Say what you will of PJ's King Kong
but if there's one thing he did right with that film, it's making you empathize with Kong. Not to forget the incredible VFX work that went into it to bring him to life. The film is already 11 years old but the VFX still hold up very well. Sans for some background CG like NYC and the Island. Not to forget the shots underwater lol, those shots are iffy af
Nevertheless, I wonder what ILM is going to bring to making Kong look and feel real as compared to what WETA did 11 years ago. The only big developments I can think of are mo-cap and working with more dynamic light. I'm sure ILM will make Kong look real and bring a whole lot of detail to him but I just wonder how much better it's going to look compared to the 2005 Kong.
The design surely is something different. It's more akin to the '33 Kong. A simpler designed face, being bipedal instead of anthropomorphic and possibly not having all black fur. I hope there's many many many layers to Kong. Most of all I hope he's not clean. Often CG creatures look simply too clean, look at Jungle Book. They look much more realistic if they are dirty as well. I think this is something often overlooked when bringing fantastical creatures to life.
It seems like they shot the film with either the arri alexa or the alexa XT. No 35mm, or Alexa 65 used here it seems. I would've preferred if they shot this on film, more so with film IMAX, to fit the grand scale of it all. I think it's a missed opportunity they didn't do that. Of course, they could do that with Godzilla 2 and/or Kong 2 and King Kong vs Godzilla. If I were them I'd certainly use IMAX. Nonetheless, rendering the creates in a higher resolution than is the standard. These monsters are absolutely gigantic, a whole lot of detail goes into bringing them to life. Imagine seeing Kong or Godzilla in IMAX, actually shot with IMAX, which means the screen is a lot bigger but the VFX artists simply have to render it all in a higher resolution to keep up with the IMAX. There's no doubt the folks at ILM are amongst the most talented people in their craft but just imagine them rendering more of their work in 4K or higher. Just look at the bear in The Revenant, he looks incredibly real and was rendered in 4K instead of the standard 2K. There's so much detail to that bear and sells it's believability. As I said, it helps that he looked wet, he didn't look crystal clear clean.
I hope they show off some of the scale in the next trailer for this film and I hope Kong looks very realistic already. The film is four months off now, should look rather decent lol
Also, I think animating Kong is an advantage over Godzilla. Sure the eyes will always be tricky but I think they finally are developed enough in that department to really sell it but animating fur brings to many elements to it. Godzilla is just all scales and can easily look fake. I honestly think they could've done a better job with animating Godzilla in the 2014 film. Then again, it had multiple things against it. Most of Godzilla's scenes were dimly and lit rather dull. Nice that some of his scenes were in the rain but water isn't an easy thing to animate to begin with... lol there are still a lot of aspects that come to bringing these creatures to life. Haven't even begun about movement!
Anyway, sorry for the walls of text but I just hope they push themselves to the limit and beyond. The technology is there and ready to be developed. Fingers crossed they'll get their hands on some IMAX camera's for the sequels of this monster franchise.
War, what is it good for?