King Kong
Another Peter Jackson film. Another 3 hour marathon. I haven’t seen the first one. Therefore, I cannot draw comparisons. However, I thought it was good. Not amazing. Not LotR status. Then again, not much is. But this movie definitely had its great points, and its ehh points. *Warning: there are some spoilers, but if you know the story of King Kong, you already know what happens.*
First of all, Naomi Watts- beautiful and a great performance. And beautiful. But anyway, at first, I tried to rationalize the film. Some parts were really ridiculous. But, you shouldn’t try to rationalize a movie about a giant gorilla. Look at the big (excuse the pun) picture. The message of the film. That’s what made the movie great. I mean, Kong was a lonely guy, looking for a companion which he found in Watt’s Anne Darrow. So the beast had feelings. He wasn’t just a blood thirsty monster. You felt bad for him when he got hurt and then captured trying to protect Darrow. And at the end of his movie, his final goodbye on top of the building was touching. He started to feel like a friend in that pet sort of relationship.
But getting to these points were very long and drawn out. Everything seemed to be in slow motion. That’s because a lot of it was. It was unnecessary. Also, the finding of skull island took way too long. The whole ship getting tossed around was really drawn out. And there were some ridiculous parts, with giant bugs, dinosaurs and whatnot.
Jack Black was very good, to my surprise. This was his first major non-comedic roll, and he was a bit of an antagonist. He took them to skull island, he put them in danger, he captured kong, which led to kong’s death. He did a really good job of making us hate him in the movie. Over all the movie could have been shorter, but it was good- it had some good action (watch Kong fight off 3 T-Rexes) not too much of a love story (but just enough) and a companionship that really played to the crowd. Later!
I strongly disliked King Kong. It wasn’t because it was 3 hours long (I’m a very patient movie watcher — rock on, Kubrick!), and it wasn’t because it didn’t live up to LotR (who thought that it would?), it was because the movie was so terribly scripted it became a farce. The cliches were stacked like pancakes drizzled in unimportant details. This is the token black guy. This is the token bratty kid/stowaway. This is the token romance subplot. I thought Jackson was above all that crap. Granted, King Kong was made in the 30’s, but if you’re going to remake it twice as long as it was originally, at least make it a more engrossing/meaningful film. Peter Jackson’s King Kong was not an improvement by any means except visually, and even then I’m forced to wonder if we were better off with a realistic looking Kong or the fanciful, forget-suspension-of-disbelief version from before. At least the people who made the movie the first time knew it was a joke–an overly-simplistic fable that didn’t have to take itself too seriously. Jackson got the idea in his head somewhere that the essence of King Kong was more than that, but he didn’t manage to convey it at all onscreen. I guess I can’t blame him for the terribly script and even worse acting (Jack Black was a joke and Brody’s character was wasted entirely), but as a director, andimportant part of the process is helping make the cuts. I think Jackson is a bit too high on himself at the moment. Like Kubrick, he left a lot in, but it ultimately had no purpose or genius behind it (the bug scene comes to mind). King Kong was not worthy of the anticipation in the least.
Also, it pisses me off that Jackson thought he could one-up Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. [Spoiler-ish] And did it completey surprise anyone when Kong broke the Rex’s jaw open? Holy shit! I thought this was a family friendly movie. I think kids can take vagina slugs swallowing heads, but even I was grossed out by the crunching bones. The poor T-Rex! I loved dinosaurs when I was a kid, and to see something like that happen would have permanently scarred me.