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As told by Peter Jackson, the new Universal Pictures release of King Kong might be the tale of a creature who is the last of his kind. Very old, battle scarred, and an intimidating but not unbelievable 25-feet-tall, this Kong is a fearless though caring mountain gorilla. If he were left to his own devices, he might sit atop a skyscraping stone perch, admiring the sunsets and eating bamboo on his native Skull Island. Alas, humanity must interfere, leading to Kong’s conquest not by technology and society, but by the temptation offered by a failed vaudevillian blonde discovered by an alcoholic movie producer during the throes of the Great Depression.
For some fans, the idea of remaking King Kong was a sacrilege, akin to remaking Gone with the Wind or Citizen Kane. Undoubtedly, the 1933 classic ranks among the great American adventure stories ever told, and though the 1976 remake – updated to reflect U.S. culture in the 1970s - left many viewers underwhelmed, it did nothing to tarnish the reputation of the original. With this new film, Jackson has delivered an assured update of the original film with only sporadic touches of the 1976 version; the 2005 version retains the basic settings, properties, and themes from the first Kong.
Naturally, director Jackson has benefited from his experiences on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. His camera swoops and glides over the action and Rings’ overly lengthy running times are no deterrent to his storytelling ambitions in his new film – Kong clocks in at just over three hours. Jackson the writer, in cahoots with Rings’ partners Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens, might not have benefited as clearly by the successes of Rings – some of the new Kong’s screenplay is lifted directly from the original story credited to Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace and from the original screenplay credited to James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose. While the names of Jackson’s key characters, bits of dialogue, and specific scenarios are identical to those in the original film, some 1933 material has been somewhat arbitrarily dispensed with in the new production.
Certainly, the set-up of Jackson’s picture fleshes out and alters elements from the original Kong story. Heroine Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) is now an aspiring performer, down on her luck, looking for a break, though not willing to stoop to burlesque. Carl Denham (Jack Black) is still an aggressive movie producer, but now he is being pursued by investors and is thus prepossessed with making a picture on an uncharted island that will put him back in the black – no pun intended. The biggest shift is in changing Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) from the first mate on the Venture – the ship that will transport Denham and crew to the mysterious Skull Island – to a playwright and screenwriter whose words have captured the imagination of Darrow even before the two have met. All of this material, laid out in the first act, serves to set up motivations more clearly and smoothly than they were in the previous versions of Kong. Due to Jackson’s patience and affinity for the period, the initial scenes all work well, and New York’s Depression-era setting is nicely established in these scenes, which all follow a superbly executed opening montage of the city’s dregs.
Without question, Jackson’s film gains needed momentum when the Venture crash lands – literally – onto Skull
Island. Jackson went through the difficult process of previsualizing many of these scenes with a computer-animated video that served as a moving storyboard of his complicated action scenes. And action there is. Very rapidly, after the Venture crew goes ashore and encounters a haunting tribe of native Aborigines, King Kong picks up much steam as Darrow is sacrificed to Kong in a ritual ceremony and the giant ape, slowly revealed, absconds with her into the heart of the most unsettling jungle ever put on celluloid. Could New Zealand native Jackson have been showing the rest of the world a smidgeon of what life is like in his exotic home country?
Jackson is unquestionably at his best throughout the sequences of Driscoll, Denham and the mates from the Venture pursuing Kong and Darrow through a lost world of prehistoric beasts, horrible insects and arachnids, and carnivorous annelids that will surely inspire audience nightmares. Suffice it to say that all of the Skull Island material packs a powerful force, giving new meaning to the term action sequence. In fact, does any action sequence in any other film approximate the various chases and battles which Jackson has committed to film in the middle section of King Kong?
Some minor notes are warranted about Jackson’s Skull Island material. First, although all of the creatures and encounters have been updated, some key moments mirror those from the 1933 film. For one, there is a log sequence similar to the original, where Kong twists a fallen tree back and forth to shake off sailors and Venture crew members who are in pursuit of him. In fact, in the original cut of the 1933 film, some of those men survived the fall into the crevasse below only to be set upon by crab spiders, lizards and other creatures, devouring them all. The sequence was considered too horrific for audiences in 1933, and has long been considered lost. In this new film, Jackson has brought it back to life, imagining a pit even more wretched than that of Merian C. Cooper, co-director Ernest Schoedsack and chief technician Willis O’Brien in 1933.
Most curiously, Jackson has eliminated a sequence in which Kong, trying to bond to Darrow through her distinct scent, strips off some of her outer clothes and smells them. In a moment where the sequence might have been, Watts’ clothing changes, so one wonders if the scene was shot but edited out before the final cut. Also, one of the most memorable Skull Island moments from the 1933 film occurs when Kong crashes through the wall meant to keep him out of the native village. Furious over Darrow’s escape, he trashes the village, and violently tramples many natives before being subdued by Denham’s team. In Jackson’s version, there is little village mayhem to speak of, odd since the director had set up the natives as evildoing heavies.
Of course, having a three-hour movie does necessitate some cutting, and Jackson, with editor Jamie Selkirk, had to make some hard decisions about which material to cut down or eliminate completely. Suffice it to say that Kong does get captured in a beach scene that resembles the original, being gassed by Venture crew, leading to a proclamation by Denham that is straight from the original 1933 screenplay: “We’re millionaires, boys. I’ll share it with all of you! Why, in a few months, it'll be up in lights on Broadway: Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World!” Pinch-hitting composer James Newton Howard eases transitions with his gentle reflective score.
Undoubtedly, Jackson was destined to shoot the third act’s New York sequences to harken back to the original material. Thus, we smash cut (as in the first film) from the Skull Island beachhead to the New York marquee announcing Carl Denham’s Giant Monster: KING KONG, EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD. What happens in the remainder of the film is thrilling, exciting, exasperating, and in select moments very touching. In fact, this Kong is more unexpectedly bonded to Ann than in either of the two earlier versions of the film. In one marvelous moment of serenity before a storm of attacking biplanes, Kong makes a hand gesture to Ann indicating a “beautiful” moment of sunrise. This bit of innovation reflects actual late-20th century research in which real gorillas have been known to learn and make hand gestures to indicate specific words and phrases.
As in 1933, Kong elevates to both literal and figurative heights in the breathtaking sequence atop the Empire State Building – coincidentally New York’s highest structure once again following the September 11 tragedy. Though, by this point, Driscoll and Denham have been essentially rendered as minor characters, we anticipate Kong’s inevitable demise. However, his moments with Darrow make his and our commitment as an audience worthwhile. Jackson stages his sequence uniquely and in large part unforgettably. Kong represents whatever innocent being you want him to – a tragic hero, society itself, nature, ecology, a doomed lover – it’s all there in the manifestation of Kong, onto which you can project your own personal demons, heartbreak and regret.
Another word about Kong himself – as a character he might be the most effective computer-generated creation ever attempted. Sure, the dinosaurs in Kong might not eclipse the work of animator Phil Tippett and visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren in the first Jurassic Park film. But Kong himself is a wonder. He is a real character, and though we know he is not really there (and wasn’t there during principal photography but for Kong motion-capture performer Andy Serkis standing sideline), we feel for him, believe him, and become him. Kong is beautifully animated and wonderfully emoted by Serkis and the team at Weta Digital in New Zealand. Against the odds, Jackson and his production staffers have done original Kong creators Willis O’Brien and Marcel Delgado – who worked in stop-motion animation – due justice with their interpretation of the character.
By the end of the picture – which has already garnered Peter Jackson a deserved Golden Globe nomination as Best Director – we are as exhausted as Kong and know that there will never be another like him. For audiences’ sake, we instead hope that there will be other films and characters like those which we have just seen, and that Peter Jackson as a filmmaker is not the last of his kind.
For more information, link to http://www.kingkongmovie.com
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