Another remake. How much longer, o lord, how much longer? There is an old Hollywood dictum that says, “If they loved it once, they’ll love it twice.” 2005 has seen that idea stretched to ridiculous proportions. One can almost picture the classic Hollywood office, obligatory pile of scripts replaced by a pile of DVDs, the blurry-eyed “reader” combing a hundred years of cinema to find the studio’s next project. One cannot help but wonder if we would have seen any movies at all this year had it not been for movies made in years past.
But I digress...
King Kong is a better film than Peter Jackson’s entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. The character development is subtler, more believable, and the film as a whole has more feeling, more passion, all without the plasticity that plagued every frame of Rings. After the wild success of that trilogy, Peter Jackson could have done anything he wanted, and the fact that he chose this speaks to his love of the material. He has remained true to the spirit of the original film more than the film itself. The story is intact, but the dynamics have shifted. New elements have been added, new characters invented, responsibilities have been shifted; this is the same King Kong we have always known, and it is also entirely different. Jackson has made something old into something new.
In the original King Kong, filmed during the Great Depression, the economic situation is in the background. Fay Wray’s Ann Darrow is just as effected by it as is Naomi Watts’, but in that film, the soup lines were on the sidelines. In this version, we open with a montage of New York City during the Depression, Hoovervilles in Central Park, bread lines, evictions, a mention of the Federal Theater Project; the Depression era living conditions are brought to the forefront, they are a major driving force for all of the characters.
Ann is starving, but Carl Denham (Jack Black) feels the pressure just as much. Denham starts out the film as a mad showman, a likeable charlatan for whom no lengths are too great when it comes to getting his show on the road. Denham will say what he has to say, do what he has to do, and he is relentless in his pursuit of the ultimate spectacle. Over the course of the film, Denham darkens, until he becomes the villain. He is still the showman, but he has gone completely mad. Denham’s madness comes from desperation. The Great Depression simmers all around him, and there is only a thin thread keeping him from squalor.
In the original film, Carl Denham was a stand-in for Kong creator Merian C. Cooper (Cooper’s Kong was a very personal film), but in Jack Black’s hands, the character becomes an Orson Welles figure, an enfant terrible of cinema whose big ideas cost money and make the studio bosses nervous. When Denham and his crew land on Skull Island, he becomes obsessed with his quest, to the detriment of the people with him.
Jackson was able to keep much of the original Kong dialogue – more than seventy years old at this point – in his script without it sounding dated. The scene Denham films on the boat, where Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler) tells Ann about how he doesn’t like having girls on his boat, that is an exact exchange from the original film. There are several instances like that throughout the film, and they fit seamlessly with what Jackson and crew have written. It was wise of them to pick and choose which dialogue to use.
In an interview, Jack Black said that so much of King Kong was shot in front of a green screen that he was never quite sure how the film would piece together. There are many effects shots here, some better than others. In the close-ups, Kong is amazing. He looks real. In medium shots and from far away, he looks like a video game. The same goes for the people who interact with Kong. The transitions from live actor to CGI recreation are not always seamless, and too often we go from looking at, say Adrien Brody to looking at the X-Box version of Adrien Brody. There are scenes where the soundstage on which the film was shot is so noticeable, so blatant, that it takes the viewer out of the film. You almost expect a boom microphone to drop into the shot. So much of this is believable that when that kind of artificiality intrudes, it is noticeable enough to be distracting.
Kong is the star of the film, as he should be. The rest of the actors do not have much to do. Naomi Watts looks good, looks conflicted, and cries. Her dialogue is minimal. Jack Driscoll (Brody) seems to be the only one who gets the gravity of their situation. Even Denham takes a backseat once they get to the island. Upon landing on Skull Island, the human characters seem to exist only to bring out the creatures on the island.
This film could easily be retiled King Kong In Jurassic Park. In the original film, Kong fought one or two prehistoric, reptilian creatures, but here they keep coming one after the other. The effects are strong, but the constant appearance of new creature after new creature becomes redundant. A lot of cutting could have been done to this film without ruining its power, and the middle of the film would have been a good place to start.
When we first meet Carl Denham, he is showing the rushes of his latest film to the studio bosses. One of them tiredly asks, “How much more is there,” to which another replies, “Five more reels.” By the end of King Kong, one could not blame the viewer for feeling like those two tired studio execs. This film is entirely too long, and length is not something Peter Jackson does well. The Lord of the Rings films all seemed to drag on, proving ultimately superficial. King Kong, while a better, more entertaining film, could lose about an hour without ruining the overall effect. Jackson’s best efforts have always come when he keeps the story tight and the pace fast. Jackson needs to find someone who can help him pare it down, someone who can tell him no.
**1/2 out of 5
