Re: Kong 2005 - A Big......Disappointment....why?...let me count the ways...

[James Farlow <farlow@ipfw.edu>]

But to criticize a sci-fi movie by claiming that certain scenes violate
the laws of physics or the laws of nature is, IMHO, a waste of time.  If
all of the scenes in KK were believable, then it wouldn't be science
fiction.


Forgive me for jumping in here again.  Up to a point, I agree with the
sentiment expressed above.  Obviously if one is going to enjoy SF and
sci-fi  (and most readers of this message presumably know the
difference)  you have to be willing to bend the rules a bit.  When I
read SF, for example, I am willing to consider the possibility of faster
than light travel, even though our present understanding of physics is
against it.  But if too many rules are bent, eventually I reach a point
where I am no longer willing to do this.

In the case of King Kong, I am willing to suspend a lot of ecological
rules about landmass area, minimum viable population density, and
maximum animal body mass that some of you will know I spend a fair bit
of time thinking about.  I am also willing to ignore the likely problems
of creating a 10-tonne ape that is geometrically similar to an ape 1/20
its body mass.  But when that 10-tonne ape is then depicted doing things
that only a gibbon or siamang, say, is likely to be able to do, and when
a bunch of other very big animals do the same unlikely things, my
willingness to suspend disbelief is stretched to the breaking point.

I can overlook such flaws in the 1933 version of King Kong.  But it is
now approaching a century later, and when Jackson's presentation shows
little wllingness to take into account much of what we know now that we
didn't know in the early 1930s about how very big animals work, I start
to lose patience.

Jurassic Park film I depends on what is probably as ridiculous a premise
as faster than light travel.  But after that, the movie for the most
part (OK, sorry about that Dilophosaurus, and the genius dromaeosaurids)
portrays the animals in a manner consistent with what real animals might
in fact do.  Somebody CARED, dammit, and it made the fantastic elements
of the movie easier to swallow.

In my opinion, Jackson just didn't care, and that ruined his version of
the movie for me.  I'm quite sorry about this, because--as I said in my
previous message--I went into his Kong expecting to like it better than
Cooper's.