Wed, November 9, 2005
Look at the Monkey—10:18 AM
Universal has released a teaser poster for December's King Kong, and it's a really impressive rendering. Posterwire.com (the movie poster weblog) thinks it looks a little too perfect, but I think the texture and character design are remarkable and the shot doesn't feel overly "arranged" to me.
We saw the latest trailer for King Kong on Jarhead this weekend, and although the story seems to be in keeping with Peter Jackson's overuse of majesty in recent years, the animation is clearly top notch. Kong looks great in all kinds of grunting, flailing, swashbuckling action – and there's a shot of a dinosaur going over a cliff that's just packed with nuance. Weta is really showing themselves to be quite a powerhouse of high quality animation: the characters move and react with exquisitely realized force and weight. The detail is really astonishing.
It's getting harder and harder to impress audiences (especially me) with CG effects because now that anything is possible, nothing is special. (This is one of the things that bothered me about LOTR.) The powerhouse visual effects movies of the future will be the ones that employ the technology intelligently – focusing on detail, nuance, and most of all, story. A digital army of millions is ho-hum, but a computer-generated Kong, as the emotional center of the movie, could be quite a thing to see.
I'm sure there are lots more pictures on KongisKing.net – I haven't dipped into it, because I cracked the door open to Blue Tights a while ago, and it gobbled up a whole weekend with all the insider details and fascinating "video diary" segments to explore.
