King Kong! (2005)

[Alan Smithee]

"It may never be a box office blockbuster, but who cares?"

Obviously,  those who funded the $207 million to produce it do. And those in the entertainment media that hyped it.

[Mr_Vindictive]

Australians speak English?

I never knew that......


;)

[peter johnson]

Re:  How did they get him back to New York on the boat --
My thought is that this is why there were so many lingering shots of the large, flat area of the foredeck of the Venture (the boat) as they were departing.  Anyone else remember those shots?  The next step would be Peter Jackson in the editing room going:  "Oh, crap, those scenes of strapping Kong onto the boat & etc. are just too long -- Lose them!".

* * *
The bug scenes, as many of you already know, were a sort of homage to the lost Willis O'Brian footage of what happens to the guys who get flipped off the log in the original.  
For decades, Forrest J. Ackerman & Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine have claimed that the lost footage still exists out there somewhere, and various people have come forth to claim they've actually seen it on the Big Screen in The Philppines, & etc.
On the new boxed deluxe edition of the original Kong, there's a long sequence with Peter Jackson & the New Zealand boys trying to recreate how this lost footage may have looked in 1933.  It really is a treat, but we'll never know how close they came . . . or will we?
peter johnson/denny crane

[trekgeezer]

In none of the various versions of King Kong do they show how they got him on the boat. In the '76 version they do show him in cargo hold aboard an oil tanker.

The flat area on the Venture was evidently the cargo bay where all those cages were stored. I want to know how they kept him quiet for the ride back, you know on steamship it would have to take a few weeks. I know they had the chloroform, but that would probably have done some kind of permanent damage to him. Oh well, it's easier to ignore these things because it really wouldn't add anything to the story.

From what I read about the lost spider pit scene in the original it was only shown once. Cooper edited it out because he felt it  broke the flow of the film  and none of the principle characters were in the sequence.

I thought having the New York sequence take place in winter was a pretty inspired idea.