King Kong: Then & Now

After watching and crying buckets over Peter Jackson's remake of "King Kong", I got interested in watching the 1933 original by Cooper & Schoedsack (thanks, Noel).

Here are some of the things I noticed:

The Jack Driscoll then (Bruce Cabot) was more of the leading man/hero type than Adrien Brody. I don't think there's chemistry between Adrien & Naomi.

I have nuthin against Jack Black (love him in "School of Rock") but I like the original Carl Denham more.

Ann Darrow then (Fay Wray) was a candidate for an ear plug commercial. She's screaming all the time. The Ann now, portrayed by Naomi Watts, has more depth and personality. I remember in the latest King Kong, they said sumpthin like "Fay" wasn't available to portray the leading lady. That's cool ;oP

The natives are 10x scarier in the latest King Kong. They didn't need dialogue to express what they want (unlike in the original where one guy actually talked to the chief in the native language, which is ridiculous to me). The way the native abducted Ann was more imaginative in Jackson's version too.

If you plan to watch the original, watch out for Jack Driscoll's reaction when he saw Kong for the first time. That was priceless. I like Black's reaction this time.

In the original version, a brontosaurus gobbled some crew of Driscoll. Hellooo, I thought brontosaurs are plant-eating dinosaurs?

There was a T-Rex fight scene too in the old version. In here, the T-Rex was bigger than Kong. I give props to Jackson for raising the bar. Fighting 3 T-Rexes is THE highlight of "King Kong" for me. By the way, in the end where King Kong was opening & closing the broken jaw of the T-Rex (which I found hilarious) was also included in the original. I thought that was new.

When Carl presented Kong to the world in the original, it lacked oomph! I like the latest version. It's sooo Broadway-ish.

Of course, I didn't cry in the original version. Kong looks cartoonish. WETA workshop did a magnificent job in creating a very charismatic and believable Kong.