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

[Phil Bigelow <bigelowp@juno.com>]

All valid points.

I'm the type of guy who will watch  "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and
get angry because the two robots sitting in the row in front of me won't
stop talking!   ;-)

I don't invite friends over to watch Sci-Fi Channel movies anymore
because they keep asking annoying questions such as:

"Why are the children in Godzilla movies:
1) almost always male?
2) always running around in groups like a swarm of bees?
3) manage to get walk-in access to the Army's  top secret weapons
laboratories (and then are promptly ignored by the adults in the room)?
4) never get killed?"

My response was "Because it wouldn't be an authentic Godzilla movie
without the funky children."

But I have contributed my share as well.  Two of my most famous
conversation killers were:  "Do you think that Godzilla has an ossified
furcula, a cartilaginous furcula, or none at all?."

and:

"The bottom of Gozilla's tail must have evolved some seriously bitchin'
osteoderms, eh?."

The silence that followed was so intense that we could hear my cat
snoring in the next room.

<pb>
--


On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 17:07:26 EST ZBBrox@aol.com writes:
>  
> <pb> writes--
> "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."
>  
> To be fair, I think this is a slight oversimplification. I think one 
> can  
> legitimately criticize a movie for not adhering to its own internal 
> logic.  
> However, the logic of the universe created in the film need not be 
> the logic of  
> our universe. We have a movie, in King Kong, about a 25 foot ape. At 
> that point, 
>  criticizing the physics of the film is silly. An example of where I 
> think a  
> criticism like this is justifiable is in "The Lost World" (i.e. 
> JP2). 
> Jurassic  Park, both in the book and the first film, went to some 
> length to make a 
> science  fiction movie that was, in a way, futurist (i.e., not 
> science fiction 
> in the  sense of making-up-bad-science, but extending present-day 
> science to a  
> theoretically possible conclusion and examining the effects). 
> Because they go 
>  into detail, much of it accurate, about the science involved, they 
> open  
> themselves up to much more criticism on questions of realism. 
> Therefore, when a  
> raptor (which is almost entirely dense muscle and bone) leaps on the 
> back of a 
>  small girl and she simply shrugs off her backpack to escape this 
> sudden 
> pressing  mass of death, well... That's just silly.
>  
> But the fact is, King Kong is sci-fi in the way Star Wars is 
> sci-fi--it  
> deals in passing with scientific topics as part of the setting for 
> an  
> action/adventure story. Criticizing the science of these things is 
> rather like  
> criticizing the character development in an Asimov book. It ain't 
> there, it  ain't 
> meant to be there, and if that's all you're interested in, you've 
> picked  the 
> wrong form of entertainment.
> 
> 


--
"Am I crazy, Jerry?  Am I?  Or, I am SO sane that you just blew your
mind?!" - Kramer