Kong
 a TRUE FANEDIT by The Man Behind The Mask This edit of Peter Jackson’s KING KONG is radically shorter, attempting to match the length to the 1933 original. The overdose of creatures as well as unnecessary exaggerations are gone for a truly fast-paced adventure. This is not a grindhouse version. member ratings: |
(16 votes, average: 8.31 out of 10, rated)
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INTENTION AND EDITING DETAILS:
I am a huge fan of King Kong.
The 1933 original is one of the movies I surely saw more than 30 times in the early 80’s. You know, all the children love to watch and re-watch the same thing again and again. For me it was King Kong (1933) and Star Wars.
When I saw the 2005 version I loved it. It was not too long for me and the DVD extended version (which I used for this edit) neither.
But I totally understand people “complaining” about the length of this movie, the useless scenes and all.
Another usual complain was the choice of Jack Black as one of the lead actor. But frankly I did not know much about Jack Black when I first saw the movie (he was not that famous in France back then, at least not to me) and I found him good. The kind of character we like to hate.
So why editing KING KONG if I like it?
- Because I think a radical short version of this movie is needed. Several fanedits already exist but I wanted to match King Kong 2005 lenght to the 1933 version. So I tried to find the 2005 scenes that fit the purpose of the 1933 ones.
- I also think Peter Jackson has gone a bit berserk with all the creatures attacks. They, most of it, are still in my edit, but heavily trimmed.
- They arrive at Skull Island in about 20 minutes while it takes an eternity in the original.
- Driscoll now only share one or two lines of dialogue with Ann. And I think it still works well.
- I also added a minute of the original 1933 score somewhere in the movie.
- the 2 deleted scenes are not as good quality as the rest of the movie. Sorry for that. But they are only 1 minute each, and they are watchable.
This is not a grindhouse edit this time! No special effects added, no gags or twisted ending: this is Peter Jackson’s King Kong fast-paced.
Disclaimer: You must own the original movie before acquiring any FanEdited movie. We here at FanEdit.org respect the company’s copyrights, and don’t want to infringe on any company’s rights. Thank you, FE!
Maybe downloadable from Fanedit.info (enter and download at your own risk and responsibility)
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Looking for this now!
‘This is not a grindhouse edit this time! No special effects added, no gags or twisted ending’ Just a note, a grindhouse edit sounds so good:-)
Review by chancer127 — February 24, 2010 @ 10:28 am
Just finished watching this.
I didn’t notice any bad edits (audio or video), and overall, the finished product was MUCH better than the version that I saw in the cinema.
To go from 200 minutes to 108 minutes obviously means a lot of cutting. However, I can’t say that I noticed any missing footage (apart from the scene with the big bugs, and that didn’t add anything to the story anyway. ) There were not any parts of the story that made me think ” how did that happen/ what’s going on),, which, to me, just means good story telling.
As there are no audio/video glitches noticeable, I have to give this 9/10 ( only because 10/10 is reserved for the lord of the rings trilogy)
Well done!
Just my thoughts
Review by bobschebaldi — February 26, 2010 @ 12:40 am
I never saw this movie in the theater because of how terrible the other remake of the original “King Kong” was. So I had no frame of reference or pre-conceived notions for this edit. I was actually very excited to DL this FE and watch it.
As bobschebaldi said, the technical aspects of this one is excellent. No rough cuts etc noticeable and the audio/video quality is perfect – as I have come to expect from TMBTM. I saw no “plot holes” or “huh?’ moments via the editing. Great job!
As far as the movie itself, I just don’t care for it. (This has nothing to do with TMBTM’s edit or ability). I am not quite certain why, but this movie just couldn’t keep my entire attention (I found myself surfing the net and skimming through the FE forum while I watched this movie). Maybe it’s the “over the top acting” from most of the main characters; maybe it’s the script; and it’s probably a lot because of Jack Black – I’m just not sure why I didn’t care for the movie.
Review by flyboy707 — March 1, 2010 @ 3:28 am
Watched this today yippeee!
However i did kinda feel there was a couple of “plot holes†& “huh?’ moments. There’s the escape and fall from kongs mountain & the kong falling in the sea a sleep moment. (How did they get him on the ship????)
I have seen the original and this is far better, this edit moves along a good pace.
Review by chancer127 — March 1, 2010 @ 11:04 pm
I gave it a 9 out of 10.
As usual, The Man delivers.
I watched it with my son and he really liked how they hurry up and get on the island already, as did I.
Jack Black seems to be even more annoying, but that’s probably his purpose in this movie anyway.
As for getting Kong on the ship, I’m pretty sure it is never shown in the 1933 original or PJ’s version. I forget about the 1976/Jeff Bridges version (which I did like)
Artistic license and all that jazz I guess.
Review by zeppelinrox — March 8, 2010 @ 8:46 pm
Kong by The Man Behind The Mask
review by boon23
Prologue:
I am a bit late to the party, wanted to watch it last month, but just never felt the necessary motivation to do so. Why? Because it’s a King Kong fanedit. I don’t love that movie. It is bloated, superficial, has a lot of the “Emmerich Godzilla” effect and simply just tells the plot from the wrong point of view IMO. Other than that it has some truly great moments and a wonderful finale. More was possible, more did not happen. Now I really like TMBTM personally and I think he is a super talented faneditor, so of course I wanted to watch his new fanedit – even though it was King Kong. My expectations were mixed, because I simply could not imagine this movie suddenly being good, when there is still Jack Black in it.
As for all my reviews: this is just my personal opinion of this fanedit. I cannot tell anybody else, if he or she will experience it in the same way or the opposite. So my review is not objective and does not reflect the opinion of fanedit.org.
!!!!This review contains heavy spoilers!!!
The edit:
We get a wonderfully condensed version of the movie. Nothing is missing even though almost half the movie was deleted, which is a truly incredible achievement and just shows how bloated the original was. Gone are all the tedious moments in the beginning, where the characters get introduced for a long time without getting anywhere close to Skull Island, because that’s where we want to be. Well, not exactly, there are still too many dinosaurs and too many victims to rescue one person. The reasons for the actions of the people are as odd as they are in the original. But at least we are getting to Kong and Anne quickly, which is nice, because it is just there, where the movie starts to build an emotional atmosphere. What TMBTM took away from these moments was for the truly greater good, without losing one bit of impact. Kong saves Anne from certain death, he is protecting her and taking care of her. While his fascination in an ant-like creature can never be really understood, her reasons to like him are way more obvious. They shared the sunset.
The hunch for Anne is still not great, most of all because I still don’t know what I am actually watching. Is it a monster action movie? Is it a love story? Is it an adventure? The scenes are not bad, but what is missing in both the original and the fanedit is the emotional impact. I don’t think anything can be done about that, so I just thank TMBTM for making it all shorter.
The part of Denham gets the biggest improvement (by cutting a lot of his scenes). The part of Driscoll loses most of what it had and makes his reasons to do anythign for Anne very obscure. The part of Bruce Baxter almost does not happen anymore.
The New York finale is very well done and absolutely the highlight if this fanedit, except for the “it was beauty that killed the beast” line. I will always hate it and I still do.
editing: 10 of 10 (great editing decisions, no hard cuts, perfect plot even though half the movie is gone.)
entertainment: 7 of 10 (I enjoyed it a lot more than the original, but it’s still not a great movie and I hope I will never have to watch it again – the original got a 5 of 10 from me on imdb )
Image and video quality:
Perfect.
Video quality: 10 of 10
Audio editing and audio quality:
audio quality was perfect.
audio editing: 10 of 10
sound quality: 10 of 10
resulting in a 10 of 10 for overall audio
presentation:
The fanedit comes with about everything a good presentation needs. Cool title, self made credits (although not really informative for the changes, they just give us the name of tmbtm), cover art, trailer, a bonus feature (which could have been longer), nice menus.
Great!
9 of 10 for overall presentation
Final result: 8 of 10 (because I stick to my opinion of not rating a movie more than 1 star higher than the overall entertainment was for me.
It’s not a great movie now, but truly an improvement over the original. It’s a fast paced and entertaining watch and I can recommend this version to anyone who has the need to watch King Kong again. This is the best version there is.
Review by boon23 — April 15, 2010 @ 2:55 pm
Well, unlike many of the reviewers here, I do like the original movie. But, though I enjoyed it, it certainly had a number of flaws that kept it from being as good a movie as it could have been. This cut fixes nearly all those flaws and the final product is the best version of Kong I’ve seen other than the 1933 movie (which is a classic but also not perfect).
The pacing is much improved, more so than I would have thought possible. All the important parts of the story are still present and much padding and over-long development is gone. Very little of the material cut is missed. The only time I felt something missing was in the early restaruant scene where Denham convinces Ann Darrow to come by mentioning Driscoll is involved. Although I was impressed by the very clever use of dialogue from another scene inserted into this scene to bring Driscoll in to the discussion, since we no longer have the scenes that showed how much Darrow wanted to work with Driscoll, her reaction in the new edit seems to come from no where. I can live with it but it is a bit jarring.
I very much enjoyed how some of the scenes on the island were trimmed to just enough to carry the story (the giant bugs in the crevice and Kong and the dinos swinging and fighting in the vines). Both scenes went on much too long in the original movie, so much so that they became silly and comical instead of dramatic. This cut gives us just enough. The one scene that should have been cut still more or, even better, completely eliminated, was the dino stampede. This was simply unbelievable in the original movie and is still too long in this edit.
Though I did like the original movie, I expect that this is the version I will watch from now on. It’s not perfect, but it is damn good.
Review by Blackhawk — July 9, 2010 @ 11:27 pm
(NOTE: Forgive me, I’m blatantly copying boom23’s review style. ^_^() )
Prologue:
I’m a giant monster fan. I adore King Kong, Godzilla, and all the rest – to me, they’re awesome fun! While I loved Peter Jackson’s take on King Kong, I’ve always felt he let himself indulge too much. I mean, seriously, there’s no reason he had to take three hours to tell a story that originally took only 100 minutes! When I discovered Fanedit.org, King Kong ‘05 was one of the first films I thought of taking a crack at. So, as you’d imagine, finding The Man Behind the Mask’s attempt at reigning this bad boy in caught my eye: Kong ‘05, in the same runtime as the original? His intentions were great, so I decided to take a look.
The Edit:
The first problem we ran into was the beginning.
While everyone agrees that Mr. Jackson took WAY too long getting to Skull Island, I feel this edit goes in the opposite direction: we get there WAY TOO FAST. The whole first act feels rushed now: we meet Carl, we meet Ann, and they leave New York in what felt like the blink of an eye. While I had no issue with the early Jack Black scenes that were cut (and removing the lame pretext for Adrien Brody joining the expedition was a great decision), at least part of Naomi Watt’s original introduction should have been retained – as it stands, I’m left wondering why I should care at all about her when Jack Black is obviously the main character now. This problem continues onto the ship portion. Again, while many of the cuts were good (removing the slo-mo “S-K-U-L-L…” nonsense was great and totally unmissed), I felt as if some important character development was missing. I still wasn’t sure why I should care about Ann Darrow, and the romantic subplot was so subdued/subtle it was easy to miss if you weren’t looking for at. I don’t recall Jack and Ann ever actually speaking to each other on the ship at all…it makes their interest in each other seem rather forced, when the original didn’t seem nearly as awkward.
Where this edit really picks up is on the island: almost all of the changes were for the better, although considering how much of a rush we were to get to Skull Island there is a substantial lack of either Kong or the dinosaurs once we get there. While I understand wanting to remove the Vaudeville scene (great job with that, by the way), the result ended up being Kong literally sitting around doing nothing for what felt like an eternity. Also, and this probably only for me ’cause I LOVED the original version, the T-Rex fight felt a bit too short (although, you did a good job cutting it up – I didn’t notice anything missing, I just felt it). On the other hand, I LOVE what you did with the Spider Pit scene: now it’s perfect!
The best overall was probably the final New York sequence. Nothing cut was missed, the new inclusions were great, and the shorter final battle didn’t feel any different – hell, I almost forgot that it was originally much longer!
Editing: 8 out of 10 (overall good choices, but the first act feels rushed and main characters aren’t developed enough.)
Entertainment: 6 out of 10 (As bloated as PJ’s cut is, I overall enjoyed the original more – the theatrical cut is 9 out of 10 for me.)
Video:
Excellent. I didn’t notice any pixelation or artifacts.
10 out of 10
Audio:
Overall, the quality is great. A few times I noticed the score change suddenly, though it was lessen by good use of audio transitions. Not really a fault of yours, there’s only so much that can be done, right?
9 out of 10
DVD:
Nice new menu and good bonus features! ^_^
10 out of 10
FINAL RESULT: 7 out of 10
I’m sorry, but rushing the first act so much just hurt the whole film for me and seriously lessened the entertainment value. A good try and worth watching, though it’s not replacing Peter Jackson’s cut just yet.
Review by Pkmatrix — October 11, 2010 @ 4:34 am
Great edit. It makes this movie watchable for me now, especially as an homage to the original. As others have mentioned, this edit really shows just how superficial and bloated the PJ version is. As much as TMBTM cut, quite frankly, even more could have been cut. I could have done without one of the search party monster scenes entirely.
One thing that would have been nice to have more of is some bonding time on Skull Island with Kong and Naomi Watts. I never fully buy into their strong connection, but as a fun eye candy movie done in the style of old Hollywood I am able to suspend my disbelief. Plus Naomi Watts helps to sell it with her graceful beauty and always amazing acting performance. Because I can only imagine what lengths I might personally go to in order to be with her and keep her safe, I can almost imagine myself as the big blundering ape. This is the level at which Kong works for me. TMBTM mostly captures this feeling. At the end with the line, “No, it was beauty killed the beast,” I am left a satisfied viewer. I turn off the TV contemplatively thinking God, ain’t that the truth.
9/10
Review by geminigod — August 16, 2011 @ 8:30 pm
This was just fantastic! It’s about as perfect as King Kong could be. The main problem with Peter Jackson is his story-telling. He’s an incredible filmmaker but he’s decided to just throw out the tried and true \Three Act Structure\. His King Kong was amazing to watch… once. When I watched it a second time I skipped a lot of scenes. The way you put this together really follows a proper structure.
I was incredible impressed by how well the first Act came out (the first 25 minutes or so). We understand essentially who the characters are and what puts them on the boat without making a big deal out of it.
As well, I was glad that you toned down the idea of Ann falling in love with Kong. That always disturbed me about Jackson’s film. Here you make it that she’s just a good person and doesn’t want to see him harmed.
Overall:
9/10
Review by Neglify — September 17, 2011 @ 7:44 am