Goodfella

Has anyone seen the trailer?

I have heard mixed opinions about this trailer and film.

My own opinion holds high hopes for it and I can't wait to see it.
Aparently alot of the scenes in the preview are not going to be in the film too.

Personally I love the build up in the trailer and if the film follows the same suit, I'll be happy

Jennie_Kermode

I hate to pick on a film for FX, as I think a well-written story and strong characters are much more important, but in a film of this sort the FX do matter. The CGI work in the trailer looked really shoddy - nice enough creatures, terrible placement of creatures on background. I really hope they've managed to improve on this in the film itself.

I like Naomi Watts as an actress (despite her awful performance in '21 Grams', which was almost certainly the director's fault), and I've been very impressed by Adrien Brody's work so far, so I really want this to be a good film. Still, I'm not getting my hopes up.

Jennie

Marky B

I've seen the trailers,and everything seems fine. My only misgivings is of showing clips of the monster himself,rather than keep a sense of mystique about him until we see him ourselves in the cinema,watching King Kong in its entirety.
The film also stars fellow Billingham lad,Jamie Bell.
Ta Ta

I once shot an elephant in my pyjamas - how he got in my pyjamas,I'll never know

JamesM

Hats of for setting the film in 1933 though, and the use of CGI in the street scenes look the most seamless so far.

Marky B

Hear,hear
Ta Ta
Marky B

I once shot an elephant in my pyjamas - how he got in my pyjamas,I'll never know

Wetherby Pond

I'm more than happy to give the film the benefit of the doubt - Peter Jackson hasn't made a bad film in fifteen years (and even Meet the Feebles has its fans), and every interview he's given he's bent over backwards to stress his respect for the original and that there are certain elements that he can't possibly compete with.

One of the reasons I think this whole "remakes" controversy is largely a red herring is that there's absolutely nothing wrong with remakes per se (the Bogart Maltese Falcon alone should give the lie to that particular notion!) - what matters is the talent of the people doing the remaking, and their motives for doing so.

samkydd

Well I'm very anti-remakes so why did they do it?

Why not have a film about a giant meer cat, or a huge piece of Plasticine shaped like a bust of Napoleon destroying everything in its wake, a giant iceberg dislodged from the Arctic Circle through global warming and heading for New York! Anything other than an ape? Easy enough, get someone who has a little imagination to write a story about it , get a screenplay writer to put a script together, get some children who are good at computer graphics and hey presto, a film that hasn't been done before!

Even The Goodies managed to do that with a giant kitten! But no, let's use the big ape again and do the same old shite! Edgar Wallace wrote King Kong in a few hours from nothing! Then it was new, fresh, and scary, never been done before!

A new concept that for 21st century film makers "let's do something that's never been done before!" This remake will be at the cinema for one week and out on DVD within a fortnight to con you out of more loverly money yeh !

Perhaps they should rename this section to "Coming Soon Yet Again!"

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

David Challinor

...I hope its enjoyable, but doubt it. The 1933 is such a classic....so was A Night To Remember (1958), and so when I heard of the James Cameron re-make I got excited, even attended the London premiere of the 1997 film. WHAT a disappointment - if a film hasn't got a good script no matter how many special effects it has its still stinks... (or sinks...)...I'd like Jackson to allow Kong to live at the end though, being an old softy

Steve Crook

If you let Kong live, they'll only make another sequel.

The idea is that you're meant to be so dazzled by the special effects that you don't notice that the script is rubbish and most of the characters are barely developed into little more than two dimensions.

It doesn't work with me either - I want a decent story at the heart of the film and some good character development.

Steve

Wetherby Pond

Um... since when was the original King Kong any kind of yardstick for good character development? Let's face it, no-one ever watched it for the script or acting - even the 1976 version had snappier dialogue (courtesy of the great Lorenzo Semple Jr., the unsung genius behind the 1960s Batman), and Jessica Lange is a better actress than Fay Wray.

I'm not normally one to cite Oscars as an automatic indication of quality, but I can't help noticing that the trio of screenwriters behind the new King Kong have no fewer than ten Best Screenplay Oscar nominations between them, including three wins. This track record doesn't exactly suggest that they're going to be producing a "rubbish" script with "barely developed" characters - on the contrary, I have an entirely realistic expectation that the new film will be very comfortably superior to both its predecessors on that score.

The major challenge, which Jackson has cheerfully conceded, is matching Willis O'Brien's contribution - not on a technical level (which is easy), but in terms of its soul (staggeringly difficult). This is where the 1976 version failed miserably, and where the merits of the Jackson version will be most hotly debated - but his track record thus far suggests that it should at least be worth watching just to see him try.