stop motion? Doubt it. Audiences were already done with stop motion after T2 and Spielberg damn near used it
It's not about special effects. Stop motion has its advantages and drawbacks and so do suits and miniatures. Godzilla looks great as it is in elegant black and white and great cinematogrpahy. I would never trade it for stop motion.
Just like people wouldn't want to see 1933 Kong colorized and with CGI Kong replacing the old one even though that would make him up to date.
I get that. I’m talking general audience not Goldizilla fans. Notice every American Godzilla movie they use CGI Godzilla. Only now is Toho using a CGI Godzilla
Sucks that digital revolution came as suitmation and miniatures reached their absolute peak in the 2000s. Not to take anything away from the old masters. Their work is incredible to this day and took staggering effort but technology moved. And then it had to be replaced with CGI and we're just getting out of this awkward early period.
>even the telegraph pole is electrified
Never noticed that before holy frick.
Check out this 70s King Kong VW commercial. The girl is Fay Wray’s daughter
I think it's David Allen's. This reminds me that The Primevals was released this year at last. 24 years after Allen's death his work was finished. If you ever had a dream that there would be some previously unseen O'Brien or Harryhausen movie that was discovered this is it.
Definitely checking out
Fun fact: Part of this is a pitch made by Hammer to remake Kong in stop motion back in the 60s/70s.
The rights owners shot it down ("no remakes"), so they added some more stuff to it and made that commercial.
Than we got shitty monkey suit remake sold over a lie it’d be 40 foot robot uh
My understanding is DeLaurenwhatever was a friend of whoever owned Kong, so he smoothtalked him into letting him make the 76 movie.
And Universal too. Then everybody sued each other and the judge ruled RKO didn't own the rights to Kong but the Cooper estate. Then the Cooper estate sold the rights (most of it anyway) to Universal but Paramount was still allowed to produce their Kong movie. Not sure where King Kong Lives fits into that.
Universal still has those rights so they can make all the Kong movies they want, actually call them "King Kong" and don't need to ask anyone's permission to use elements from the original movie.
Kong goes into public domain in literally a couple years. End all red tape shit
RKO was bankrupt and stopped making movies but they still had the audacity to do shit like that? I don't even know how Toho managed to make a deal with Universal and then Rankin-Bass to use Kong in their movies because the producer John Beck wasn't from RKO. But never mind then it bit them in the ass because they lost the rights after they let both Universal and Paramount produce their remakes of King Kong.
In the 1990s Dave Allen again animated Kong, this time filmed on large format 65mm film with an Imax camera for the documentary Special Effects: Anything can Happen.
I was lucky to see this on the Imax screen at the science museum and it looked incredible. It can only be seen today in a VHSrip.
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>so only Son of Kong was made
Flopped, too.
Well they gave them a few months and almost no money. And that was it for Kong as a franchise for a while. It really became messy in the 60s and into the 70s when Cooper tried to prove he owned the rights. It was never meant to be. Kong was just too expensive for its time and its studio. Everyone started investing in cheaper gothic horror instead. It's so sad that War Eagles was never made.
Sad, it's a fun movie.
Theres something really freaky about Kong's face on that poster.
This movie isn't that good.
Same as Godzilla 1997.
They just came to be aided by nostalgia.
This movie proves my point. To sell it and get people excited De Laurentiis brothers claimed Kong would be a 40 foot robot. Even put huge article in Starlog. Instead as we know, it was bullshit. Just Rick Baker in a monkey suit and robotic Kong was just a prop in a few scenes
De Laurentiis wanted to use the robot more but it was impractical.
We live in a world where Harryhausen didn't participate in the King Kong remake, and that makes me sad.
What’s funny is Donkey Originally a Peopeye game. Pic related was the design. Couldn’t get rights. So switch Brutus out for Donkey Kong and Popeye out for JumpMan aka Mario. They than get sued by Universal for using Kong name and likeness and Universal loses. I think that’s when Univeral through up their hands bad gave up on Kong
Not really. They spent all of the 90s trying to get a reboot off the ground, but then Godzilla 98 killed all enthusiasm for monster movies.
Lmao that was a shitshow. Emmerich and Devlin were the biggest names in Hollywood at the time attached to every important project and this movie ended it all. It was also supposed to make Godzilla an international brand but that only happened after 2014. But it's ok. Jackson himself admitted that the hiatus made the movie better. So everything turned out ok.
Well thats what happens when you give an IP to two directors who publicly admitted to never liking it in the first place.
Except Jackson’s movie sucked
My ideal 1970's King Kong remake.
>Special effect
Ray Harryhausen
Jim Danforth
Phil Tippett
David Allen
Dennis Muren
>Director
Don Chaffey
>Ann Darrow
Barbara Bach
>Jack Driscoll
Robert Redford
>Carl Denham
Orson Welles
One of the nice things about how much Hollywood sucks these days is that movies that seemed just meh when I watched them as a kid back in the 90s seem positively brilliant now compared to modern crap
is this the worst frickup in history?
It’s awful even for Toho standards
I like how they're both dumbasses in this movie.
I like that both of them are stupid in it
Yeah KKvG has a unique tone with both of the kaiju being comedic dumbasses in it, fun movie.
Anyone remember this kino game? Best character read King Kong knock off. Kongar. He had this sonic roar that destroy shit like Rodan flying by
Didn't play it but I did play the Pipeworks Godzilla games. Too bad rights issues got in the way of King Kong being in those, would've been cool.