Well, this was five dollars and well worth it. The new creatures in the film were worth it. But hwat makes this film worth it is the endless behind the scenes stuff. It's almost as if the LOTR special editions were the story of Peter Jackson and company and what they are doing and how they make films and the KK EE is just a continuation from those disks. You get to see the the origins of the project preLOTR and then the development using post LOTR tech. It's almost liek you can watch the behind the scenes stuff of the LOTR films and this one in sequence.
I got a little emotional in the feature with the first visit to NY. I liked the scenes about visiting the ESB but also the scenes where they meet Fay Wray. When they report her dying it's genuinely emotional for Jackson. If it was me doing the documentaries, I would have added one thing to that part, something I remember seeing when I was in NY when Fay Wray died, that, at night, they lit the ESB a bit differently in tribute to her. I think a shot of that would have been a good button to end that part of the documentary.
The documentaries here are of the same quality of the LOTR ones, and its interesting to see how they did it. Most interesting is their duplication of NYC in NZ... and how they used LOTR's MASSIVE technology to make crowds and cars, and how they wrote a NEW program to create the buildings in the city..
What is so interesting for me is that I like the movie but I don't think it entirely succeeds... Kong after a while looks too animated, too obviously CGI. but he still looks good (odd, with LOTR, WETA trounced ILM in creating effects...LOTR vs TPM.. but then with Transformers, ILM trounced WETA... Optimus Prime vs KK) but I enjoy watching commentaries for films that are not perfect.
I like comment in there that KK is a truely cinematic story, told only in film and the epitome of that medium in its different eras, and, though a sound story, is not based on any particular book.
I still don't quite know if I know the allure that this story is to Jackson, though he does go into a lot of depth on that. But I think I understand why he made it, what the allure is, in one particular shot that really almost sells me on the whole project. It's my favorite shot of the film, from the music to the look of it, to the fact that you know wht's going to happen next, but in a good way, because its like aforeboding, like you've come this far and destiny is unavoidable. The shot I'm talking about has Kong racing first climbing the ESB and the camera starts in close and eventually pans out almost a mile to show the majestic building being lit by spotlights. The music in the film is lit by spotlights. It's beautiful.
The film is an odd thing: the story is exactly the same as the old version, but longer. One of the reasons that it is so much longer is that they wanted to have the same things happen in it but not ahve the reason for these things happen be so clear cut. Denham knows of the island but he doesn't know what's there, whereas in the original he knows what's there and where to find it (which isn't dramatic). There are many moments like that, things that they decided to make a little more gray for this film.
