King Kong

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

I should add, those scaffolding/effects* type movies.... that’s almost certainly my own bias. I don’t like them. I can watch on a technical level and even be wowed, but that’s just not my favorite type of movie at all—and even turned me off of watching films for awhile, all these empty blockbuster sort of things.

I know my vote is an outlier and I’m a bit of a detractor here, but I did rate it 3.5/5, I did enjoy this!

*i really like this metaphor of scaffolding

 

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

There was some question about why Peter Jackson decided to tackle a remake of King Kong, but the discussion of the meta-filmmaking aspects of the original movie make me think this fits right in with his thematic interests in much of his non-Tolkien stuff. I'll also note that I can't take all credit for this stuff, as I first read this analysis of Jackson on the old (now defunct) Rotten Tomatoes forums.

Jackson is interested in the idea of fantasy storytelling and how it interacts with reality (or "reality" as individuals perceive it).

Heavenly Creatures - about two girls who live out a secret fantasy world that morphs into a real-life murder

Forgotten Silver - mockumentary about a fake Kiwi filmmaker that aired on New Zealand television and fooled a lot of people into thinking it was real

The Frighteners - story about a guy who can actually see and speak with ghosts but uses this ability to fake hauntings and get people to pay for his "exorcisms"

In that context, remaking a movie about a film production turned frighteningly real like King Kong fits right in. He even cast Jack Black as Carl Denham, and Black is a fairly decent on-screen counterpart for the then-portly and scraggly Jackson.

Anyway, it was divisive, but I also quite liked the Peter Jackson version of Kong, though it is certainly too long and seemingly the beginning of Jackson overstretching his narratives to their detriment.

[Cam Bert 8145]

For me personally, even though I don't love King Kong, I think the technical side of things are so impressive that it deserves to be on the list. This movie was doing things effects wise that even twenty or years later they weren't doing as well. It was really ahead of the curve on that kind of stuff. The easiest parallel I can think of is if you think of modern actors working on a green screen reacting to tennis balls that will be a monster. That's basically this movie, but eighty plus years ago. These were pioneering effects and ways of making a movie, not to mention the score. Therefore it deserves a spot.

However, if we were allowed to put on non-American films I would say the originally Japanese non-Steve Martin version of Godzilla is the better example of a monster movie with a complex story. If your only familiar with the later versions of Godzilla as in the "Godzilla vs" movies the original is a completely different thing. On the surface you think it is just a movie about a giant lizard destroying a city, but there is much more to it than that. It is a movie with a lot of subtext about post war Japan and the sometimes obvious but sometimes subtly done fear and destructive power of radiation and nuclear weapons. Of course you can choose to ignore that as Toho did going forward as well.

[Cam Bert 8145]

So if you account for inflation a $20 show in 1933 would be the same as paying $387.68 today to see a show. And what exactly does that money get you? You see Kong on stage chained up and barely able to move while you have a movie director doing a lame one man show in front of it. Not to mention for two cents the next day you could see a picture of Kong and not have to listen to the Denham.

[Cameron H. 23786]

2 minutes ago, Cam Bert said:

So if you account for inflation a $20 show in 1933 would be the same as paying $387.68 today to see a show. And what exactly does that money get you? You see Kong on stage chained up and barely able to move while you have a movie director doing a lame one man show in front of it. Not to mention for two cents the next day you could see a picture of Kong and not have to listen to the Denham.

And to think, all those chumps on the street got to see his carcass for free!

[Susan* 135]

I have to see King Kong again before I can rank it on my list.  I've seen it on TV but never paid close attention.

 

If you don't know what All About Eve is about, I question why you're listening to this podcast, but welcome anyhow.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

1 hour ago, Cam Bert said:

So if you account for inflation a $20 show in 1933 would be the same as paying $387.68 today to see a show. And what exactly does that money get you? You see Kong on stage chained up and barely able to move while you have a movie director doing a lame one man show in front of it. Not to mention for two cents the next day you could see a picture of Kong and not have to listen to the Denham.

Idk sounds like the Hamilton of its time to me

[grudlian. 4725]

2 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

For me personally, even though I don't love King Kong, I think the technical side of things are so impressive that it deserves to be on the list. This movie was doing things effects wise that even twenty or years later they weren't doing as well. It was really ahead of the curve on that kind of stuff. The easiest parallel I can think of is if you think of modern actors working on a green screen reacting to tennis balls that will be a monster. That's basically this movie, but eighty plus years ago. These were pioneering effects and ways of making a movie, not to mention the score. Therefore it deserves a spot.

However, if we were allowed to put on non-American films I would say the originally Japanese non-Steve Martin version of Godzilla is the better example of a monster movie with a complex story. If your only familiar with the later versions of Godzilla as in the "Godzilla vs" movies the original is a completely different thing. On the surface you think it is just a movie about a giant lizard destroying a city, but there is much more to it than that. It is a movie with a lot of subtext about post war Japan and the sometimes obvious but sometimes subtly done fear and destructive power of radiation and nuclear weapons. Of course you can choose to ignore that as Toho did going forward as well.

1. I think you mean Raymond Burr version of Godzilla unless the is a Steve Martin version I don't know about. If there is a Steve Martin version, I definitely want to see that.

2. I'm sure I've complained about it before but I agree that I wish non American films were represented. I get why the AFI limited it to American films but there is a literal world of cinema. For a number of these movies, I can point to a foreign equivalent that is debatably as good. And if we needed to include an influential, giant monster/kaiju movie, Godzilla over King Kong all day every day.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

For sure. At the end of this pod, I’m absolutely going to be digging through a ‘best foreign film’ list or two.

[Cam Bert 8145]

12 minutes ago, grudlian. said:

1. I think you mean Raymond Burr version of Godzilla unless the is a Steve Martin version I don't know about. If there is a Steve Martin version, I definitely want to see that.

Raymond Burr's character's name is Steve Martin.

[Cameron H. 23786]

19 minutes ago, grudlian. said:

 

2. I'm sure I've complained about it before but I agree that I wish non American films were represented. I get why the AFI limited it to American films but there is a literal world of cinema. For a number of these movies, I can point to a foreign equivalent that is debatably as good. And if we needed to include an influential, giant monster/kaiju movie, Godzilla over King Kong all day every day.

Here's what I would like: once they're done with this list, I would like them to cover the movies that got booted off from the 98 list. Then, if they're up to it, I'd love for Amy and Paul to dive into World cinema. I'd love to hear their take on Bergman and Kurosawa et al.

I know Unspooled was always meant to be a macroseries, but the fact that they are already 12% done makes me anxious

Of course, I don't actually expect this will happen, but a boy can dream, can't he?

[Cam Bert 8145]

1 minute ago, CameronH said:

Here's what I would like: once they're done with this list, I would like them to cover the movies that got booted off from the 98 list. Then, if they're up to it, I'd love for Amy and Paul to dive into World cinema. I'd love to hear their take on Bergman and Kurosawa et al.

Of course, Unspooled was always meant to be a macroseries, but the fact that they are already 12% done makes me anxious

I don't actually expect this will happen, but a boy can dream, can't he?

Completely agree with those thoughts and feelings.

As far as world cinema goes save that for their follow up open ended series "Unspool the The World" If we all dream hard enough maybe we can make it happen.

[Cameron H. 23786]

Just now, Cam Bert said:

Completely agree with those thoughts and feelings.

As far as world cinema goes save that for their follow up open ended series "Unspool the The World" If we all dream hard enough maybe we can make it happen.

I just don't know what to do! Should we send them a box of croissants or something?

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

14 minutes ago, CameronH said:

Here's what I would like: once they're done with this list, I would like them to cover the movies that got booted off from the 98 list. Then, if they're up to it, I'd love for Amy and Paul to dive into World cinema. I'd love to hear their take on Bergman and Kurosawa et al.

I know Unspooled was always meant to be a macroseries, but the fact that they are already 12% done makes me anxious

Of course, I don't actually expect this will happen, but a boy can dream, can't he?

Yeah, this has come up on the Facebook group. If they want to do world cinema, then maybe the Sight & Sound list would be a good thing to go through (leaving out those already covered by the AFI).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sight_%26_Sound_Top_50_Greatest_Films_of_All_Time

[Cameron H. 23786]

1 minute ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

Yeah, this has come up on the Facebook group...

...you, two-timer.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

Even if Paul and Amy end the pod at 100 eps, we can use the forum still on a weekly basis and go through the 1998 bonus films and then a world cinema list, or any list we want. I say let’s worry about it in 80 weeks tho haha

[grudlian. 4725]

12 minutes ago, Cam Bert said:

Raymond Burr's character's name is Steve Martin.

I feel like I should have remembered that but once the Japanese version finally got a US release around 2003, I never needed to go back to the Raymond Burr version.

15 minutes ago, AlmostAGhost said:

For sure. At the end of this pod, I’m absolutely going to be digging through a ‘best foreign film’ list or two.

There are a few really good lists like the BFI Sight and Sound, Cahiers du Cinema that include US films alongside foreign films (and have a lot of overlap). If you want a really daunting task, try 1001 Movies To See Before You Die or They Shoot Pictures Don't They.

I don't think any of these lists have the really weird rules to include or exclude certain movies that AFI has either.

[Cam Bert 8145]

What would be really interesting but painstakingly hard to put together is a series of sequels dedicated to maybe just the top 10 films of different countries based on that country's AFI equivalent or critics circle chosen greatest films. Not only do you cover the classics of various countries but it is an interesting look into what each country values in their films and what films other nations overlook.

[LindsayNelson 26]

13 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

I have to question whether or not the love story was intentional terrible or not. When Denham is explaining why he needs an actress for the movie he complains that after he works hard to make a movie the critics and exhibitors claim "if this movie had a love interest it'd gross twice as much." He also cites this is what the public wants and it makes him sore. Cut to twenty minutes later or so and we have John and Ann fall in love out of nowhere. Was this the writer and director giving the critics and exhibitors what they wanted? Were they aware they were doing what they just complained about? I'd like to think this was some meta message.

Wow...mind blown! I totally didn't see this but yeah, it absolutely makes sense. (Or it could just be that romance tended to be super stilted and awkward in 1930s films. Or it could be both.)

[LindsayNelson 26]

Loved this episode and this film, but yeah, definitely agree that the racism needs to be addressed, especially in light of how influential so many of the movie's images and characterizations were (not in a good way). King Kong's depiction of indigenous people as "savages" threatening white women and the connection of Kong with the image of African-American men as beasts who were hell bent on stealing white women cast a pretty long shadow (King Kong wasn't the first movie to do this, but I'd say it's one of the more memorable examples). There are a lot of great books / articles on this subject & one of my favorites is Fatima Tobing Rony's The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle, which has a section on King Kong. Watching the movie also brought back memories of this Vogue cover and all the controversy it caused at the time. King Kong has a long historical reach.

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

3 hours ago, CameronH said:

...you, two-timer.

I contain multitudes!

[alexkirtoon 7]

Paul and Amy, I really enjoyed this episode. 

As an animator, I got a kick out of Paul being flummoxed and at a loss to explain why he enjoyed watching Kong the character so much, even though the effects techniques are relatively crude compared to today's sophisticated cgi. I think Willis O'brien and his crew are due a bit more credit than they were paid in this podcast.

To my mind "King Kong" is an incredibly significant film for a key reason. Previously, special effects were just that, tricks that were used to enhance brief sequences in a film, to bring some realism to circumstances that were too difficult or dangerous to film for real. In "King Kong" the effects are undeniably the star.

"King Kong" is the first time special effects are used to bring life to a central character of a feature length film.  Willis O'brien had previously used his stop motion techniques in "The Lost World" on a variety of rampaging prehistoric critters, but Kong is different. Kong is a brilliant example of "personality animation", or animation where the character appears to be thinking and making decisions. In this film, for the first time, the barometer of special effects changes from "how realistic is this effect?" to "how engaging is this performance?". As your guest zoo employee points out, there are many things about Kong's design and performance that are not accurate to a real gorilla, but in animation we regularly speak about "realism" and "believability" as separate concepts. Kong's brilliant performance, executed by a team of unseen artisans, transcends its technique. It is engaging and believable. This is the film proved that a special effect could hold it's own as an actor, and it's the milestone that paved the way for Yoda, E.T., Roger Rabbit, Dobby, Gollum and so many more. 

Keep up the good work,

alex

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

12 hours ago, alexkirtoon said:

"King Kong" is the first time special effects are used to bring life to a central character of a feature length film.  Willis O'brien had previously used his stop motion techniques in "The Lost World" on a variety of rampaging prehistoric critters, but Kong is different. Kong is a brilliant example of "personality animation", or animation where the character appears to be thinking and making decisions. In this film, for the first time, the barometer of special effects changes from "how realistic is this effect?" to "how engaging is this performance?". As your guest zoo employee points out, there are many things about Kong's design and performance that are not accurate to a real gorilla, but in animation we regularly speak about "realism" and "believability" as separate concepts. Kong's brilliant performance, executed by a team of unseen artisans, transcends its technique. It is engaging and believable. This is the film proved that a special effect could hold it's own as an actor, and it's the milestone that paved the way for Yoda, E.T., Roger Rabbit, Dobby, Gollum and so many more. 

Keep up the good work,

alex

I think you hit exactly why this film needs to be included. It really showed how movies could physically create totally fictional, fantastical realities for actual actors to interact with. It's exciting, it's thrilling, and it has this two-story ape engage with human actors as its own character. This certainly did not pre-date cartoons, but it does pre-date Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature, by four years, while only being six years after the first sound picture, The Jazz Singer. We are in brand new territory here, but the fundamentals of storytelling are still adhered to and valued, even if the love story is rather undercooked. From a personal standpoint, I love stop-motion, I find it fascinating to watch and I lament its demise in the wake of more efficient means of creating these kinds of characters. From King King to Ray Harryhausen to Nightmare Before Christmas to Studio Laika, I love that medium so much. So I see King Kong as a sort of progenitor of that whole field (even if the technique was not invented for the film).

The racism IS deplorable in this movie, as is the troubling idea bandied around at the time (thanks to movements like "scientific racism") of Africans being more closely related to apes than other races. The very idea of a white woman being kidnapped by an ape from "Darkest Africa" is subconsciously mining that concept. There was a lot of and Eugenics going on in America and Europe at the time, and this movie struck such a chord with audiences that it might have been cultivating those cultural currents. Was it conscious of the filmmakers? I don't know. It doesn't seem malicious the way Birth of a Nation was. Do I wish it wasn't in the film? Undoubtedly.

I think you could have a King Kong that functions as a metaphor for the destructiveness of Colonialism, about the dangers and evil that inevitably come when one culture arrives and imposes its values and morals on another. White people come, extract resources from a native culture, and bring back a violated version of it for their own benefit. It could be a Beauty and the Beast story where the real Beast is racism if done right, but the way the Skull Islanders are depicted, the 1933 Kong definitely does not reach those heights. I still think it belongs on the AFI list though.

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

10 hours ago, Quasar Sniffer said:

I think you could have a King Kong that functions as a metaphor for the destructiveness of Colonialism, about the dangers and evil that inevitably come when one culturearrives and imposes its values and morals on another. White people come, extract resources from a native culture, and bring back a violated version of it for their own benefit. It could be a Beauty and the Beast story where the real Beast is racism if done right, but the way the Skull Islanders are depicted, the 1933 Kong definitely does not reach those heights. I still think it belongs on the AFI list though.

You can argue that some of that is in there, maybe unintentionally thanks to the work of the animators making Kong so sympathetic upon his death. But I think it's hard to watch the movie and not feel sorry for the death of the beast . . . and by extension, for the exploitation and destruction of the native peoples he is a metaphor for.

I mean, yeah, they're still basically equating those people with gorillas. I'm just saying it's complicated.

[tomspanks 9039]

I voted yes on King Kong mainly for the stop motion special effects.  However, personally, this wouldn't be on my list of top 100 films.  Besides the obvious racism and misogyny, sometimes it was so slow that my mind kept wandering.  When something finally happened, it was usually something being killed.  For example, the way they kept shooting that stegosaurus went on forever, it was kind of upsetting.  And King Kong is supposed to be a beast, I get that, but he kills everything and anyone and this made me appreciate later adaptations (and "rip-offs" like Mighty Joe Young) where you feel more sympathy for the ape.  I guess I prefer my Kong to be more than just a brainless brute who smashes things.