King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

For the discussion of non-Toho monster media, tokusatsu franchises, and also for mixed discussion of Toho and non-Toho kaiju media.
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Mr. Yellow
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

Post by Mr. Yellow »

Shhh! The Octopus wrote:Not to sound like a shill but I Just picked up this great book

If you guys are remotely interested in lost King Kong films you'll enjoy the book. For me personally I never knew they planned an Abbot and Costello Meet King Kong movie.
Quick, someone tell James Rolfe!
"Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy. They do not attack people because they want to, but because of their size and strength, mankind has no other choice but to defend himself. After several stories such as this, people end up having a kind of affection for the monsters. They end up caring about them." - Ishiro Honda

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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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Shhh! The Octopus wrote:^No screenplay treatment but it has black and white scans of most of the art.
Lovely! Maybe I'll get it after all. Does it say anything about the basic plot of the story?

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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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Wait, wait...were there really plans for both King Kong meets Frankenstein and Abbot and Costello films? Because I thought that was just solely fanboy dreams I was daydreaming all in my head.
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

Post by G2000 »

Vakanai wrote:Wait, wait...were there really plans for both King Kong meets Frankenstein and Abbot and Costello films? Because I thought that was just solely fanboy dreams I was daydreaming all in my head.
I hadn't known about the Abbot and Costello films until now, but King Kong vs Frankenstein is fairly well known. It was the project that eventually became King Kong vs Godzilla, actually. It began as an idea from Willis O'Brien for a Kong sequel; IIRC he was very disappointed with how Son of Kong turned out and wanted to retcon it. The general plotline and some concept art drawn by Obie himself has been in circulation for years now. The film would have revolved around Kong (revealed to have survived his fall in New York and had been secretly smuggled back to Skull Island by Carl Denham) doing battle with the Ginko (a creation of one of Frankenstein's descendants made from a hodgepodge of African animals) in San Francisco.

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On reflection, it's sort of funny how many unmade kaiju films were set in San Francisco (Kong vs Frankenstein, The Volcano Monsters, Godzilla: King of the Monsters 3D, and the unmade 1994 Rossio-Elliot TriStar Godzilla script off the top of my head)
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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G2000 wrote:
Vakanai wrote:Wait, wait...were there really plans for both King Kong meets Frankenstein and Abbot and Costello films? Because I thought that was just solely fanboy dreams I was daydreaming all in my head.
I hadn't known about the Abbot and Costello films until now, but King Kong vs Frankenstein is fairly well known. It was the project that eventually became King Kong vs Godzilla, actually. It began as an idea from Willis O'Brien for a Kong sequel; IIRC he was very disappointed with how Son of Kong turned out and wanted to retcon it. The general plotline and some concept art drawn by Obie himself has been in circulation for years now. The film would have revolved around Kong (revealed to have survived his fall in New York and had been secretly smuggled back to Skull Island by Carl Denham) doing battle with the Ginko (a creation of one of Frankenstein's descendants made from a hodgepodge of African animals) in San Francisco.

Image

On reflection, it's sort of funny how many unmade kaiju films were set in San Francisco (Kong vs Frankenstein, The Volcano Monsters, Godzilla: King of the Monsters 3D, and the unmade 1994 Rossio-Elliot TriStar Godzilla script off the top of my head)
Huh, neat. In the fantasy I was dreaming up I'd have stuck with the fall having killed Kong and Dr. Frankenstein (or a descendant) would bring the great ape back to life. Which in my imaginary continuity is why Kong is powered by lightning when King Kong vs. Godzilla comes around, lightning having already brought him back before.

Weird. And 2014 Godzilla actually ended in San Fran. I mean, there are other west coast cities. Personally I'd like to see a kaiju topple the Space Needle.
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

Post by Legendary Gojira »

Vakanai wrote:
G2000 wrote:
Vakanai wrote:Wait, wait...were there really plans for both King Kong meets Frankenstein and Abbot and Costello films? Because I thought that was just solely fanboy dreams I was daydreaming all in my head.
I hadn't known about the Abbot and Costello films until now, but King Kong vs Frankenstein is fairly well known. It was the project that eventually became King Kong vs Godzilla, actually. It began as an idea from Willis O'Brien for a Kong sequel; IIRC he was very disappointed with how Son of Kong turned out and wanted to retcon it. The general plotline and some concept art drawn by Obie himself has been in circulation for years now. The film would have revolved around Kong (revealed to have survived his fall in New York and had been secretly smuggled back to Skull Island by Carl Denham) doing battle with the Ginko (a creation of one of Frankenstein's descendants made from a hodgepodge of African animals) in San Francisco.

Image

On reflection, it's sort of funny how many unmade kaiju films were set in San Francisco (Kong vs Frankenstein, The Volcano Monsters, Godzilla: King of the Monsters 3D, and the unmade 1994 Rossio-Elliot TriStar Godzilla script off the top of my head)
Huh, neat. In the fantasy I was dreaming up I'd have stuck with the fall having killed Kong and Dr. Frankenstein (or a descendant) would bring the great ape back to life. Which in my imaginary continuity is why Kong is powered by lightning when King Kong vs. Godzilla comes around, lightning having already brought him back before.

Weird. And 2014 Godzilla actually ended in San Fran. I mean, there are other west coast cities. Personally I'd like to see a kaiju topple the Space Needle.
Well...

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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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I found the plot summary for Continuation:King Kong vs Godzilla to be very interesting. The script was written by Shinichi Sekizawa who wrote the script for King Kong vs Godzilla. There is a scene where a group of entrepreneurs raise Godzillas carcass from the bottom of the Ocean off of the coast of Atami and bring it to an island in the Seto Inland Sea to turn into a tourist attraction. Of course it turns out Godzilla is only comatose and not dead, but the fact that the same script writer from the previous film had Godzillas "corpse" raised from the same spot that the final battle in the previous film took place, pretty much tells you that Kong was indeed the winner in the previous film.
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

Post by SickleFeather »

By any chance, does it say anything about the "Baboon: A Tale about a Yeti" project in LeMay's book?
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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^ Yes that's in there.
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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cloverfan98 wrote:
Mr. Yellow wrote:I love pulling the thread of influence. Obie inspired so many who then turned around to inspire many more after. As Ray Harryhausen put it, “That’s why the way the snowball goes.” I know Kong inspired Tsuburaya, but Beast from 20,000 Fathoms had a big influence as well.
Makes me sad that Ray hated the Godzilla films because Tsuburaya was just like him. A kindred spirit who was also influenced by Obie.
I can understand the feeling, since Ray knew O'Brien personally and the cheapness of suitmation must have felt like an insult to stop-motion animators.
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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Which is ironic because suitmation does stop motion’s job ten times better.
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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^ I got to go with stop motion on that one.
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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I like both and respect both. Tsuburaya had intended to use stop motion before realizing it was too expensive.
"Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy. They do not attack people because they want to, but because of their size and strength, mankind has no other choice but to defend himself. After several stories such as this, people end up having a kind of affection for the monsters. They end up caring about them." - Ishiro Honda

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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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UltramanGoji wrote:Which is ironic because suitmation does stop motion’s job ten times better.
I respectfully disagree. While suitmation can look incredible when done right, stop motion tends to look more real.
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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Stop Motion Kong is scarier to me than suit Kong.


I can't place my finger on why.
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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_JNavs_ wrote:Stop Motion Kong is scarier to me than suit Kong.


I can't place my finger on why.
There's something fundamentally uncanny about stop motion. Well, really about animation in general. Our brain knows we're watching something move that just should not be moving.
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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It's apples and oranges for me. Suitmation can certainly have a more organic feel, whereas stop motion's movements can be naturally jerky, but there's certainly a more time-consuming, careful feel with (good) stop motion. When done well, I see an equal amount of craftsmanship put into both.

I've never heard that Ray Harryhausen disliked Godzilla movies, but if so, that's pretty upsetting. While I enjoy the Harryhausen movies I've seen, I'd call very few superior to Toho's monster outputs from the "Golden Age" (Again, apart from the debatable monster portions of them).

Its a pretty common viewpoint for old, curmudgeonly "monster kids" to have disdain for Japanese monster movies, viewing them as little more than cheap, childish crap, but view the likes of It Came from Beneath the Sea or 20 Million Miles to Earth as masterpieces. Pretty stupid.
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

Post by Terasawa »

eabaker wrote:
_JNavs_ wrote:Stop Motion Kong is scarier to me than suit Kong.


I can't place my finger on why.
There's something fundamentally uncanny about stop motion. Well, really about animation in general. Our brain knows we're watching something move that just should not be moving.
It could also be that there is no natural motion blur from stop motion animation that you'd see from literally anything else.
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

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Terasawa wrote:
eabaker wrote:
_JNavs_ wrote:Stop Motion Kong is scarier to me than suit Kong.


I can't place my finger on why.
There's something fundamentally uncanny about stop motion. Well, really about animation in general. Our brain knows we're watching something move that just should not be moving.
It could also be that there is no natural motion blur from stop motion animation that you'd see from literally anything else.
Well, yes, that's probably the factor that most clearly clues the viewer in to the fact that the thing should not be/is not actually moving.
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Re: King Kong Tribute Thread (THE REAL KING KONG!)

Post by UltramanGoji »

Stop motion, as a visual effect in an otherwise normal live-action film, has never once looked convincing to me. Ever.

Do I enjoy it? Absolutely. It's a fun and creative effect. But that doesn't instantly translate to me thinking it's a convincing effect.

Kong '33 is my favorite incarnation of the big ape, but as far as the most convincing Kong on screen, the 1976 version absolutely trumps it. Does that mean all suitmation effects are better than stop motion? Not necessarily, but 9 times out of 10, the suitmation does a much better job at portraying a fictional creature in the world of the film.

This:

Image

...does not convince me that the hydra is actually engaging with the environment around it. It's movements are way too jerky which immediately ruin any and all immersion. It's compositing is too contrasting with the live footage of the actor.

This:

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...does do a brilliant job of convincing me that Godzilla's actually interacting with his environment. Why? Because the suit's actually in the environment! And there's an actual person performing the motions (though an argument can definitely be made that stop-motion animators are themselves a kind of actor but I digress).

Is stop motion fun? Absolutely. Is it creative and a prime example of fantastic animating ability and craftsmanship? You bet. Is it a more convincing/better effect? No. And it never will be.

Unless...

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...the entire world is created through the technique. Films like those from Laika and Aardman excel at stop motion because they are not restricted by essentially being a composite effect with nothing to interact with. With the models being the "actors" and not just the "effect", it allows for the audience to be fully immersed because nothing in the film's environment is contrasting.

Does that make sense? I'll try to summarize it:

Stop motion, while a creative and commendable technique, ultimately fails at portraying a realistic creature juxtaposed with a real environment because the stop motion model is not actually interacting with anything and is often noticeably composited into the shot. Suitmation excels at portraying a realistic creature juxtaposed with a real environment because the suit actually exists in the environment and can interact with it. Stop motion excels best when it is the sole technique a film is composed of because there is no distraction from a contrasting environment.
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