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Kong Mirrors Real Evolutionary Paths 185
CNN has an article pointing out that, though King Kong may be a little extreme, evolutionary gigantism is not out of the question on remote islands. From the article: "There are many examples of what biologists term 'gigantism' on islands. These include the Komodo dragons, the world's largest lizards which can be 10 feet long or more and weigh up to 500 pounds. Found on a few small Indonesian islands, the Komodo -- a recorded man-eater -- is in many ways as chilling as anything from Jackson's fertile imagination."
Hype time already? (Score:5, Insightful)
CNN should label these articles as advertisements. There's little science in the story, and certainly nothing new.
King Kong is about human behaviours, not evolution (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. Although, having said that, I was suprised by the new King Kong film. It really does try to do something new with an old film, rather than just watering it down and selling it as a basic adventure or feel-good movie.
King Kong isn't really about big creatures or evolution, though. It's about how humans are sacrificing nature on the altar of concrete monuments to our own "achievements".
Re:King Kong is about human behaviours, not evolut (Score:2)
Re:King Kong is about human behaviours, not evolut (Score:5, Funny)
One thing I don't get.... (Score:2)
Maybe they just drank too much seawater out there on the perimeter, or something....
Re:One thing I don't get.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:One thing I don't get.... (Score:2)
Well just look at the size of the rabbits in Australia - except they call them Kangaroos.
Seriously though, I remember one travel ad for Australia that went something like' don't worry about the snakes in the outback-none of them are bigger than our earthworms (but the earthworms are 6 feet long)'.
Re:Hype time already? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hype time already? (Score:4, Interesting)
Most readers probably only got as far as "You shouldn't blame CNN" before sighing with relief (that CNN isn't a bad guy) and moving on to the next post. You need to get your point across in succinct sound bites.
"CNN good. Society Bad."
Re:Hype time already? (Score:3, Insightful)
That "society" you talk about happens to include you. Unless somehow you've been magically exempted from the ranks of short-attention-spanned pleasure seekers.
Max
Re:Hype time already? (Score:3, Insightful)
How Kong Gets Media Attention Online (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdot: "Kong Mirrors Real Evolutionary Paths"
Something Awful: "After watching King Kong, how many times did you cut yourself?"
Digg: "Kong-inspired PC Case Mod! OMFG!!"
Craigslist: "I will have sex with you for two tickets to King Kong premier."
eBay: "Folding table used by catering company on Kong movie set to be auctioned off starting at US$50,000"
Fark: "Man sues waffle house for refusing service to him while dressed as a giant ape. Your dog wants t
Jackson's imagination?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to say that the man isn't creative or imaginative, but he certainly didn't invent King Kong...or the brachiosaurus or the T-Rex or the Velociraptor or or or....
Re:Jackson's imagination?? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Jackson's imagination?? (Score:2)
Re:Jackson's imagination?? (Score:2)
Re:Jackson's imagination?? (Score:2)
The original:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024216/ [imdb.com]
The second remake:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074751/ [imdb.com]
Jackson's:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360717/ [imdb.com]
Re:Jackson's imagination?? (Score:2)
Re:Jackson's imagination?? (Score:2)
Re:Jackson's imagination?? (Score:5, Informative)
Which were not imagined by Jackson either. But his film does a great job of re-imagining them.
There were two instances of lost footage from the original King Kong. One was the lost spider pit footage. As in Jackson's version, this scene would have occurred after the crewmen were tossed from the log. The surviving crewmen were attacked and killed by spider and crab like creatures.
It's not certain how much of this scene was filmed, but some pre-production drawings were definitely done. If it was filmed, it's likely that Merian Cooper destroyed the footage since he felt it broke the momentum of the film.
The other footage was the material that was censored in 1938. About 4 1/2 minutes were cut, some of which is replicated in Jackson's film. Kong drops a woman from a building after finding it's not Ann Darrow, pulls off some of Darrow's clothing, grinds a native into the ground with his foot and a little more of the same. This footage was later found in an uncensored print from the UK and restored.
The new 2-disc DVD has the restored 1933 version and includes some pretty cool extras -- apparently, Jackson decided to do a little side project while making Kong. He shot some stop-motion footage to recreate the techniques used to animate Kong, as well as recreating the lost spider pit scene. The extras show this recreation in detail, including Jackson's trip to the hospital to x-ray his original dinosaur puppet from the 1933 film so they can recreate the armature for it. It's worth a look if you're a fan of the original film.
Leave Jackson out of this! (Score:2, Funny)
HAH! Let's see now... The Lord of the Rings and King Kong. Yeah, real original.
While I loved LOTR (haven't seen Kong), let's call a spade a spade, shall we?
Re:Leave Jackson out of this! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Leave Jackson out of this! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Leave Jackson out of this! (Score:3, Informative)
Don't know about Kong, but LotR is actually fairly different from the book. It was by many considered to be "unfilmable" and indeed, many parts were cut (Tom Bombadil), changed & added (helm's deep, Galadriel, gollum's demise, sam turning back), transplanted (saruman's defeat, descripion of gray havens), reshuffled (entire timeline of second and third book) and so on.
Not only do I think a lot of originality went into the film
Re:Leave Jackson out of this! (Score:2, Informative)
That's funny, because even Australians know that spades and shovels are two different tools. A spade has a flat blade. A shovel is more like a scoop.
Re:Leave Jackson out of this! (Score:2)
Jackson's imagination? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Jackson's imagination? (Score:2)
Not 'evolved' just better fed. (Score:5, Interesting)
The house mice -- believed to have made their way to Gough decades ago on sealing and whaling ships -- have evolved to about three times their normal size.
I have raised a couple of generations of house mice from a captured pair at my parent's place, and while that original pair were the same size as any other house mouse, about an inch and a half from nose to the base of their tail, their offspring raised in my tank and fed well (ok, overfed
They were certainly fatter, but also MUCH larger at a base level.
Re:Not 'evolved' just better fed. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not 'evolved' just better fed. (Score:2)
BTW, its not just that they are bigger than normal mice, they are also more aggressive. They have been known to attack birds much larger than themselves (and have become a threat to the local bird populations).
Re:Not 'evolved' just better fed. (Score:2)
Re:Not 'evolved' just better fed. (Score:3, Funny)
What? Hundreds of Tyrannosaurus-Rexes, of course!
Re:Not 'evolved' just better fed. (Score:2)
What this really means... (Score:2)
Re:What this really means... (Score:2)
First of all, they can't control them because most Inde studios are in another country. Second, there are no laws preventing Inde studios from making films. And third, Hollywood studios don't usually get to share in the profits of a Inde film that makes it big until the time to distribute it on DVD comes along.
Why do you think it took so long for Inde films finally get recognition in the Oscars?
Re:Peter Jackson is from NZ :) (Score:2)
Side note on Kodomo dragons (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2005/11/21/w
My choice quote - at the very end, and the only tenuous link to the present subject:
Re:Side note on Kodomo dragons (Score:2)
Re:Side note on Kodomo dragons (Score:3, Informative)
I propose a new term! (Score:4, Interesting)
Being the cool dudes we are, let's shorten that to CFA. There's nothing even mildly interesting in the linked article. It reads like an advertisement for King Kong.
Re: I propose a new term! (Score:2)
There are an awful lot of "articles" nowadays that happen to coincide with a movie or DVD release.
Anyone actually see the movie? (Score:3, Interesting)
Fluff piece (Score:4, Insightful)
*JACKSON*'s imagination? (Score:2)
Re:*JACKSON*'s imagination? (Score:2)
Fran has writing credits in Kong, which is harder to mess up since there is no canonical form of the story for her to deviate from. I haven't seen it but I'm guessing the gorilla-heroine romance gets developed to hell in this ver
Re:*JACKSON*'s imagination? (Score:2)
Liv Tyler and ELVES AT HELMS DEEP just totally make my nuts SCREAM in agony. Nevermind the original Tolkein incongruity of Teh Undead Army - I can almost stomach that, but man. Liv and the overdone, nuked-to-DEATH sequence of over-endings put me off. Probably because I had to pee.
I've seen some of the commentary on a couple of the movies - a friend of mine STILL tents his fucking khakis at the mention of anything even related to LOTR - and from what I've seen, I completely agre
Gigantism in People (Score:3, Interesting)
Stretch your mind back to childhood. What giants do you remember? Jack and the Beanstalk? Hercules? Paul Bunyan? Goliath? What were you told and what did you read? With the exception of Goliath and an occasional ornery cyclops, legends emphasized their innate goodness, eye-popping feats accomplished with unparalleled strength, victories over the bad guys and all performed by "gentle giants". What if it were all a lie? What if the truth were something much MUCH more sinister?
Sad... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sad... (Score:2)
Re:Gigantism in People (Score:4, Interesting)
When a website contains a phrase like this:
"I have invested over 30 years researching the vast history of giants. It has, for the most part, been kept from the public. Proof of giants' existence - their skeletal remains - has been quickly secreted away in obscure museums, when not destroyed."
You know it is not worth reading. Yet more pseudoscience combined with conspiracy theories...... how boring.
Re:Gigantism in People (Score:2)
imho you're reading it all wrong. This:
"I have invested over 30 years researching the vast history of giants."
is some funny stuff
Re:Gigantism in People (Score:2)
[snip]
You know it is not worth reading. Yet more pseudoscience combined with conspiracy theories...... how boring.
Usually you can just stop at: "This guy has been on Coast to Coast AM"
Re:Gigantism in People (Score:2)
I have no idea what you are talking about, but the idea that anyone would hide skeletons of giants, when such evidence would win the finders huge international fame (just look at the fuss over the 'Hobbit' discovery) is rabid nonsense.
Re:Gigantism in People (Score:2)
And yet (Score:2)
Yup... (Score:2, Interesting)
What's more, it is thought they spent most of their time in trees :
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/10 27_041027_homo_floresiensis.html [nationalgeographic.com]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3948165.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Yup... (Score:2)
Not really. Both articles (and others) indicate normal mammalian trends would be shrinking. The only 'problem' is the lack of precursor H.erectus fossils. This is because they haven't been found yet or because H.floriensis boated it. If the latter, they still came from other islands to this one.
Gigantism (Score:5, Interesting)
Seeing as the whole article is irrelevant... (Score:2)
Yeah yeah, I get it, he was creating a modern action movie as a sort of homage to the old B movies he loved as a child. Someone should've told him that modern movie goers are a little more sceptical about "indestructible lead actors" than they were 50 years ago.
They also should've pointed out that end-to-end action is all great fun, unless it runs for 60 minutes more than most people can stomach, featuring gun FX circa
Limit on size? (Score:2)
Re:Limit on size? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Limit on size? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Limit on size? (Score:2)
Re:Limit on size? (Score:2)
Re:Limit on size? (Score:3, Informative)
Now think about big mammals. Imagine the size of the heart that would be needed to pump blood against gravity into King Kong's brain. Imagine the muscles that
Re:Limit on size? (Score:2)
"...the air enters their body through the entire surface of their carapace..."
They have spiracles. Tubes running around similar to your veins. The air can be pumped through these by rudimentary bellows, but it's basically passive.
"Gravity would collapse lungs over a certain size."
True, but not Kong's. Brachiosaurus was much bigger.
"... I would hazard that the size of the biggest dinosaurs that did exist was probably the size of the biggest that could exist."
Maybe. But, they
Re: Limit on size? (Score:2)
There are also issues of proportion. If you scale a creature up, mass goes up as the cube of the linear size, but the cross section of the leg bones goes up only as the square of the linear size. There's no way an ape could grow to that size and s
Re: Limit on size? (Score:2)
Galileo wrote about this more than three and a half centuries ago in Discorsi and sketched a nice illustration [kennesaw.edu] comparing femurs from different animals of different sizes. In his illustration, the longer femur was about 2.5 times longer but about 10 times wider. As S.J. Gou
Thermal problems (Score:2)
Foster's Rule (Score:5, Informative)
In my opinion, more interesting than the giant species are pgymy species also created by the same effect. Pygmy Mammoths likely survived far longer than their gigantic counterparts before going extinct, as there is evidence of them being alive as recently as 5000 years ago on a few select islands. In fact, if I recall correctly, there is an egyptian painting which many suggest appears to be the pharoah or some lesser ruler recieving one as a gift. My details on this are a bit sketchy, so those genuinely interested should take their queries to google . . .
Some of you may also remember the somewhat controversial discovery of a species of pygmy hominid described as "hobbit-like" that was discussed on Slashdot about a year back -- those fossils were also from a rather isolated island . . .
Re:Foster's Rule (Score:2)
Jackson's films are best viewed under the influence of Fosters?
Re:Foster's Rule (Score:2)
Is Foster the head of the PR company that has minions of underlings invading all media with King Kong marketing propaganda?
The real source (Score:4, Informative)
CNN has an article ------------ No. Nope. Wrong.
CNN is running an article. ------------ YES!
CNN is running a Reuters article. Learn to understand the god damn difference. This article is running on dozens of other sites out there, yet you just gave CNN credit for it. If I were one of these AP, Reuters, AFP, UPI, or [insert wire service here] writers, I'd be annoyed when nobody could figure out how to properly attribute my work.
Re:The real source (Score:2, Informative)
If the post had said "CNN have written an article" then it would be wrong, but there's nothing wrong with saying they have it.
You know what? (Score:2)
Okay, I have never seen the original King Kong. However, from what I understand, much of Jackson's Kong followed the original, so this wasn't so much a product of his "imagination" as his self-indulgence. Can we please stop fellating this guy now? If his films were half as long as they are they might be decent, but making them overly long with a bunch of FX doesn't automa
the opposite is true, too (Score:2)
Oy vey. Jackson didn't imagine this. (Score:2)
King Kong (1933)
Writing credits: Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace [unl.edu]
Not Peter Jackson! Give credit where credit is due.
The crocodile is the largest lizard (Score:2)
Isn't the crocodile the world's largest lizard?
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-38416 [britannica.com]
The crocodiles are the largest and the heaviest of present-day reptiles. In former times the Nile crocodile (Crocodilus niloticus) and the estuarine crocodile (Crocodilus porosus) attained a length of almost nine metres (about 30 feet), but today, specimens rarely excee
Re:The crocodile is the largest lizard (Score:3, Insightful)
No, crocodile != lizard. Comparing crocodiles and lizards would be something like comparing dogs and monkeys. They belong to an entirely different order.
Crocodiles are from the order Crocodilia, lizards are from the order Squamata (which includes snakes).
What about whales? (Score:3, Informative)
Oh come on (Score:2)
WHAT fertile imagination? AFAIK he hasn't done anything original.
Re:Oh come on (Score:4, Informative)
Peter Jackson was famous in NZ long before he made LOTR, he made a lot of original stuff first.
Interesting reference to the Komodo... (Score:3, Informative)
Let's see if I can find a reference for this. Ah, here we go... [newswise.com]
"Elements of the 1933 Kong movie are based on the 1926 real-life expedition of William Douglas Burden, a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History," says Mitman, an expert on how animals are portrayed in popular culture.
"Burden traveled to Indonesia to film and capture the Komodo dragon, which he thought was the closest living relative of dinosaurs," he says. "When Burden brought back two live Komodo specimens and housed them in captivity in the Bronx Zoo, they died. Meridan Cooper, producer of the 1933 film version of Kong, wrote at the time, 'I immediately thought of doing the same thing with a giant gorilla.'"
The same correspondence indicates that Burden attributed the Komodo dragon's death to civilization. "This is why Cooper chose the Empire State Building and modern airplanes to kill off Kong. They were fitting symbols of civilization and the machine age that many feared were destroying nature," Mitman says.
He adds that the film's enduring appeal (the current one adds to the 1976 version and the 1933 classic original) might be linked to the restorative properties of an unspoiled, natural landscape.
Is Slashdot a stop on the Hollywood press junket? (Score:2)
Just so you press people know... (Score:2)
Now there's a great merchandising idea..... (Score:2, Funny)
Big dicks (Score:2)
You mean like the giant man eating penises with teeth? The endless cascade of falling brontosaurs I could handle. Jack Black's horrible acting I could handle. But Andy Serkis getting eaten by big dicks with teeth was too much.
Crocodiles (Score:2)
Guns, Germs & Steel (Score:4, Interesting)
We're all familiar with the dodo bird which was a fairly large species but there were also appearant extinctions of other large animals in the Polynesian Islands.
The reason for their extinction is that they grew up without modern man on their islands. Now, animals that live in Africa like the giraffe, wildebeest, hippo, etc were exposed to the evolution of man. Our initial stone weapons didn't kill all the targets but gave them time to adjust genetically and grow wary and eventually instinctively fear humans.
Those that didn't were killed.
Once the remote island mega fauna became exposed to humans and their advanced iron or steel weapons, they did not have the time to adjust to fear us. And our weapons rarely didn't kill them
A supposed Kong would invariably never fear humans unless their were a race of Kongs and we adapted our 1920's technology to be able to kill them more efficiently.
If you haven't read that book, do so.
Square-cube law (Score:2)
Dwarfism just as common (Score:2)
There are many examples of what biologists term 'gigantism' on islands.
There are even more examples of dwarfism on islands because of the low energy environment and relative lack of predators. Pygmy mammoths [nps.gov] are one good example. The recently found hobbits [eurekalert.org] are another.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Evolution ... Evolution ... Evolution ... (Score:2)
* I mean macro evolution of course.
Seeing as macro evolution is nothing but 'micro evolution' repeated enough times, this might just work!
You missed the point (Score:3, Insightful)
You see this kind of thing happen all the time. For instance, since the Da Vinci Code came out, I have seen plenty of historic tv specials on channels like the History channel that allude to that book in order to gain popularity (think "Da Vinci and the Code He Lived By"). That doesn't change the fact t
Da Vinci Code (Score:2)
Cheers.
Re:Da Vinci Code (Score:2)
Re:junk psuedoscience (Score:2)
Re:Totally incorrect for mammals (Score:2)
No. Some animals of both types get smaller and Some animals of both types get larger. It is nothing to do with whether they are mammals or reptiles.