King Kong Review
by Shane Burridge (sburridge AT hotmail DOT com)December 19th, 2005
King Kong (2005) 187m
Peter Jackson is in the enviable position of making his childhood dreams come true. He loved Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings'; he made the movie of it. He loved KING KONG as a child; he made his own version of it. And he can be seen entertaining these seemingly impossible fancies as far back as 197
Warning. Flashback and long personal reminiscence ahead. But you won't read this in any other review of KING KONG, I can tell you.
Jackson and I were born in the same country in the same era. We undoubtedly were both captivated by the same television broadcast of the 1933 KING KONG late on a Friday night back when we were kids. Some years afterwards I was unwittingly exposed to a sampling of the fledgling director's handiwork: a children's television programme called SPOT ON had been running an 8mm film competition (this is in the days before video, kids), and had become the only reason I'd tune in to watch the show (which was by and large pretty dull) as, being an 8mm freak myself, I wanted to check out the level of film-making that was going on in other peoples' backyards. It was a revelation to me just how cack-handed the entries in this competition turned out to be - all point-and-shoot with no idea of editing, use of sound, or even effective visual composition. And so, every week I would watch and assure myself that I could produce results light years better than anything else on offer.
But then, one weekend afternoon, I saw something that was actually good. Better than good. It was a clip from an effort called 'The Valley' (the show screened only excerpts from the entries) and featured...STOP-MOTION ANIMATION!! These guys were animating a man-eating giant frame-by-frame! My own lousy camera didn't even have a timer! I was immediately full of admiration for the film-makers - although obviously the stop-motion sequence suggested there was one guiding hand behind the effort. I loved Harryhausen films (this is in the days before CGI, kids) and I could tell that the 8mm animator did too. Even though I hadn't seen the whole entry, 'The Valley' was a shoe-in. It was the only good thing I'd ever seen on that show, period. However, when it came time for the winners to be announced, the Only Good Thing was not among them. I was dumbstruck. Outraged with disbelief. Not only because the film didn't win, but because once again it showed that any material of a fantastical nature didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting anywhere in New Zealand, a country where derivative dramas and unfunny comedies were about the only fictions churned out in local production houses.
It wasn't until many years later - after the final film in the RINGS trilogy, in fact - that I learned that the person responsible for that short film was none other than Peter Jackson. I was at first surprised, then gleefully vindicated. I hope he got the names and addresses of the people responsible for judging that film competition and sent them all an 8 x 10 glossy of him holding an Oscar.
When I first heard of Jackson's plans for a KONG remake, three thoughts immediately came to my mind - 'Why the hell does he want to remake a classic?'; 'If he's lucky it won't suck like the 1976 remake, which was just as unnecessary as this one is going to be', and 'Is he going to put giant spiders in it?'. The spiders are a piece of KONG lore. I know I'll never get to see David Lean's NOSTROMO or Kubrick's NAPOLEON, but there was always some slender hope that someone, somewhere might unearth a lost reel containing the legendary 'Spider Sequence', in which a good number of the movie's cast fall into a chasm and are killed by huge spiders. It was cut out of the original 1933 KONG after its premiere, reportedly because the audience freaked out so much that they couldn't concentrate on the scenes following. When it time for the long-awaited DVD release of the 1933 KONG, Jackson and his team used existing storyboards and stills to recreate this sequence to the point that it looked like it could have been made back in the days of the original film (the time he spend faking vintage film footage for FORGOTTEN SILVER probably paid off here). Having made this bonus DVD feature a labor of love, it was unlikely that Jackson would have then repeated it in his own version - doubly so when he had already done his own Giant Spider scene in LORD OF THE RINGS anyway.
Still, I was curious to see if anything would come of the spiders. The answer that Jackson responded with has got to be the most expensive in-joke in the history of cinema. The chasm is still in the new movie, but instead of spiders it is populated with wetas, a turnabout that no doubt induced gagging and wry grins from audiences in New Zealand at the time of the film's premiere. For most folks outside the antipodes, the acronym WETA is simply the name of an NZ effects company. But as anyone actually living on those islands can tell you, the weta is the most loathed and dreaded of native wildlife. It's unfortunate for the weta that it is quite a large and fearsome-looking insect, and most people in NZ have a 'shriek first, kill later' reaction to them. I have to admit, the sight of a chasm full of wetas that were three feet long made my jaw tighten.
It's not only the wetas that Jackson has fun with, but also Skull Island's whole ecosystem of prehistoric monsters. I remember being surprised and delighted to see dinosaurs when I first watched the original KONG - I'd assumed the gorilla was the only creature in it - and I'm sure Jackson revelled in it, too. Back in pre-JURASSIC PARK days it was rare to see good dinosaur FX, and I think KONG was about only the second I'd seen after Harryhausen's work on ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. Jackson had to wait about thirty years to give the dinosaur scenes in his imagination full vent on the screen, and the action scenes will undoubtedly win this movie many fans, but I wonder if the work in this film has reached the FX ceiling now. In 1933 audiences were amazed by the level of effects work in KONG. In the 2000s, audiences expect the effects to be nothing less than amazing, and are harder to impress. The result is a new breed of film directors, or a new style of film directing, of which Jackson is at the forefront. As much as I enjoy and admire KONG and LORD OF THE RINGS, I don't feel Jackson is a director now as much as a choreographer, a logistician, a painter of CG images. For me, real directing comes from looking through a lens and capturing what is framed within it - obviously KONG and RINGS are quantum leaps from Jackson's 1983 debut BAD TASTE, yet it's that earlier film that I still treasure as a piece of highly-individual film-making craft. I'd even be tempted to trade KONG for a chance to see 'The Valley' if it came down to it.
So, in twenty-five words or less: Yes, KING KONG is great, grand-scale movie-making -
an old-fashioned adventure with action, spirit, and a lot of heart.
But no matter how marvellous KONG looks and feels, it will never beat the original. Jackson and his crew can be happy in the knowledge that their movie wasn't a misfire like Dino De Laurentis' 1976 remake. One reason the '76 movie failed was because it posed itself as a brassy improvement on the original (Location shooting! Widescreen! Bigger monkeys! Newer skyscrapers!). Jackson publicised his love of the original KONG long before his movie appeared, making it clear that he had no pretensions of updating or improving upon the original, but instead wanted to live out a childhood dream. The 2005 KONG can't be the revered milestone that the 1933 KONG was, and Jackson knows that. And that's why his film is actually good. Better than good.
[email protected]
_________________________________________________________________ Need more speed? Get Xtra Broadband @
http://jetstream.xtra.co.nz/chm/0,,202853-1000,00.html
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
