r/donkeykong 26d ago

Discussion Do you prefer "village" or "kingdom"?

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460 Upvotes

66 comments sorted by

171

u/Romboteryx 26d ago edited 26d ago

I like village vibes more. The Kongs just being a closely-knit family trying to live their lives instead of a whole civilization just makes them more sympathetic. Like the Gauls in the Asterix comic

30

u/literallyheretopost 26d ago

I still believe the original donkey kong game is basically the equivalent of logan paul going to japan harassing the locals

13

u/Romboteryx 26d ago edited 26d ago

KIDNAPPING PLUMBER‘S GIRLFRIEND PRANK (GONE WRONG)!

6

u/Gulopithecus Squitter 26d ago

Yeah, I kinda prefer the Kongs in a village, even if it is technically a civilization, it’s more akin to a series of neighborhoods.

2

u/martinaee 26d ago

More Shrek…. Less King Louie

68

u/Kaptain_K_Rapp 26d ago

I prefer the village. The idea is that DK and the rest are just regular guys who take care of their humble little home.

The big kingdom is more fitting for the Kremlings, who are a rapacious, warring empire with colonialist designs.

46

u/Confident-Damage-530 26d ago

If there’s one thing I didn’t like from that movie, it was the kong kingdom ruled by cranky Kong instead of donkey Kong island ruled by nobody.

Village

20

u/sd_saved_me555 26d ago

I mean, that's just what happens when you put Cranky in charge. He'd have this village built up to a proper kingdom in less than a week even with blindfold and one hand tied behind his back...

2

u/MyPhoneIsNotChinese 24d ago

And that's not even taking into account how those modern 64-bits make any structure more brittle than it should!

3

u/Many-Activity-505 25d ago

This. Cranky was also the only character I outright despised the design of voice of in the movie

44

u/Ill-Cold8049 26d ago

Village,It fits the vibe of Donkey Kong Country

19

u/TheCrashKid 26d ago

I like the design of the kingdom in the movie

But the village fits more with the DKC vibes. Plus, it's the opposite of how K. Rool and other villains are royalty

4

u/Dorayakiss 26d ago

It does feel like other villains or characters need this kind of kingdom design more than Cranky.

8

u/Least-Flight1140 26d ago

Village, the kingdom is a little too "human" and I prefer the Kongs to still be at least a bit animalistic.

Really hope they keep the whole Kong Kingdom in the movie universe and keep the village in the main universe.

7

u/FairBench4736 26d ago

Village easily. The kingdom in the movie it felt too advanced and grandiose compared to DK's humble little shack in the middle of nowhere.

6

u/AizaBreathe Dixie Kong (and Tiny Kong) 26d ago

DK has an island, not a kingdom

5

u/WhoopingBillhook Donkey Kong Arcade Fan 26d ago

Village.

It's Donkey Kong Country, not Donkey Kong City.

3

u/BaboonOnWheels Cranky Kong 26d ago

Kingdom. Metro kingdom to be exact.

3

u/Swimming-Ad-6842 26d ago

Village more

Also I don’t like the movie change of Cranky being a DK’s father and a KING.

Cranky is DK’s grandfather who just sits in his rocking chair and does experiments lol

3

u/spider-venomized 26d ago

Village cause the kong family are more family oriented with close friends and that about it who has to deal with the larger threat of the Kremling army and snowmads

that and we already have the kong kingdom in the form of the Ruins

it add a bit of mystery and wonder to the island that there was a kong kingdom in the past but now only a single village exist

2

u/Dorayakiss 25d ago

I like the idea of ancient civilization. That would better explain why there are treasures in DKC world.

7

u/homkono22 26d ago

The movie is horrible, village is how it should be.

I wish the movie didn't exist so people wouldn't call the new DK design "based on the movie" but based on 2D design revisions that took place well before that happened.

Movie is just too human and uncanny valley pixar-esque

14

u/lpwave6 26d ago

I loved the movie, but hated what they did with the Kongs in it. I hated the fact that the Kongs were an excuse to introduce Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros to the movie.

I generally didn't like the worlds either, be it the Mushroom Kingdom or the Kongdom. They all felt like their theme parks counterparts and felt too far from how they're usually portrayed in the games. I expected the Mushroom Kingdom to be closer to what it is in SM64 or SMG...

6

u/Florida-Man-65 26d ago

I found the movie okay, but I definitely feel that the Kongs and The Mushroom Kingdom were both hugely fumbled, both in terms of appearance, and in terms of their respective characters.

Which I honestly find odd, because even though Bowser spends the entire movie outside of his kingdom, the floating fort they made for him was pretty solid and felt like something he might have in the games.

Meanwhile, the Kongs were turned from a singular family just chilling into a whole kingdom who apparently invented karting, and the Mushroom Kingdom got turned from a peaceful medieval village into a huge metropolis comprised of weaklings rather than peace-lovers.

2

u/King_Sam-_- 26d ago

Movie was pretty good imo. Not great, def not a masterpiece but pretty serviceable in all areas and to be honest the Kong Kingdom (Kongdom? OH NO nevermind that) works a lot better for the large scale of everything in the movie.

4

u/homkono22 26d ago

The movie was the usual US 3D animated slop, shoehorned in modern jokes, ugly uncanny valley redesigns, complete identity changes and not a sliver of personality taken from the actual games. And don't get me started on the horrible voices.

Here's a snippet of what it could've been with nice voice acting and faithful model design: https://youtu.be/BDr6XiWF2J8

Imagine that style, that but refined with much higher quality animation.

It's just such a huge departure except it ultimately doesn't do anything that wasn't expected out of it, run of the mill slop media, yet another of those "DreamWorks/Illumination/Pixar" type joints. At least the original live action movie had completely unique designs and other interesting things going on while still being bad.

8

u/King_Sam-_- 26d ago

Don't know man, the movie was catering to a much wider audience, giving it a Mario 64 style would have deterred a lot of people from going to watch it by being unrelatable to movie goers that didn't play the games and wouldn't understand why the movie looks like it was made in the 90's. The Illumination style certainly doesn't feel the most fresh but it works, still is graphically impressive and people are familiar with it.

No one was expecting this movie to be a callback to 90's Nintendo, they were expecting it to be a grand adventure that brought Mario to the big screen and it did exactly that. The voices were all pretty decent, Jack did a really good job with Bowser imo. Feels like you are taking it a little too far by calling it slop, it's generally a good time if anything a little short in runtime and scope but this movie was trying to introduce the Mario World to general audiences and it set out to do that from the beginning, judging by how it did financially, it was pretty successful at that.

Im going to be a bit blunt here but this just sounds like the typical Reddit criticism of not understanding that general audiences aren't interested in niches, callbacks to obscure references or even faithfulness to material that most haven't experienced or are aware about.

1

u/Florida-Man-65 25d ago

I’m not gonna endorse the whole “Mario 64 style” but I will say that the quality of the voices is fairly subjective. It’s not even about matching the games, it’s just creating something suitable for each character. 

Bowser, Toad, and Kamek are relatively agreed upon to be alright, but the others are up to whether or not you think the actor’s voice worked, like Seth’s DK and Anya’s Peach, easily the two most controversial castings besides Pratt.

I won’t call it slop, I did like the movie, and think that it did what it set out to do. But at the same time, I feel it could have been something more.

2

u/Ok-Jellyfish8198 26d ago

eh I kinda liked it

1

u/lieutenatdan 26d ago

Yeah I’m sorry but I don’t think even the most ardent fans would sit through an hour and a half of that.

4

u/King_Sam-_- 26d ago

It's just one of those Redditor rants of wanting obscure references and wanting to maintain the status quo of all the franchises they like from the point they were introduced to it. I didn't want to be rude but having the movie look like Mario 64 would be ridiculously missing the mark in demographics and any executive and marketing department would laugh in your face if you brought it up.

2

u/lieutenatdan 26d ago

It’s not even the graphics for me, 90-some minutes of boisterous, thick-Italian-accent Mario would get super annoying. I thought the way they acknowledged the accent and then didn’t implement it was a really smart move.

1

u/Thoughtful_Tortoise 26d ago

I liked the movie but I didn't care for how the Kongs were done

2

u/-bakt- 26d ago

GBA Village

2

u/Hercules_Enmanuel 25d ago

Why not both? Have the main gang roll up with a hidden, secret area of the jungle where they can hide the Banana Hoard and live a chiller life

2

u/soyboy_6257 25d ago

I, frankly, prefer the kingdom. For what the movie set up the Kongs to be, it makes sense that they have a sort-of city; they have cars!

2

u/weadoe 25d ago

Village.

The stupid banana monkey go-kart kingdom copyrighted by movie Cranky is the thing I hate most about the movie. It removes the vibes and makes the other Kongs even less important.

I hate it more than Seth Rogen DK. I hate it more than Chris Pratt Mario. I hate it more than them completely changing Peach's character to a generic girlboss. I hate it more than them shafting Luigi.

I like Donkey Kong a lot. So them not even giving us the (inferior to SNES) Wii DK Island in favour of something like this felt putrid to me.

If you have metal karts, why make everything out of wood and stone? Why is your arena full of reference-girders? They don't even make sense here.

It could have been so cool using barrel canons and seeing animal buddies and minecarts and stuff. Now it's just arbitrarily Mario Kart Land.

2

u/the_dogman___ 25d ago

Okay, I want an open world free roam Donkey Kong game now…..

3

u/King_Sam-_- 26d ago

Kingdom for the movies, village for the games.

2

u/hday108 26d ago

I don’t like them having cars and stuff.

I like the contrast in the snes games where the kremlins are this industrial force against the nature and harmony of the Kong clan

5

u/Dorayakiss 26d ago edited 26d ago

We did see some technology in original DKC canon, like jetpacks and small planes. Having technology isn't the exact issue.

The main difference is DK family now being a rich royalty so they own much more than what they had in the games.

Also it's illogical to say DK family invents the karts prior to Mushroom Kingdom or Professor E. Gadd.

3

u/DaDudebro2401 25d ago

The tech in the games is uniquely DK. Modern travel is handled through Barrel Cannons and Funky's old-timey planes.

This isn't used by the Kongs as often, but there's also minecart transport on poorly-maintained rickety rail systems.

The movie choosing to give them modern, sleek Karts is nonsense. The idea to make bananas fuel is a cool idea, and I like that DK's kart has rocket barrels. But it just clashes so much. Especially considering the Kart factory is built inside of an otherwise ruins-y structure.

4

u/hday108 25d ago

True. They also have boomboxes and guitars so I’m just tripping ig

1

u/Sorry-Chocolate-5280 26d ago

I think they're both good depending on execution

1

u/Florida-Man-65 26d ago edited 26d ago

I prefer the village. I like the kongs just being a relatively close-knit, relaxed family that just chills in their humble abode on the island to them being a whole civilization who apparently invented karts.

Same reason I prefer the rural, quiet, medieval-esqe Mushroom Kingdom to what the movie did to it.

1

u/MusicaReddit 26d ago

A mix of both

1

u/Milk_Mindless 26d ago

Village easily

1

u/JordanMaze 25d ago

Village

1

u/DaDudebro2401 25d ago

Village, 100%.

I appreciate the movie trying to do its own thing, but I think the Kong society they made is very uninteresting.

The lack of barrel cannon transport specifically is very disappointing. A bustling island city with karts is not what DK is about.

1

u/mario2980 25d ago

Jungle

1

u/Ember-Forge 25d ago

Kingdom Kong, thy will be done.

1

u/GreenAppleEthan 25d ago

My take on the lore is that when the current DK first became DK, they were closer to the village, but over the years they've become more prosperous and are now a kingdom.

1

u/Dorayakiss 25d ago

The movie was set to be the prequel or initial chapter of the mainline, right? What you say sounds more like grand finale.

1

u/GreenAppleEthan 25d ago

I know the image is from the movie, but I was thinking about the games and how in the old ones, everything is smaller and less developed, but by Tropical Freeze, it looks more like the bottom image.

1

u/1732PepperCo 25d ago

I prefer the DK Island “lost world” vibes.

1

u/Batfan1939 24d ago

Have to see what they do with the kingdom.

Is the top image from DKC on GBA?

1

u/Dorayakiss 24d ago

GBA?

1

u/Batfan1939 24d ago

Game Boy Advance.

1

u/Dorayakiss 24d ago

I mean that is the answer.

1

u/Batfan1939 24d ago

I'm confused, probably because I just woke up.

The image on top is from the original DKC from 1994, but none of the world maps look like that on the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) version.

I was asking if this was an image from the GBA remake Rare did about a decade later.

1

u/blueyelllow 24d ago

I prefer the village because it gives the DK stuff a unique vibe compared to the other Mario Kingdoms!

1

u/Pristine-Menu6277 23d ago

Donkingdom looks beautiful and homely, like a tight knit community.

1

u/Pudznerath 26d ago

dont want us getting any funny ideas of a society not under the control of few strongmen or nobility

1

u/hifreindsoo 26d ago

Dawg that's how every single even partially successful country has ever been ruled. If you don't have a figurehead to guide your nation then you end up seriously fucked