King Kong Finally Wins Some Kind Of Award

It’s a difficult thing, predicting movie successes. We’d have though that King Kong - a film about a massive angry monkey smashing up some dinosaurs for three hours - would have been a huge film.

But it wasn’t - King Kong was beaten commercially by that Narnia film, and critically by that film about Thandie Newton getting her tit felt up by Matt Dillon. But - finally - things have turned around for King Kong: it’s won the best film award at the Sony Ericsson Empire Awards.

Although King Kong (DVDs) didn’t have an entirely
fruitless night at The Oscars (it won three awards for sound and visual
effects) it hardly matched up to previous efforts by Peter Jackson - a
man who won 11 Oscars for basically making some midgets walk across a
mountain for an interminable amount of time. But at the Sony Ericsson Empire Awards, King Kong finally won a best film award.

Seen
as a more audience-orientated awards ceremony than the Oscars, the
Empire Awards celebrates films that people actually watch. Or not, in
the case of King Kong. Other non-King Kong winners at the Empire Awards
included Thandie Newton winning Best Actress for Crash, Johnny Depp
winning Best Actor for Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Nick Park
and Steve Box winning Best Director for Wallace And Gromit: The Curse
Of The Were-Rabbit.

Most bizarrely of all, however, was the scene in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge Of The Sith where Darth Vader goes "Noooooooo!" and smashes stuff up with his mind. That won the scene of the year award. Editor of Empire magazine Colin Kennedy said:

"Many of our winners will never trouble
the Academy but ask any real movie fan - horror films don’t come more
terrifying than The Descent and few scenes rival the historical impact
of Darth Vader’s birth."

Darth Vader himself, Hayden Christensen - who recently won a Razzie for being such a rubbish Darth Vader - was due to turn up at the ceremony, but changed his mind after throwing a hissy fit about cameras or something.

Read more:

At last, it’s King Gong! - This is London 

[story by Stuart Heritage]