King Kong Blu-ray Edition
The newest King Kong from director Peter Jackson may be the same old story but told in a new and refreshing way with plenty of great cinematic effects.
Film making 20/25
Cinematography 23/25
Audio 24/25
Bonus Features 10/25
Total 77/100
King Kong or Peter Jacksons King Kong as I remember it being touted when it came out in 2005 is the latest remake of the traditional monster movie from the early days of television. The story is about the same, damsel and others go to Skull Island and damsel is given in sacrifice to large hairy ape who finally meets his doom by people who shoot him off the Empire State Building.
Of course with this version we have the modern day effects and computer generated imagery with plenty of very good acting and scenery to create an action packed drama. King Kong is a great story and adding an almost realistic behavior and intelligence to the large gorilla made the newest version much better than the previous remakes.
King Kong is the story of an out of work actress named Anne Darrow, played by Naomi Watts, who takes up work from Carl Denham on his desperate attempt to finish a movie. When Denham returns to his studio with hours and hours of film shot in the jungle and nothing exciting happening he races to a tramp steamer for a hasty departure when he overhears the executives saying they are going to scrap his film project.
He quickly gathers his crew and writer with a few quick lies and gets underway to Singapore with a short stop at a mythical island on a map he found. The captain agrees to check out the possible island and they find it by crashing into it while trying to navigate the treacherous shores.
Once ashore the filming party tries to get some footage only to find natives who are quite unfriendly and they seize Darrow to offer her up as a sacrifice to their god, King Kong. Kong takes Darrow and races off into the jungle while the crew take off to rescue her after taking care of many of the villagers with modern weapons.
The island scenes are great and plenty of larger than normal insects and animals abound the lush tropical locale as well as several long extinct creatures, dinosaurs. The crew along with Denham try to rescue Darrow but writer Jake Driscoll manages to do it himself so that the crew can get back to the ship and work at getting it back into working order.
The crew are back at shore and have set up an ambush to capture the large gorilla so when Driscoll brings Darrow back the gorilla does get captured using drugs but not until many of the crew are killed. Denham brings King Kong back to America and uses his contacts to set up a big stage show but Anne Darrow and Jake Driscoll both don’t want anything to do with the show.
When King Kong escapes Jake Driscoll and Anne Darrow who are working in nearby shows hear of the escape and rush to find out what is going on. Kong rampages out of the huge theatre and finally finds Anne and the two have a cute scene on the ice at Central Park before the Army starts to shell them with artillery.
King Kong does his famous climb up the Empire State Building and is finally killed by old time fighter planes with machine guns. The film is pretty much like the original and done with very great care to preserve not only the original movies tone and story but enhanced to make things as great.
Peter Jackson did a great scene with King Kong fighting two Tyrannosaurus Rex using great CGI that was very well done with the gorilla and other creatures throughout the film. This is one of those films that was not only very costly and made a lot of money but was well worth the effort by all.
King Kong won three Academy Awards and did very well in theatres and on DVD when it was first released and is still making it big with the newest Blu-ray sales just starting. The Blu-ray version has some additional content but the biggest one is the two versions of the film, the extended version and the theatrical release.
The Theatrical release is the three hour and 8 minute version while the extended feature has 3 hours and 20 minutes. The additional scenes are noticeable and well worth the few extra minutes but the movie in either version is great.
Other than the two versions there is the usual commentary and picture in picture additions on the extended version as well as some still art galleries but that’s all. The BD Live is still a waste of time for any Blu-ray movie as it is only preview and theatrical trailers of films and nothing more for bonus content.
You can also do the save a scene and other features on the Blu-ray version but about the only extra content that amounts to much is the commentary during the extended version and the two versions. King Kong Blu-ray edition does have the fantastic quality in both video and audio and the audio is where it really stands out.
King Kong won two Academy Awards for sound; sound mixing and sound effects and one for visual effects so I would expect sound to be a great part of the film. The movie is great and the sequences involving not only the large dinosaurs but all the scenes on the island really show the effort and skill put into the visual effects as well.
King Kong, Peter Jackson’s version, is a great movie and well worth the cost on Blu-ray for a great cinematic film with those old film stories and modern computer graphic effects.