Will Kong be King?
As a kid, there were two movies in the 1970s that I anticipated with enormous interest, only to be enormously disappointed by the actual result. One was Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings, and the other was Dino De Laurentiis’ King Kong. In both cases, I was aware of the films months before they released, ate up every scrap of information I could find about them (mostly tripe manufactured by the studio’s publicity machines), and attended the theater on opening night.
Geez, what a pair of turkeys those films turned out to be!
Fortunately, we have been blessed with Peter Jackson, who has already erased the bad taste of Bakshi, and is now working on delivering a new Kong for Christmas.
The latest Kong trailer looks quite promising. Jackson’s respect for the original film is quite evident, and he’s had the good sense to make it a period picture. The hardest part for me is trying not to think about kielbasa sausage while listening to Jack Black, but I’m working on it. I think I can manage it by December.
For more fun, check out this movie of the original Kong armature on the KongIsKing site. They also have a great production diary showing the armature being newly animated during its brief visit to New Zealand.