Taking Down the Big Monkey

[kdtipa]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

[random]
Lets' assume the woman weighed no more than 200 lbs. To casually tote her about, she would need to be his BL or less. That means KK's ST was around 32. ST 32 means KK massed roughly 4,096 lbs. 4,096 lbs means KK is roughly 5.4 yards in height. 5.4 yards in height means KK is roughly SM+2.

I expected him to be taller!

That would just be the minimum for him to be able to pull it off. Not necessarily the definition of what his strength was.

[Purple Haze]

Originally Posted by marvin

What was his height in the recent Peter Jackson Kong? I'd imagine that keeping him scaled consistently would be far easier when using computer animation.

Also, remember that a sniper rifle in the Pulp era is almost certainly going to be a .30 cal. (7.62mm) rifle. While the same sized round as those being shot by the biplanes (nearly all fighters in the WWI pre-WWII timeframe used .30 cal machine-guns as their primary weapons and this is true for the Curtiss Falcon biplanes depicted in King Kong (2005)), the rate of fire is obviously far less. Most large bore "elephant guns" were not as accurate at long range and there were no accuratized .50 cal rifles being produced that I know of. So taking Kong out at long range with what was essentially a civilian hunting rifle would be extremely difficult.

Benjamin

If it's PC's doing the sniping one would imagine they came suitably equiped.

Perhaps a Mauser T-Gewehr m1918 (13.2x92mm, 51.5 g @ 780 m/s).

Or (from 1937) a Boys .55 Rifle (47.6 g @ 884 m/s).

Or the old big game classic, some hand-made Holland & Holland in .600 Nitro Express (58 g @ 620 m/s).

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by kdtipa

That would just be the minimum for him to be able to pull it off. Not necessarily the definition of what his strength was.

Hence my marking the post with the [random] tag. :grins:

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by kdtipa

That would just be the minimum for him to be able to pull it off. Not necessarily the definition of what his strength was.

Yep. If he's ST 50 it's not going to make it harder for him to tote her. Sub-BL fractions matter for throwing, but unfortunately for benchmarking him we never got to see Kong try and toss Fay at an airplane :)

(Incidentally, if she was 200 lbs I'll buy a hat and eat it)

[kdtipa]

So... the wiki article is interesting and has this quote...

Kong's size changes drastically throughout the course of the film. While creator Merian C. Cooper envisioned Kong as being "40 to 50 feet tall",[6] animator Willis O'Brien and his crew built the models and sets scaling Kong to be only 18 feet tall on Skull Island, and rescaled to be 24 feet tall in New York.[7] This did not stop Cooper from playing around with Kong's size as he directed the special effect sequences; by manipulating the sizes of the miniatures and the camera angles, he made Kong appear a lot larger than O'Brien wanted, even as large as 60 feet in some scenes.[8] Concurrently, the Kong bust made for the film was built in scale with a 40-foot ape,[9] while the full sized hand of Kong was built in scale with a 70 foot ape.[10] Meanwhile, RKO's promotional materials listed Kong's official height as 50 feet.[5]

So it sounds like the creator wanted it to be 50 feet, though as pointed out, it was inconsistent depending on the situation.

[kdtipa]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Yep. If he's ST 50 it's not going to make it harder for him to tote her. Sub-BL fractions matter for throwing, but unfortunately for benchmarking him we never got to see Kong try and toss Fay at an airplane :)

(Incidentally, if she was 200 lbs I'll buy a hat and eat it)

I'm at work in my cubicle and reading "unfortunately ... we never got to see Kong try and toss Fay at an airplane", and I had a really hard time not laughing out loud.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

ST 32 means KK massed roughly 4,096 lbs.

This is an error. The relationship between ST and weight in Basic is only (semi-)valid for mundane creatures made of mundane flesh and blood, which means it's meaningless for all giant monsters.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by kdtipa

So it sounds like the creator wanted it to be 50 feet, though as pointed out, it was inconsistent depending on the situation.

[random, but less random]
Well ...

50 feet is 16.6~ yards (and roughly SM+4). 16.6~ yards works out to 115,740 lbs. 115,740 lbs works out to ST 97 ... with a BL of 1,881.8, I imagine that KK would be toting the woman about with minimal effort. Heh.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by kdtipa

So it sounds like the creator wanted it to be 50 feet, though as pointed out, it was inconsistent depending on the situation.

Sounds like his height depends more on who's doing the creating, rather than the needs of the plot.

In other words, he isn't as tall as the Enterprise is fast. He's as tall as Black Canary is strong and independent.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Stone Dog

All I know is that there needs to be more threads worthy of the "reckless endangerment" tag.

LOL Yep.

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

It's a genre setting. He's plot feet tall.

Ouch.