King Kong

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I've just read Roger Ebert's review. Here's what he says:

I want to see this movie so badly. I love the original, and the advertisements and reviews make this one seem even better.

I'd seen it before when I was like 8, but I caught the second half of the movie tonight, and you are right it is very good. I doubt there are very many movies from 1933 that could be this engrossing.

I'll see it a week or two later when shows aren't sold out. I'll see Family Stone before that since Rachel McMyfuturewife (the cutie pie in my avatar) ALWAYS comes first.

I'm not necessarilly more intrigued by scientific accuracy than I am by the fact that it should be a work of art. Not a lot of recent movies have had actual "meaning" compared to plays at this point in time, and this new remake of King Kong should be able to turn the tables around by offering new moralities and principles on what modern society is like. Maybe even a bit of political symbolism. You see science has always taken a backseat in movies to plain ol' thrills so as long as my brother doesn't whine about it (like with the Star Wars ships screeching in space when in reality you can't actually hear anything), everything is good.

All it really boils down to is exitement, not boring cliches like a lot of modern movies suggest.

I saw King Kong today! It was exciting, sad, and wonderful. I highly recommend it.

It was really good.

Spoilers! There were only a couple scenes I strongly disliked (other than the spider pit scene- that one I hated because it was so well done that my skin was crawling); one shot before they reach the island which is overdramatized (the one where the glass falls off of the table if you've seen it) and I kind of cringed at teh ice-skating scene. It seemed a little indulgent. I was glad when they shot at Kong; I was cringeing att he scene, but it's probably because I am so anti-sentimental much of the time. The scene wasn't badly dont, it was just kind of incongruous and unnessessary. I completely anticipated that the ladder would fall backward in the end scene, too. Something about the camera angle; whenever there's a ladder attached to the wall with a certain angle (maybe half-wall, looking down, is the one), the ladder WILL fall abckward, seems like.

My short review:

I think maybe there's a sense trepidation amongst filmgoers that are holding audiences back from seeing King Kong in absurdly large numbers. It is not warranted in any way. From the open 30s titles it feels like this movie is immediately preparing to take you into a world of fantasy that only the magic of cinema can provide the means of creating. From the scenes of vaudeville and the depression early in the picture, we get an insight into Ann Darrow, a smile that emits an underlying beauty. It is this simple power that you can sense will later woo the obviously anticipated main enigma to come later in the work. There are problem only few people who haven't seen or heard of King Kong in either the original film, the remake or countless parodies. We all know what's coming. Jackson's directorial pacing makes us yearn for it. The major change is that this script and performance gives Ann more of a Jane Goodall type silent sentiment, than unpenetrable beauty.

Whilst some big budget films feel like they're just moving from action set piece to set piece, Kong instead feels like a journey into the unknown. The fact that one of the characters is reading Heart of Darkness illuminates this underlying theme. A major drive is Carl Denham. During casting, Jackson apparently wanted Jack Black to summon the spirit of Orson Welles. As you watch the film, you can't help but want to look out for the Tenacious D rock style of the actor to come through. He supresses it greatly and becomes this man intoxicated with the mystery of the world and perhaps so, his own ego. Australian Andrew Lesnie, who won the cinematography oscar for the first Lord of the Rings film, has out done himself. His original choice was to even film the movie in black and white. The man was born to shoot epics. The island itself has been created such that there is danger at every turn. And not to be cliche, but just as we think we've had the worst of it, we get to the top of the heap: man. You know it's coming AND you want to see it.

How do you make a remake and still give us something new? Perhaps you start with a little thing called imagination. Lesson one for Hollywood.


Also Serissa, I agree with you about the ladder as well, old trick that. But I didn't let it ruin it for me. This was one of those movies where I really really wanted to suspend my disbelief.

Oh, about Jack Black's being cast: I personally did not object to it. He changed the character, but here's my guess on this: Peter Jackson cast him as he saw the original Carl Denham in his mind- someone who was so wrapped up in his own work that he would destroy anything that was in his way. This is exactly what the new Carl Denham is like. Utterly self-absorbed and self-focused; all he cares about is making a movie. It's almost sociopathic. When he delivers the final line, it's as if all of his dreams have finally been brought to light, not only shattered but found wanting in the first place.

Then aagin, I know nothing about acting.

I thought the 2005 King Kong was remarkable in many respects, but not perfect. Of course, few things are. Being familiar with the 1933 Kong only makes one appreciate the 2005 version more--and the original as well. This is not a replacement of that film but a loving tribute to it. It even sort of engages the original in an intelligent discussion. Some of the nice easter egg touches include Denham's line of: "We can't take Fay, she's working on a picture for RKO", many musical chords taken directly from Steiner's original score, and recreations of some of the scenes in the original movie (now within the movie) that almost seem to suggest the '33 Kong is a film version of the events portrayed in this movie, weird as that sounds.

At first I felt, and still do somewhat, that Jack Black was miscast as Carl Denham. I don't think he gave a bad performance, but it just seems he lacks Robert Armstrong's charisma. Many of his lines--the same lines Armstrong spoke in the original, now seem diluted because his voice lacks the inflection. When he speaks of the map he found in his first scenes, he does so in a whisper. Even his last line doesn't seem to carry the weight that it should. But if nothing else, I got used to him.

It may also, as Serissa pointed out above, have to do with how the film makers have interpreted the character. In this version, Denham seems more shallow, desperate, and conniving. The original Denham was based, not on DeMill (as Ebert says above), but more on the personality of the creator of Kong, Meriam C. Cooper. Cooper was in many ways the equivalent of Denham--an adventurer film maker who loved to travel to exotic locals and film animals. As a result, Carl Denham (in the first movie) has that infectous adventurous spirit that makes him impossible to hate.

The character of Jack Driscoll, who was based on King Kong's producer and co-director (Ernest B. Schoedsack) and a macho Harrison Ford-type first mate in the original film, has now been made into three characters: a writer, an actor, and a first mate (the first mate is black, which I've heard some people complain is a complete anachronism for 1933). But either way, Driscoll and Ann both have more depth than they were allowed in the original.

Kong himself is one of the most impressively rendered CGI creations I've ever seen, but you probably don't need me to tell you about that. All I will say, though, is that you often forget he's not real. In most f/x dominated movies, like Van Helsing and the new Star Wars, you are painfully aware that you are watching special effects on the screen, and not so with Kong.

I was also afraid that the new version would become too heavy-handed with the relationship with Ann and Kong, like the awful '76 remake did with its pointless sexual overtones (Judith Crist appropriately said of the 1976 version, "The one and original lovable monster is lost amid all the hydraulic manipulations in what now emerges as the story of a dumb blonde who falls for a huge plastic finger."). However, I rather liked the way that relationship was developed. Kong toys with her as he did in the original, and I love the way he picks her up and places her on his shoulder after a victory against the T.rex. I think the difference is that this Ann is intelligent, while the Jessica Lange Dwan character was an idiotic blonde.

I will say, however, that this new version is rather too long. I think Jackson could have easily trimmed away 20 minutes or more. There is too much of Hayes and Jimmy (two characters who essentially mean nothing to the story), too much ominous foreshadowing, and some shots where Ann and Kong stare at each other that go on too long. I felt like I was watching an extended DVD rather than the theatrical cut. I'm almost cringing to think of what the extended edition would be like.

And, of course, there are problems I had with the way the dinosaurs are portrayed in this new version, but you all knew that. It seems all of their research into the subject came from watching other movies with dinosaurs in them. None of these particularly bothered me while watching this film, and the bottom line is that I give the movie a thumbs up, but I plan to spend the rest of this post perceverating about dinosaurs:

The sauropods (or "brontosaur", as it is referred to officially) was said to have been based on the models of the enraged sauropod that chases the sailors onto the log in the original. Of course, the look of the creatures in the original film was based on the artwork of Charles R. Knight. The beautiful black and white chiaroscuro was inspired from the engravings of Gustav Dore and Max Ernst. Here's a painting of a Brontosaurus (which is now known to be a chimera consisting of an Apatosaurus skeleton with a Camarasaurus skull):



Sauropods are now known, of course, to have been land dwellers (Bakker reflects that the original is actually ahead of it's time in depicting the sauropod charging onto land and reaching a tree). In the scene involving the Sauropod stampede, it seems that too many 30 ton beasts are crammed into too narry an alley, and that too few people die as a result. The total casualty is 4, and one of those is killed by a "raptor". These bastard creatures resemble to me the Titanosaurids of the Cretaceous, such as Jobaria:



The Tyrannosaurus in the original film was also based on the artwork from Charles R. Knight. Some of his Tyrannosaurs were innovative for their time:



Though in this painting the T.rex has an overly shallow back of the head and small chest, the horizontal pose is ahead of it's time.

This Tyrannosaurus, however, is vastly inadequate:



The tail-dragging gait, length of the tail, badly dwarfed head, placement of the eye (we didn't even know which hole in the skull was the eye socket until later), lizard-like head, and armor scutes are completely inappropriate. However, this is the image of Tyrannosaurus rex that the one featured in the original King Kong is more or less based on (the following still was not used in the movie):



I have commented before, I think, that Kong could not kill the T.rex in the manner in which he does in the original film because it did, in fact, have the strongest bite of any known creature. Still, it doesn't disable my suspension of disbelief, as it's such an awesome moment I'm always transfixiated to the screen when it happens. It's one of the greatest animated battles I've seen, and O'Brien even infused much of Kong's personality into every motion, like the feigning of punches, and the comical the way he toys the beast's jaws after he has ripped them appart, and then beats his chest and roars. Even though I was dreading it, I still loved the fact that Kong kills the tyrannosaur in almost exactly the same way in the new film, because every motion looks almost identical to the old one.

Gregory S. Paul stated in his book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World that even thinking of dinosaurs as reptiles has hindered dinosaur art:

Saw it. 8/10 is my score. I thought that King Kong could have used better pacing, especially in the begining. Lots of pointless scenes along with nameless characters dying. It picks up when Kong Finally reaches the city, what with some of the greatest street actions scenes ever shot. The special effects are phenomanel and it really shows just how far CGI has come since Jurassic Park.

I really enjoyed the 2005 Kong. The greasy/sleazy yet charismatic Carl contrasted nicely with his devoted friends Jack and Preston, who are still there even at the end. As for the relationship between Kong and Ann… it looked very much like parent/child behavior that has been previously documented in gorillas. Looking at through that lens, Kong's search for "his" baby makes a lot more sense.

The spider pit was the first time in ages I've heard an audience scream. True horror; better than any zombie.

As an aficionado of the 20's and 30's I have to say that the black first mate on a tramp steamer is correct for the time. Often, well educated blacks, graduates of places like Tuskegee found that they had to leave the US in order to actually improve their station. The sub story of Hayes and the boy Jimmy was a nice counter point to Carl's sleaziness, as well as a subtle political commentary.

Thagomizer's exhaustive treatise on the dinosaurs over looks one possibility that hit me over the head as soon as the first one came on-screen: These are evolved dinosaurs. Rather like the Galapagos Tortoise, these dinosaurs are the result of living in a closed ecology for untold generations. After all, there were few of the Great Reptiles left by the time mammals like gorillas were dwelling amongst the trees, and no one is complaining about Kong's existence.

So, i have this theory. Kong just needed a hug.
See, he's angry. Unloved. So he just needed a big hug and all the NYC rampage thing wouldn't have happened.

Also:
KONG DIED FOR YOUR SINS!