King Kong
Peter Jackson follows up his Lord of the Rings
trilogy by bringing back the biggest ape of all, and recreates Depression-Era
New York City superbly in the process.
In this modern age of CGI and special effects,
bringing back King Kong in 1930s mode is a tough act, and director Peter Jackson
brilliantly brings the beast to the screen. The downside: the film is three
hours long.
Just about everything in this new remake is hyperbolized. The film opens with a melange of 1930s starvation scenes as a way of underscoring the plight of Vaudeville comedienne Anne Darrow (Naomi Watts) as she swipes an apple and is saved from arrest by desperate film director Carl Denham (Jack Black). He likes her mostly because she can fill the size 4 dresses that his would-be star left behind when she dropped his production.
Denham snookers her into his production and onto the ailing bucket of a ship, The Venture, along with playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrian Brody), not telling any of them that they are off to the uncharted Skull Island. Jackson makes the islanders quite sinister and dreadful, all skin and bones and stringy hair and dry skin. Ann is offered up to King Kong as a sacrifice, but unlike the other meals before her, she provides a show. She uses her Vaudeville act to charm the beast; in the original, the big ape simply loved her because she was purty. In this regard, we see how she charms Kong with her comedy skills and defiance, and he in turn saves her from becoming the meal of several T-Rex dinosaurs. The love affair of sorts continues on in New York. The film's best scene, in which Kong "skates" on a frozen park lake with Ann in his paw, is one of the most humane and humanizing moments in the film, and in any of the King Kong adaptations.
The downside to the film is that the effects of videogames on entertainment is quite apparent here. While the rather short original (less than 90 minutes) shows dinosaurs and the famous log scene, this edition gives us not one but three T-Rex scenes with Kong fighting them on land and on vines. And no sooner are we done with the dinosaurs, but the rescue party is decimated by brontosaurs, velociraptors, and giant insects and worms. Then, just when you think it might be time to relax, there are the giant bats. Mind you, I found all of this fighting against nature gone gigantic thrilling; I was squirming in my seat, viscerally reacting to the action, in a way I did NOT during any of the Lord of the Ring films.
The other big star here is New York in the 1930s. it's amazing how today's film technology can show all of Manhattan from Midtown to the Battery as it might look in the 1930s, taking various newer towers out of the landscape.
Just about everything in this new remake is hyperbolized. The film opens with a melange of 1930s starvation scenes as a way of underscoring the plight of Vaudeville comedienne Anne Darrow (Naomi Watts) as she swipes an apple and is saved from arrest by desperate film director Carl Denham (Jack Black). He likes her mostly because she can fill the size 4 dresses that his would-be star left behind when she dropped his production.
Denham snookers her into his production and onto the ailing bucket of a ship, The Venture, along with playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrian Brody), not telling any of them that they are off to the uncharted Skull Island. Jackson makes the islanders quite sinister and dreadful, all skin and bones and stringy hair and dry skin. Ann is offered up to King Kong as a sacrifice, but unlike the other meals before her, she provides a show. She uses her Vaudeville act to charm the beast; in the original, the big ape simply loved her because she was purty. In this regard, we see how she charms Kong with her comedy skills and defiance, and he in turn saves her from becoming the meal of several T-Rex dinosaurs. The love affair of sorts continues on in New York. The film's best scene, in which Kong "skates" on a frozen park lake with Ann in his paw, is one of the most humane and humanizing moments in the film, and in any of the King Kong adaptations.
The downside to the film is that the effects of videogames on entertainment is quite apparent here. While the rather short original (less than 90 minutes) shows dinosaurs and the famous log scene, this edition gives us not one but three T-Rex scenes with Kong fighting them on land and on vines. And no sooner are we done with the dinosaurs, but the rescue party is decimated by brontosaurs, velociraptors, and giant insects and worms. Then, just when you think it might be time to relax, there are the giant bats. Mind you, I found all of this fighting against nature gone gigantic thrilling; I was squirming in my seat, viscerally reacting to the action, in a way I did NOT during any of the Lord of the Ring films.
The other big star here is New York in the 1930s. it's amazing how today's film technology can show all of Manhattan from Midtown to the Battery as it might look in the 1930s, taking various newer towers out of the landscape.
Posted: Sun - December 25, 2005 at 12:52 AM
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Published On: Jun 20, 2009 07:03 PM
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Published On: Jun 20, 2009 07:03 PM