King Kong

[undyingking]

We were a bit disappointed by the big ape. (But enough about Peter Jackson...) I was worried that the 3-hour length of it would drag, but that wasn't the case, which was good. But it smelt like a big missed opportunity. What's the point of doing a new version of a classic film if you're not going to say something interesting with it?

OK, the CGI was terrific, and I suppose it's a must-see film in that it embodies the current state of the art technically. The bugs and creepy-crawlies (and munchy-munchies) were good enough that it's really difficult to tell where CGI stops and models begin. Less so with the furry things, dinosaurs etc, but still. And the action sequences back in New York were pretty good too. So I don't feel I wasted my money... but.

• The whole setup hour or so was wasted time. Why bother making us care about these characters' motivations etc, why bother trying to root it firmly in the Depression? It's kind of irrelevant to the thrust of the movie. We would be happy to take them as givens. It meant a clunky  transition between comedy (leaping in and out of cabs while moneymen shake their fists, etc) and the main part of the film, which turned out to be a sort of thriller.
• It makes me feel pretty sick to see the islanders portrayed as evil subhuman savages. Really I think the lack of consideration here is kind of pathetic -- the Orcs in LotR were far more "human". That it's like that in the 1933 film is no excuse.
• Also, what happened to the islanders? -- they mysteriously disappear from the film completely, with no explanation. So do the surviving sailors, including poor old Billy Elliot whom we've gone to so much trouble to preserve. What's that all about?
• What was the point of that wall, which Kong could have climbed over any time he wanted? And why does it have a giant-gorilla-sized gate in the middle of it?
  
• I have a pretty low ick threshold, which was triggered more than once -- by the giant centipedes in the hollow log, and several times during the fight in the swampy chasm. I guess this is more about me than about the film, but why did it have to be so gruesome?
• Naomi Watts did a really good job with what she had to work with, so props to her. Although I'd like to know how she managed to climb to the point of the (mysteriously breeze-free) Empire State Building in icy sub-zero conditions wearing stack heels and a sleeveless dress. Maybe this was why they worked so hard to establish her character as rather agile.
• Likewise Jack Black, who showed that he could manage a big role in a serious film next.
• After the insistence in the original film that Kong's interest in the girl was sexual, this one was a bit of a wimp-out -- it seemed more like he wanted her as a companion to watch sunsets with, so much nicer than those horrid lowbrow dinosaurs. Which is rather feeble to say the least.

But anyway, as I say I felt it was a missed opportunity to do something more interesting with Kong than just to have him scamper around being bitten / shot at. Even the dreadful 1976 version added more to the original, with its theme about the badness of ruthless exploitation of natural resources. The quotes from Heart of Darkness were thrown away AFAICS, never mind any ideas about relating it to the exercise of imperial power, the demands of consumerism, allegory for the human condition, or any of that sort of jazz that thoughtful film-makers try and work into their B-movies.

Comments

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Satisfactory for a blockbuster, terrible as a work of art, I thought. Now if only I could persuade more people that exactly the same is true of the horrifically overrated Lord of the Rings trilogy!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

At leat with those films we weren't realistically hoping for any sort of reinterpretation, so it wasn't a let-down...