Lord Liaden

Fair enough. Perhaps having viewed the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy, I was more sensitized to the differences than some. But Kong standing, walking, and running fully upright rather than on all fours struck me immediately, and led me to pay attention to other details. It's a distinct contrast to Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong, in which Kong is very clearly a giant gorilla.

To anyone actually taught by nuns growing up, that picture is hardly a surprise. 😈

It's an understandable perspective, but note that Legendary Kong doesn't look exactly like a real-world animal in other ways than just size. Unlike every real ape on Earth, Kong's locomotion is fully bipedal, although his legs are proportionately shorter and arms longer than human. His feet have much shorter toes than real apes do, and don't appear to be prehensile. Kong's torso and abdomen are built more like a muscular man's than an ape's. You could say he's like a giant sasquatch, but I will offer no opinion as to whether the sasquatch is real.

If you don't mind Spanish subtitles, you're covered. https://archive.org/details/the-beast-from-20-000-fathoms-1953

The mind boggles over the magnitude of insensitivity required to publicly gloat over profits from prices gouged out of millions of suffering people.

What's the temperature in your house, Ricky?

Sorry to break the flow, but do you think maybe it's time to update the thread title? Oh, and, Colossi.

Personally I would have loved more Hero products from Allen Thomas. He's a very creative writer with a distinctive approach to the material. I hope he's doing well. If you did consider doing ARGENT as a sectional book (not saying you should), my own summary of published ARGENT data grouped it into related sections: History, Goals and Methods, Structure and Personnel, Front Companies, Global Activities, Associates and Allies, Rivals and Enemies, ARGENT-Created Superhumans, and ARGENT Technology. Perhaps that could be suggestive of a similar breakdown?

It's not even possible any more to shame Republican politicians for past hypocrisy. They just try to brazen their way out of it, like Trump does.

I read that the Democrats are now in a position to redraw the congressional districts. Generally a questionable power, but in the current circumstances I can't decide whether that's problematic or necessary.

You otter start every day with a good breakfast. In almost every other species besides ourselves, the males have to put on the display and make the effort to attract the females. Maybe the relationship issues in our society stem from having gotten that backwards?

Hmm... I'm not sure WW II scenarios would really match with Faerie. It's more about the fantastical, the larger-than-life, and war stories have been predominantly historical and realistic. Maybe because so many people have lived them. But there have undoubtedly been evolutions of the Imaginal Realms to match the shifts in popular entertainment-fueled imaginations, especially since they can involve hundreds of millions. I remember discussing here with Dean Shomshak the possibility that the Australian aboriginal Dreamtime has by now become infested with the post-apoc freaks from the Mad Max movie series. Dean suggested calling it "the Way Outback." I would be surprised if now the Japanese kami, oni, tengu, heroic samurai, etc. don't have to sometimes get out of the way of wandering kaiju. Tarzan almost certainly roams West African mythic jungles. Heck, the rain forest of the Mayan region of Faerie might have a Predator stalking it. Elysium, of course, has its "pop culture heavens." Images of famous people from living memory live in Babylon. I'd be willing to bet there's a corner of the Netherworld where not all demons are irredeemably evil, because that notion has become popular in recent decades. That might be where you could hang out with Hellboy, Lucie and Maze, and Crowley.

Which movie are you referring to, PG? Several kaiju and Harryhausen films are on reputable online hosts these days.

We had an extensive, high-quality Shadowrun-to-Hero fan conversion in PDF on the now sadly-defunct Star Hero Fandom website. That would probably make a fine place to start building an official Hero sourcebook. While I can find that website via the marvelous Internet Archive Wayback Machine, that particular PDF appears inextractable.

And shouldn't the representative of his state in the Senate be there showing support when his state is in crisis?

It did spawn a pretty kick-ass animated series, though. I'm not even getting into the utterly indescribable creatures like Hedorah and Biollante.

In addition to the arthropods from the Toho stable like Mothra, her sibling Battra, and the ones I mentioned above, don't overlook King Caesar, and Toho's take on Frankenstein, and the humanoid Gargantuas spawned from him. Toho's kaiju are much broader than lizards and dinosaurs.

BTW you can see inspirations from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (a well-made and financially successful giant monster flick) in the 1998 American Godzilla film, like the amphibious giant attacking a ship at sea, and rampaging across Manhattan. But the latter was an inferior movie in almost every way except film making technology.

Well, you're kinda splitting hairs here. Kumonga is an inflated spider. Kamacuras is an inflated mantis. Gamera is an inflated turtle. It's also rather misleading to characterize King Kong as "a standard animal monster." Kong was "the Eighth Wonder of the World," a unique, breathtakingly giant ape who awed all who saw him. All Toho and Legendary did was make him more giant, and put him in a movie with other giants. And that's not unprecedented either. Don't forget the original movie Kong's battle with the T-Rex, which Peter Jackson tripled for his remake. Kong vs Godzilla can be viewed as an extension of that fight.

I just want to point out that Kong has a fuller history in popular media than some in this discussion may assume, as well as a larger past connection to Toho Studios. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_(franchise)

This is the line we're getting from politicians desperate to avoid the blame for not having winterized their power system. I know it's Texas, but this isn't the first time they've had a run of cold weather in the winter. And climatologists have warned them that extreme weather events like this are going to become more frequent due to global warming. Other states with average colder winters and more use of renewables are coping just fine, because they spent to prepare their grids to handle it. The great majority of Texas' energy is generated by oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear, and that's what's freezing. That's also a segment of the economy that has enormous political clout in Texas, and a vested interest in denigrating renewable energy.

I think his history might have been a little different.

Gee, Duke, you suddenly read like you're steriaca.

While they do tease out the monster over the course of the film, and we rarely get a scene lingering on it, it is shown in some detail from various angles. Like these.

J.J. Abrams has stated in interviews that his movie Cloverfield was motivated by a desire to create the kind of iconic monster for American audiences that Godzilla is for Japanese. Setting aside the implied hubris of that , Clover is of course part of a different franchise and different universe. OTOH given the premise they've set up for that universe, a crossover is theoretically possible.