Hacker Cinema
King Kong
2005 · Film · 188 min
Directed by Peter Jackson
In 1933 New York, an overly ambitious movie producer coerces his cast and hired ship crew to travel to mysterious Skull Island, where they encounter Kong, a giant ape who is immediately smitten with the leading lady.
2 positive3 negative10 neutralfrom 15 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
15 comments on Hacker News
Jurassic Park fits into the TvTrope of "Seinfeld Is Unfunny".[1] CGI dinosaurs are awesome when you see them for the first time in 1993, when Reboot was cutting edge.[2] Now it's a basic requirement to have photorealistic CGI, so the first film that did it doesn't stick out to me. I'm 25 and grew up with Avatar. People younger than I am mock minor compositing issues because they're so used to perfection.
You probably feel the same way about the VFX in King Kong and our grandchildren will laugh at us for living in a world in which we cannot generate unlimited dinosaur movies on-demand with AI.
[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny
[2] https://youtu.be/fuEJWmxWkKw
It wasn't a sudden change, it's been a gradual tendency towards them. James Bond was already 19 films by the turn of the century (or 20 if you include the other Casino Royale), King Kong and Star Trek both got to 6, Batman 8, Star Wars had just had the 4th, Friday the 13th had reached 9 films.
Even BttF itself was three films, and in the second one was parodying the tendency towards sequels with the holographic Jaws 19.
Feels slightly different in that the Matrix is original so literally nobody in the GPs audience knew what to expect whereas Transformers has been a thing (comics, toys, hundreds of TV episodes) since the mid 1980s. I also feel like the early 2000s had a lot of good CGI movies (LOTR, King Kong, etc) so that to me doesn't explain it either
I took my nephew to King Kong in 2005. There were a group of 5-6 teenagers sitting at the middle top of the theater who talked and laughed throughout the movie. In the final scenes where he had her at the top of the building, they started fake crying and I just lost my shit: I ran up to the top of the theater, falling twice on the stairs, got in the row in front of them and told them quietly but forcefully to just shut the hell up. I guess they could tell I was out of control and one of the girls starting yelling and goading me to hit her! Somebody in the audience told her to "shut the fuck up". I turned around in the seat and had to calm down before I strangled her.
After the movie people were complaining and I told them to ask for a refund, because I did and got one. They thanked me for finally saying something to those idiots. I don't think I went to the movie for 10 years after that horrible experience.
Jackson's "enhancements" to The Hobbit were failures because he wasn't a good storyteller. He turned it into a Disneyland ride. You can see that in other Jackson movies, like "King Kong".
Jackson needs a Paul McCartney to tell him "no, take this scene out, and that one, and that one."
If your narrative was true, we would always see critics scores lower than the audience (assuming statistically significant number of critics reviewing a given movie). But we see so many counterexamples with radically different ratings: Spy kids, Ad Astra, Noah, King Kong (2005), Babe, The Blair Witch Project, Chicken Run, and thousands of others.
Did we need a live version of Lord of The Rings? What was wrong with the print version?
The original Mulan legend is good material as is the original movie. If the new movie had been any good we'd likely all be happy for it.
A Star Was Born has been re-made 4 times. The most recent is the highest rated. Pride and Prejudice has been made several times. I personally really enjoyed the mid 90s version. Mutiny on Bounty has been re-made more than once. I liked the 60s version over the 40s version. I liked the 2005 King Kong (and the 1933 King Kong)
There's nothing wrong with remaking. It's just disappointing when it's a bad remake.
I was lucky enough to visit the Faroe Islands two years ago. The islands are just out of this world beautiful. The photos on this article does not do justice. I have yet to upload many of my images, but some of my photos are here, [1,2,3,4]. The cliffs on Faroe are massive (it much older island formation than the Iceland). For example that light house on picture 1, is that white dot you see on the drone shot on photo 3.
Because helicopter is really needed, it's treated like public transportation. So it's almost like the cost of Uber ride on Bay Area. I think we paid like $20 or so for a 15-20 min flight. However, to reduce tourist abuse, you can only take the helicopter one-way. But when we visited, it was very low season and helicopter was pretty much empty and they allowed us to take a roundtrip flight which was quite amazing.
That being said, on our last full day we took a boat ride. Where the pilot showed us some of uninhabited islands. Like you read this in this article. He would point to a hut on a small abandon island and he would say: no one has lived here since 1998 (or something like that). On that same boat ride we hit some rainy weather, and part of the highlight of the trip is the boat going through this giant rock formation by the cliffs. It was almost like being inside the movie King Kong. It was one of the most thrilling experiences of my life.
One more interesting experience was arriving there. Firstly the airport is on this strange and scary location. Secondly, on arrival (because of high tariff rates) you see people buying cases of Coca Cola, etc at duty-free shop before officially entering into the country. I highly recommend visiting there.
[1] https://www.eyeem.com/p/121810400 [2] https://www.eyeem.com/p/121804039 [3] https://www.eyeem.com/p/93320647 [4] https://www.eyeem.com/p/93320500
Location: San Francisco Remote: Sure Willing to relocate: Possibly, but not outside of the USA Technologies: Python, C++, Java, HTML/CSS/JavaScript/SQL Résumé/CV: http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~kawal/code/deep.gif Email: see resume
I'm looking for my first job in software development after 10+ years in visual effects for films as a technical director. I worked at world class studios (Lucasfilm/ILM, Disney, and Dreamworks) on killer films (Avatar, King Kong, Madagascar, and the Matrix sequels).
I have a BA in Applied Math with a CS focus from UC Berkeley. I know my data structures and algorithms and have a strong record of shipping product for demanding clients on real deadlines.
Peter Jackson is exactly that kind of directors. And he is consistent in that. Even before LoR/Hobbit, check out King Kong made by him. It's like watching Serious Sam, never-ending battle with CGI monsters, boring and pointless (as part of the movie, playing SS games is fun of course).
King recently announced a sequel to the Shining, 36 years after the original. Danny is grown up and working in a care centre. All seems well, but then something from Stephen King's brain knocks at the door!
I never liked the LOTR movies for the reasons described. Certain scenes are spectacular, and Gollum is cool, but that's about it for me.
For a great Peter Jackson movie that suits his epic action style, try King Kong.
The gulf between homage and derivative work is quite wide. Consider a few examples of famous derivative works: Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, Alice in Wonderland, Apocalypse Now, Muppet Christmas Carol. Right now there are no less than 3 different ongoing adaptations of Sherlock Holmes (the movie series, the BBC series, and CBS's Elementary series).
These are works that would be patently illegal if the source material were not in the public domain. This isn't just about "remix culture", it's about being able to adapt and interpret what's out there, fully and without restriction. Clearly there is value to allowing such artistic freedom once a work has grown sufficiently old. However, today that age has grown quite impractically long. A movie such as War of the Worlds (a 110+ year old book) can be made without seeking a licensing agreement, but movies such as The Hobbit (a 75 year old book), King Kong (79 years), The Chronicles of Narnia (62 years), Casino Royale (59 years), or The Dark Knight Rises (73 years) still require licensing.
And the sad part is that even in the next 20 years when, say, the Superman IP will be pushing 100 years old and Mickey Mouse even older it seems likely that such things will still require licensing.
The fact that the current IP laws have not utterly destroyed creativity or the productivity of creative industries is not a ringing endorsement. The fact is that they are stifling and they have been responsible for creating an industry which is too heavily controlled by a small group.
> And here’s something no one has stopped to consider: Maybe making movies is too damn expensive. Or rather, far more expensive than it needs to be.
Hmm. I went to the theatre (first time since a long time as the experience feels antiquated and overpriced) with friends to see Sherlock Holmes, and the opening scene perfectly exemplifies the point: for about ten second you see a shot of the cathedral of Strasbourg. Half of it consists of a CGI explosion. I live there, and to produce this shot, they locked this part of the city for one week.
Ten seconds. One week. A whole team plus equipment. To the other side of the world. Seriously.
When seeing the scene I found that downright shocking, especially given the 10€ hole burning my pocket.
By comparison it takes Turn10 Studios three days[0] locally to gather enough information on a track to subsequently work on for one year. That's a full-length, five kilometer track.
I know this is not the same, and various other things come into play, but I just can't help but have an alarm bell ringing when I see movie production costs. See for yourself (budget in $):
- 2001 and Star Wars: 10 million each - Independence Day: 75 million - Transformers: 150 million - Kill Bill 1+2: 50 million - Jurassic Park: 65 million - King Kong: 200 million - Blues Brothers: 30 million - Fast & Furious: 90 million - The Fellowship of the Ring: 100 million - Harry Potter: ~150 million each - Full Metal Jacket: 15 million - Jarhead: 72 million - Apocalypse Now: 30 million - Black Hawk Down: 90 million - Terminator: 6 million - The Matrix: 60 million - Terminator 2: 100 million - Casino Royale: 100 million - Quantum of Solace: 230 million - Sherlock Holmes: 125 million - The Godfather: 6.5 million
I know those $ do not mean the same across time, but still, you can see going from simple to double produces crap (CS vs QoS), or produces twice the length at arguably the same 'quality' (whatever that means) for a significantly smaller cost (LotR vs HP). I don't see either why F&F costs thrice as much as BB, and almost twice as much as KB.
Bottom line: MAFIAA, please produce non-crap and control your costs instead of blaming piracy.
[0] http://forzamotorsport.net/en-us/underthehood4/
>Release movies to audiences in episodes; start by releasing a half-hour pilot, and if it takes off, call the actors and director back to make another hour. This could cut the cost of filmmaking by more than a factor of 2, especially if the first part goes easy on the special effects, the music, that kind of thing
There are a lot of fixed costs in movie theaters that make this impractical - you've got to get people seated and then get them out of the theater, for instance, which takes 20-30 minutes. Given that you can't charge more than $3 for a thirty minute movie, that decrease in utilization-percentage hurts their bottom line. Plus who is going to buy popcorn or a soda when they'll be in the theater for too short of a time to eat/drink it? And who's going to drive to a theater to watch something that's shorter than the average TV show?
Not to mention, who wants to watch 30 minutes of a story and then wait a year to watch the next hour? And I'm skeptical about people being willing to go to a movie when there's a realistic chance it'll get cut off before they see the end.
And many movies are still warming up at the half-hour mark - in "Star Wars: A New Hope", you've only just met Obi-Wan at the 30 minute mark. You haven't seen light-sabers, X-Wings, the word "Jedi", Han Solo, the Death Star, or the Millennium Falcon yet. In "Back to the Future", you're only just going back in time at that point. In the remake of King Kong, you don't even see Kong until like an hour into the film. At 30 minutes into Gladiator, you're still a good 20-30 minutes from seeing the inside of an Arena. At 30 minutes into Fellowship of the Ring, you've still met like half of the Fellowship. You'd have to rework the whole scripting paradigm if you want an accurate representation of what the film's about in that 30-minute episode.
>Instead of a pilot episode or abridged movie, do the first installment of the movie as a comic book.
This will lead to a very biased output, as only a subset of the movie-going population reads comic books.
>Don't spend anything on marketing. Release films in a single theater or a single city. If it takes off, print more copies. If GQ is to be believed, this would cut the cost of filmmaking in half, which would mean you could make twice as many movies.
With this approach, you've really got to hope that word-of-mouth generators like film blogs like the movie or that everyone in the audience is an active Tweeter. And you've really got to hope that everyone in your target audience is an active Web 2.0 user or has a close friend who is.
IMDB reports that 2322 movies were released in 1939 alone, is it really surprising that there were a handful of good movies among them?
1980 for comparision, IMDB lists 6007 movies (8000+ if you include TV movies), and contains modern (popular) classics such as Stir Crazy, Superman II, Empire Strikes Back, Airplane!, The Blue Lagoon, Ordinary People, Urban Cowboy. The Shining, Caddyshack, Raging Bull, Friday The 13th, The Fog, The Blues Brothers.
Hmm, looks like 1980 was a much more 'classic' era than the 40s for hollywood, but you wouldn't have heard that from film buffs in the 80s.
Hollywood has always been a great abuser of the 'sling lots of shit at the wall and see what sticks' approach to 'greatness', they're just slinging a lot more shit these days.
Even if we take a really contemporary year and do the same study, we see a pattern of greats no matter what year, take 2005 at random:
Batman Begins, Sin City, V for Vendetta, Revenge of the Sith, King Kong, Brokeback Mountain, Harry Potter/Goblet of Fire, Serenity, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mr & Mrs Smith, Wedding Crashers, Munich, Saw 2, Hostel, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Madagascar, Pride & Prejudice, Land of the Dead.
Ah, but the movie buff will point out that they're not established classics like Gone with the Wind, or Wizard of Oz. Not yet, anyway.
Edit: Btw, for 2005, the number of movies was 28,000+. Is it any wonder that there is a lot of formulaic stuff in there as well?