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Peter Jackson's King Kong swings...
03 April 2006
[indent] I really wanted to like this movie even before I got a copy. The original King Kong (1933) has been one of my favourite films ever since I first saw it, almost 50 years ago. In fact, it's one of my top five all-time favourite films. I really wanted this new version of King Kong to live up to that.
Peter Jackson is, of course, the director/producer who gave us the epic film version of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy. He shares with director James Cameron a penchant for grandiose productions. Some might say bloated.
The original Kong was a ground-breaking film in many areas. First was the combination of special effects and stop-motion animation. Merging live actors and models was unheard of before Kong. The amount of work that went into the special effects is staggering. Each model was set up, then carefully moved tiny amounts for each frame. Every change in camera angle, in background required more frames to be shot. This film went on to inspire generations of special effects designers, giving us today's films like Star Wars.
It's also the first film to use thematic music, rather than mere background music. Star Wars fans also owe a tip of the hat to King Kong for that.
America and the world was just emerging from the Depression when Kong was released, and an adventure film was just what the public wanted. Similarly science fiction and adventure fiction - Edgar Rice Burroughs in particular - were proving to be very popular in getting people's minds off their financial troubles. Kong came from a rich background of escapist material - including some that went back to Conan Doyle and Jules Verne.
So popular was Kong that it was re-released five times until 1976, but in the first of these, in 1938, several scenes were cut by the censors of the day. The entire film was restored for its most recent release, in late 2005. A colourized version was also released in 1985 (sacrilege to diehards, it retains its popularity through eBay).
Kong was essentially a re-telling of the Beauty and the Beast fairy story, wrapped in modern garb, with a twist at the end. The character of Ann Darrow (Faye Wray in the original) won the beast's heart and caused his inevitable downfall. The fun was in the journey to that end. Corny, perhaps, silly sometimes, but a great yarn nonetheless.
But no matter how sympathetic we felt for Kong at his first film demise, the ape's character never emerged far enough from the jungle. Little was designed in his character or imagery to warm us to him - the models were brutish, his actions were crude and violent, his face never showed much emotion beyond anger. Perhaps that was forgivable given the fledgling state of special effects in 1933.
Fast forward 72 years.
Today's model makers and computer graphics wizards can create astounding virtual worlds and populate them with believable settings and characters simply for our entertainment. And in the new version of King Kong, they reach the apex of their art. Kong comes alive as a giant gorilla, with a range of facial expressions - particularly in his eyes - and we are able to feel for him, see in him an intelligence the original lacked (in fact, I have always wondered how, with such a massive brain, Kong wasn't a giant philosopher...).
Coupled with stunning visual effects, lots of action, exotic settings, great camera work and the reputation of both the director and the story, this should have been one of the best films of the decade. So what happened? Why did it prove a box-office bomb?
Well, first of all, it's long. Three hours and eight minutes long. Few films deserve anywhere near that length. Most of the mindless entertainment flicks of today occupy 90 minutes and that's overly long for a lot of them (most, in my humble estimation, don't rate more than 15 minutes...). Serious films are routinely two hours. Three migrates from entertainment to a sitzkrieg.
We ended up watching the movie in two parts over two nights, breaking the flow and rhythm of the film. Maybe War and Peace or Gone With the Wind deserve three hours. King Kong really doesn't - the material simply doesn't have that much stretch to it. The original tale was told in 104 minutes. The 2005 Kong, beautiful and exciting as it is, should have been told in 120-150. The rest was like white bread - filled but without substantial content.
Second problem is the cast. Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow is great, and she makes the role her own. Where Fay Wray played a wispy, somewhat insubstantial character whose main strength seemed to be in her scream and the rare flash of nipple, Watts makes her Ann believable and human, although she engages in a little too much stand-and-stare-in-awe in some scenes.
The rest of the cast is fairly good, although mostly at work in the background, until we bump into Jack Black as Carl Denham.
In the original film, Denham (Robert Armstrong) was mature, cynical, savvy, wisecracking and tough. Black doesn't strike me as old enough. He's heavier, shorter and, sadly, wooden. And he also does too much stand-and-stare when he should take action. Denham's finest line closes the film in both versions, where he says it was beauty who killed the beast. It should be sharp, bittersweet, poignant. In the original, it was a fitting epitaph over the body of Kong said by a sadder-but-wiser Denham. In the 2005 version, it's just a line. Black diminishes the role of Carl Denham, and it weakens the film.
Jackson also changed the original script to move the love-interest between the ship's first mate and Ann to ann and a nerdish screenwriter (played by Adrian Broudy), perhaps to include the transformation from nerd to hero as a plot enrichment. That's okay and doesn't hurt the story, but it also removes a strong character from the ship's crew, and - despite Jackson's attempts to make them solid characters - none of the rest fill that void as the focus changes.
A lot of effort was put into making the settings seem real. New York of 1933 is wonderful, with its period cars, fashion and buildings. Skull Island, however, is simply amazing - a rich landscape of dense jungle, craggy mountains, ancient ruins and, of course, dangerous creatures. I would have had more of the island and less of New York, had I been the editor.
The original film had the typically stereotype 'natives' played by black Hollywood extras. They don't have much character, but they sure could dance around a fire. Jackson populates his island with visually believable, even scary natives, but we don't get enough of them to really feel much. They disappear from the movie after they kidnap Ann and feed her to Kong. I think there might have been an opportunity for Jackson to give us some humanity here, to cast them as equal victims in the tale, people on the edge of survival, but he didn't.
Jackson does flesh them out - and the rest of the island - in the DVD extras, under the Natural History of Skull Island. I'm not sure why he didn't translate more of that into the film. Those extras, by the way, are well worth watching, although combined they're longer than the original film. They really give you an insight into the making of the film and its special effects. These extras are worth the cost of the package just to see how truly hard these people worked at putting everything together.
KK 2005 surpasses the original in many ways, but will never achieve the same iconic status. It is, however, light years above the 1976 remake by Dino De Lautentis, which, although financially successful, received mixed reviews from the critics.
Since the mid 1930s, many ape films have attempted to cash in on the Kong market, none with any success, although some have been so spectacularly bad that they are worth watching for that alone; as abject lessons in filography's darker side. I should mention here the abysmal 1986 De Laurentis sequel, called King Kong Lives and also called King Kong 2, which is best described by this reviewer's quote from IMDB: "...every time an ape smiled in this movie I wanted to put a pot over my head and beat on it with a serving ladle."
Overall, King Kong is a good film that could have been a great film with some tighter editing and a better Carl Denham. Despite its length, it is entertaining, moving and certainly worth another viewing to catch some of the background elements we missed in the first run.
For special effects, it gets five stars. For plot, setting, and atmosphere, it gets 4.5. For characters it gets a mere 3, and some serious under-acting by a few of the cast, including Jack Black, it gets 2.5. Overall, I'd put it at 4, which may be a generous nod to my childhood memories, but I still have an affection for the big ape.[/indent]
Peter Jackson is, of course, the director/producer who gave us the epic film version of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy. He shares with director James Cameron a penchant for grandiose productions. Some might say bloated.
The original Kong was a ground-breaking film in many areas. First was the combination of special effects and stop-motion animation. Merging live actors and models was unheard of before Kong. The amount of work that went into the special effects is staggering. Each model was set up, then carefully moved tiny amounts for each frame. Every change in camera angle, in background required more frames to be shot. This film went on to inspire generations of special effects designers, giving us today's films like Star Wars.
It's also the first film to use thematic music, rather than mere background music. Star Wars fans also owe a tip of the hat to King Kong for that.
America and the world was just emerging from the Depression when Kong was released, and an adventure film was just what the public wanted. Similarly science fiction and adventure fiction - Edgar Rice Burroughs in particular - were proving to be very popular in getting people's minds off their financial troubles. Kong came from a rich background of escapist material - including some that went back to Conan Doyle and Jules Verne.
So popular was Kong that it was re-released five times until 1976, but in the first of these, in 1938, several scenes were cut by the censors of the day. The entire film was restored for its most recent release, in late 2005. A colourized version was also released in 1985 (sacrilege to diehards, it retains its popularity through eBay).
Kong was essentially a re-telling of the Beauty and the Beast fairy story, wrapped in modern garb, with a twist at the end. The character of Ann Darrow (Faye Wray in the original) won the beast's heart and caused his inevitable downfall. The fun was in the journey to that end. Corny, perhaps, silly sometimes, but a great yarn nonetheless.
But no matter how sympathetic we felt for Kong at his first film demise, the ape's character never emerged far enough from the jungle. Little was designed in his character or imagery to warm us to him - the models were brutish, his actions were crude and violent, his face never showed much emotion beyond anger. Perhaps that was forgivable given the fledgling state of special effects in 1933.
Fast forward 72 years.
Today's model makers and computer graphics wizards can create astounding virtual worlds and populate them with believable settings and characters simply for our entertainment. And in the new version of King Kong, they reach the apex of their art. Kong comes alive as a giant gorilla, with a range of facial expressions - particularly in his eyes - and we are able to feel for him, see in him an intelligence the original lacked (in fact, I have always wondered how, with such a massive brain, Kong wasn't a giant philosopher...).
Coupled with stunning visual effects, lots of action, exotic settings, great camera work and the reputation of both the director and the story, this should have been one of the best films of the decade. So what happened? Why did it prove a box-office bomb?
Well, first of all, it's long. Three hours and eight minutes long. Few films deserve anywhere near that length. Most of the mindless entertainment flicks of today occupy 90 minutes and that's overly long for a lot of them (most, in my humble estimation, don't rate more than 15 minutes...). Serious films are routinely two hours. Three migrates from entertainment to a sitzkrieg.
We ended up watching the movie in two parts over two nights, breaking the flow and rhythm of the film. Maybe War and Peace or Gone With the Wind deserve three hours. King Kong really doesn't - the material simply doesn't have that much stretch to it. The original tale was told in 104 minutes. The 2005 Kong, beautiful and exciting as it is, should have been told in 120-150. The rest was like white bread - filled but without substantial content.
Second problem is the cast. Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow is great, and she makes the role her own. Where Fay Wray played a wispy, somewhat insubstantial character whose main strength seemed to be in her scream and the rare flash of nipple, Watts makes her Ann believable and human, although she engages in a little too much stand-and-stare-in-awe in some scenes.
The rest of the cast is fairly good, although mostly at work in the background, until we bump into Jack Black as Carl Denham.
In the original film, Denham (Robert Armstrong) was mature, cynical, savvy, wisecracking and tough. Black doesn't strike me as old enough. He's heavier, shorter and, sadly, wooden. And he also does too much stand-and-stare when he should take action. Denham's finest line closes the film in both versions, where he says it was beauty who killed the beast. It should be sharp, bittersweet, poignant. In the original, it was a fitting epitaph over the body of Kong said by a sadder-but-wiser Denham. In the 2005 version, it's just a line. Black diminishes the role of Carl Denham, and it weakens the film.
Jackson also changed the original script to move the love-interest between the ship's first mate and Ann to ann and a nerdish screenwriter (played by Adrian Broudy), perhaps to include the transformation from nerd to hero as a plot enrichment. That's okay and doesn't hurt the story, but it also removes a strong character from the ship's crew, and - despite Jackson's attempts to make them solid characters - none of the rest fill that void as the focus changes.
A lot of effort was put into making the settings seem real. New York of 1933 is wonderful, with its period cars, fashion and buildings. Skull Island, however, is simply amazing - a rich landscape of dense jungle, craggy mountains, ancient ruins and, of course, dangerous creatures. I would have had more of the island and less of New York, had I been the editor.
The original film had the typically stereotype 'natives' played by black Hollywood extras. They don't have much character, but they sure could dance around a fire. Jackson populates his island with visually believable, even scary natives, but we don't get enough of them to really feel much. They disappear from the movie after they kidnap Ann and feed her to Kong. I think there might have been an opportunity for Jackson to give us some humanity here, to cast them as equal victims in the tale, people on the edge of survival, but he didn't.
Jackson does flesh them out - and the rest of the island - in the DVD extras, under the Natural History of Skull Island. I'm not sure why he didn't translate more of that into the film. Those extras, by the way, are well worth watching, although combined they're longer than the original film. They really give you an insight into the making of the film and its special effects. These extras are worth the cost of the package just to see how truly hard these people worked at putting everything together.
KK 2005 surpasses the original in many ways, but will never achieve the same iconic status. It is, however, light years above the 1976 remake by Dino De Lautentis, which, although financially successful, received mixed reviews from the critics.
Since the mid 1930s, many ape films have attempted to cash in on the Kong market, none with any success, although some have been so spectacularly bad that they are worth watching for that alone; as abject lessons in filography's darker side. I should mention here the abysmal 1986 De Laurentis sequel, called King Kong Lives and also called King Kong 2, which is best described by this reviewer's quote from IMDB: "...every time an ape smiled in this movie I wanted to put a pot over my head and beat on it with a serving ladle."
Overall, King Kong is a good film that could have been a great film with some tighter editing and a better Carl Denham. Despite its length, it is entertaining, moving and certainly worth another viewing to catch some of the background elements we missed in the first run.
For special effects, it gets five stars. For plot, setting, and atmosphere, it gets 4.5. For characters it gets a mere 3, and some serious under-acting by a few of the cast, including Jack Black, it gets 2.5. Overall, I'd put it at 4, which may be a generous nod to my childhood memories, but I still have an affection for the big ape.[/indent]
