I saw the new King Kong by Peter Jackson two nights ago, and what a joy. A movie movie. A spectacle. With a big heart. All about love – love of an ape for a human, and of the human taking joy in the ape’s affection. A worthy reinvention of the classic original, from a story by Edgar Wallace, who’s had no less than 190 movies made of his novels and stories, surely some kind of record.
I have a special fondness for those authors who create characters that become iconic archetypes: like Robert Louis Stevenson (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Treasure Island's Long John Silver), H.G. Wells (The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr. Moreau), Bram Stoker (Dracula), Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), Mickey Spillane (Mike Hammer), and Ian Fleming (James Bond).
Anyway, about the movie: see it. My girlfriend enjoyed it too, even though she is one of the few people growing up in America who is totally unfamiliar with the genre of movies I’ll call, for want of a useful term, “Hollywood blockbuster." However, she thought it was too long, and that sequences were milked to the utmost. But I lapped up every juicy second.
Interesting the relationship between ape boy and human girl: we have paradigms for big things who like little things, the way the big Ape loves the tiny girl — in the same way, perhaps, that we big humans like precious little things, i.e. sparkling jewelry.
But what things do we like that are bigger than us? We like horses — women especially like horses. However, Kong is bigger than a horse, way bigger. Well, we like mountains: maybe that's how the girl likes Kong, her big protector.
The movie is of course about the unbridled Id, or nature, if you will, and how we humans treat it. We either exploit it (as the Jack Black character does); divert it or lead it on to make society safe from it (as the artist character Adrien Brody does when he leads Kong away from the people on Time Square); kill it (as the Army and Air Force do); or appreciate it (as the Naomi Watts character does).
King Kong proves one thing: special effects are diverting, but if they’re not anchored by human emotions, and human characters, they’re a waste of money. In this case, not a cent was wasted, because every scene is human emotion-charged.
I wish the makers of action movies would realize this. Most good action movies miss being classics, because they forget character in their monomaniacal pursuit of event. Question in point: What makes my top action movies of all time — The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2 with Mel Gibson), The Seven Samurai, Aliens, and Point Blank (Lee Marvin) — better action movies than Diehard? Because the characters are better, even though Diehard throws in a wife for Bruce Willis to give him some character, but not enough. Peter Jackson’s King Kong is a great movie not because of the special effects, even though they are as special as they get, but because of the human emotions and human character of everybody, the Big Ape included.
Article comments
1 - Bob A. Booey
Unbridled Id? Oh please. Maybe your point on nature is more interesting, but I don't think the film has any particularly deep thoughts on environmentalism or our relationship with nature, especially since half of the movie is cramming as many creepy crawlies and spectacles of nature as possible onto the screen with expensive computer animation.
I thought the acting and dialogue at the start of the movie was bad and I wasn't sure if it was intentionally stilted to echo 1930s early Hollywood dramas or just bad material acted badly. With Jack Black, you expect some lines to be delivered with bad timing, an inappropriate gleam in his eye and mugging/mock emotion. I didn't expect that so much from Naomi Watts. The casting of Black is curious and I almost wonder if you have to subscribe to the Clooney-in-Coen-films theory where the actor is cast precisely because the gifted director knows that their overacting and lack of range suit the foolishness of the role?
The CGI is incredible and I can see where they spent the $270 million budget, but it's an oddly paced movie. The beginning is slow and the movie builds up to a big horror show/monster fest in the Skull Island scenes. Don't get me wrong -- those are some of the neatest, scariest creepy crawlies and monsters you've ever seen, but was the goal of the producers to spend as much money as possible to fit in Jurassic Park and Arachnophobia 2005 into the middle of the movie?
The CGI for Kong is incredible as well and I credit Jackson and his people for doing research on primate facial expressions and movement to make him look realistic.
The movie was good, but pretty dumb. I think Jackson did a decent, sufficiently eye-catching job with a story that started out as a dumb one earlier this century. Even Adrian Brody seemed like he was there for the paycheck.
Film critics are dumb sheep, so you won't read this in any other review, but there was some definite homosocial subtext to the ship crew that was weird: the wise, strapping black first mate and his young, scrappy protege Jimmy (who cries like a widow after the expected minority splat occurs) and the one-eyed, sea-dog cook guy who also mourns his soulmate, the racist stereotyped character of the Chinese animal-tamer who also meets his expected minority splat. I know Jackson was paying homage to the golden era of Hollywood (even trying to get Fay Wray in the film), but isn't the Chinese coolie one 1930s film convention we could have dropped from the Charlie Chan days for this 2005 remake? Even Jack Black's character and his assistant had a slightly weird vibe going on.
That is all.
2 - pogblog
I completely agree. GO. What a photovizual treat, as they say.
King Kong is a major motion picture, flawed & fabulous
The idea that someone might miss this movie movie, this major motion picture, or, the horror the horror, only see it on DVD makes me ill.
I am the quintessential LOTR fan, but I would say most succinctly about this movie --Don't think. Drink it in. It's swell.
p.s.(And, yes, do go to the loo before it begins. You won't want to miss any of it.)
pp.s. IF you only see this fabulous film on DVD, you will be sent to Movie Hell where they only play Britney Spears movies. If there are any. (I don't want to know.)
ppp.s. I don't care so much yea or nay about 'the characters' -- they're fine. It's that you are transported into another sensibility so ravishingly. If you miss this movie on the big screen, you will never forgive yourself.
3 - joanne
Who knew an ape could bring me to tears! Fabulous, heart-felt movie...the ape was so sweet and the effects were so dynamic. And what can one say about Naomi Watts? She's a Hollywood beauty way beyond today's definition. What a wonderful actress. (I have to mention her performance in "21 Grams"...amazing!)
Agree with you on Kong! Long live the King.
4 - Scott Butki
I'm with B.B. on this one. His comments mirror ones I made here.
5 - pogblog
I meant to say that I completely agreed with Adam's cheerful review. B.B.'s wasn't on when I wrote mine -- we must have clikked Publish at the same moment. I missed all the creepy stuff he mentions.
It may be because as a cameraperson, I was watching every cut like an eagle & sighing with delight, but it never felt creepy to me except where it was supposed to -- when they horribly cut our Kong down.
The movie's a tour de force with a heart.