 I originally heard
of Peter Jackson’s upcoming adaptation of King
Kong shortly after the release of The Frighteners.
Jackson’s plans to bring back the beast to the big screen
were well known amongst the pasty, annoying Fangoria-subscribing
types (of which I was a member) and, if the rumors were correct,
in full, stop motion-animated glory.
For those keeping track, this was
in 1996.
It took awhile.
Nearly an entire decade passed before Kong made it onscreen. In that time, Jackson’s
career did a 180 – splatter flicks, though well loved
and even obsessed over, were replaced by honest
to God epics. The Lord of the Rings trilogy
established Peter Jackson as pure gold and allowed him to
finally realize his dream of bringing his version of King
Kong to the big screen.
…Where it took an absolute nosedive at the box office
What the hell happened?
Using the original 1933 film as a springboard, Peter Jackson’s King Kong faithfully adheres to the original’s
concept while expanding the story to a gargantuan three-hour
running time – quite possibly the easiest explanation
for the film’s theatrical abortion.
Starting off with what could easily be described as Act
1, we’re introduced to New York, 1933, better known
as the Great Depression. Vaudeville is on its last legs, prohibition
is guaranteeing that nobody is having a good time, there are
homeless people in the street eating out of garbage cans –
but despite the obvious problem with the  economy,
film director and outright charlatan Carl Denham is still trying to get his movie off the ground despite the studio’s
refusal to fund the project, a star who has left the project,
a primadonna main actor and a crew that has reservations about
filming on a location called Skull Island.
With all the moxie he can muster, Denham manages to find
a main actress in the beautiful Vaudevillian actress Ann Darrow,
who immediately signs on when she finds out her favorite playwright
Jack Driscoll is penning the script. Ann and Jack hit it off
with a romance that is surprisingly  hurried
considering the running time. For God's sake, they give more
relationship development to the young scrappy do-gooder ship
boy and his hulking black companion! What up with that?
Through thick and thin, the crew manage to drift into Act
2, Skull Island.
Now, a lot has been said about this portion of the film,
specifically the suggestion that the portrayal of the island
natives is a particularly racist caricature of uncultured
African-American islanders. I have to admit, I’m on
the fence with this suggestion. Now you may not know this  and
it might come as a shock to you, but I think racism is
bad. However, I do think it’s great that the cast
of RIZE is getting more work outside of the
documentary field.
The movie crew is greeted with an enthusiasm that’s
comparable to gang rape, despite Denham’s attempt to
bribe the locals with chocolate bars. This results in the
death of a few crewmembers, excessive use of strobe-motion
camera shots and the kidnapping of Ann Darrow – which,
if you were rating on a cinematic disaster scale, would place
slightly higher than John Landis, but slightly lower than Oliver and Company.
 In
an orgiastic display of tribal tomfoolery, poor Ann is offered
as a sacrifice to their deity Kong, a 25-foot gorilla who,
instead of turning Ann into delicious girl-paste, actually
takes a liking to the woman. Ann manages to sense a kinship
with the beast and strikes up a friendship with the smitten
Kong via the use of broad slapstick and CGI juggling –
which is already triple the amount of relationship development
she gets in comparison to Jack Driscoll, who is already on
a rescue mission with the rest of the crew.
Set Piece after Set Piece happens as the film cuts back and
forth from Kong’s attempt to protect Ann from harm,
and the rescue team making their way through the jungle, encountering
dinosaurs, giant bugs and surprisingly unconvincing blue/green
screen shots. Since this is King Kong, the
humans save the day, and Kong is brought back in time for Act 3, or: Kong goes Bananas for Manhattan!.
 My
guess is that King Kong will play to a bigger
audience on DVD. The ability to pause the movie (thus allowing
you to use the bathroom or get a sandwich, possibly both at
the same time) alone will probably make people feel a little
more comfortable. However, a pause button isn’t going
to help a few of the big problems with the movie, mainly the
lack of real character development (which will probably be
fixed with whatever upcoming mega-extended edition is coming
out), and the weird-ass casting for the movie. While Adrien
Brody is an odd person no matter the context, I’m specifically
talking about Jack Black.
 I
like Jack Black. His shtick has yet to grow old with me (check
back with me after Nacho Libre is released,
though), but he’s not going to stop being Jack
Black. His performance isn’t even particularly bad,
but… It’s Jack Black.
I’m being a bit hard on the film – overall, Kong managed to grab hold of me and kept my full attention with
its effective melodrama (Kong remains sympathetic whether
he’s a wad of fur or a computer graphic), wild action
scenes (show me a dinosaur tearing things apart and I instantly
revert back into a 10-year-old boy) and Jackson’s slick
visual style. I can’t wait for the five-hour long extended
edition!
Presentation
What a pretty little movie. Kong has a sharp
image, and, while the beginning scenes of the film are appropriately
drab for the New York Depression scenes, gives way over time
to a rich color palette,  from
the dark blue nights, to the greens and yellows on the decrepit
boat, to the ash gray and forest green of Skull Island.
On the audio side of things, Universal
supplies a single dolby digital 5.1 audio track. The track
starts off on a subtle note, mainly pumping out the score
through the back speakers for the first hour, but once the
film gets to Skull Island, it’s nothing but bombast
from there. The center channel seems a tad low, but with a
movie like this, you’ve probably got the volume up too
high to notice. Everything is going to sound chaotic, which
results in something called “fun.”
Extras
Seeing as how Universal managed to throw together an extras-only
release a day before the film was even released in theaters
in the form of the King Kong Production Diaries (which, thanks to the release of the film, has been priced
down to about $15 and some change) and the constant rumors
of an expanded cut coming out eventually, I didn’t expect
much in this two-disc set. However, outside of a few  lame
commercials on the first disc, disc two holds the massive post-production diaries - a collection of three-to-five
minute snippets that were posted on the Internet week after
week have now been compiled to a full two-and-a-half-hour
documentary
Covering the last 33 weeks up until
the actual release of the film, the post-production diaries
are all over the map, showing off every facet that goes into
the finishing of a film. The motion capturing is covered,
the CGI is covered, the props, models, even the Foley
artists get a spotlight. Do we need all of this? Absolutely
not – but if you delight in the making of a film you’re
going to have a blast. Hell, marathon all of this with the King Kong Production Diaries DVD set and
then kill yourself. At least, that’s my plan.
What’s Danny DeVito doing in
this documentary?
 You
might already be hitting yourself in the head for taking on
the post-production diaries, but there are a few
more tidbits, an introduction by Peter Jackson, Skull
Island: A Natural History is a mocumentary on the “real”
Skull Island (fans of Jackson’s Forgotten Silver should get a kick out of this), and a wholly depressing view
on New York during the depression, Kong’s New York,
1933 covers the Great Depression, prohibition, shantytowns,
skyscraper development, regurgitation as a novelty act, all
that awesome stuff.
Overall
The action sequences run frighteningly long, more emotion
is put into Kong than its human counterpoints (should I be
complaining about lack of human character development in a
movie called KING KONG?), the marketing was
an absolute mess, the public shunned it, and the film made
its way to DVD in a little over three months. And yet King
Kong still managed to be one of the best
movies of 2005.
Go figure.
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