Writer's note: Much like the new
special edition DVD, this review of King Kong: Deluxe Extended
Edition is an expansion of our original review of Peter
Jackson's King Kong. New bonus features include an extended
introduction paragraph, 500+ extra words and a never before seen alternate
ending!
Woe to those who didn't expect an
extended edition of Peter Jackson's King Kong to be released months after
its original DVD release. Woe to those who had purchased the original DVD who
are now faced with the choice of yet another edition of the film to
choose from. And worst of all, woe to those who knew an extended version was
coming, picked up the original release anyway and are now willfully shilling out
an extra $25 for yet another God damned version of King Kong.
Guess which category I'm
in.
Using the original 1933 film as a
springboard, Peter Jackson's extended edition of King Kong faithfully
adheres to the original's concept while expanding the story, clocking in
at a near-exhausting three hours and twenty-one minutes; a surprisingly short
thirteen additional minutes in contrast to the original cut. Comparing this with
Jackson's extended cuts of the Lord of the Rings saga might make it seem
a miniscule addition, but the material that's been added back in should be
appreciated by fans - more on that to follow.
Using the oft-forgotten three-act
structure, Act 1 introduces us 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, and 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, in spite of the studio's refusal to fund the
project; a star who has left the project; a prima donna 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 underdeveloped, despite the film's extended 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 manages 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 her relationship with 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!.
Of course, right about now I should be
talking about those precious thirteen minutes that have been added back into the
film. Most extended edition DVDs seem to promise everything you want and more
but churn out a few extra seconds of character development, nearly every
additional second added back into King Kong is action-oriented because
that's obviously what you and I want, right?
 There are two major action scenes added
back into the film, a fun Ceretops Attack can be found near the end of
Disc One, which packs in a good amount of carnage involving one cheesed-off
dinosaur. Disc Two features the excellent Underwater Creature Attack,
which plays out much more in the style of a horror movie than the rest of the
film and is comparable to the scene where Cookie meets his fate. There are
additional action scenes that were excised for one reason or another, but these
are the two “big” scenes that will interest fans of the film.
And no, they don't show you how they get
Kong back to New York. Sorry.
Sadly, some of the problems with the
original film just haven't been fixed, as I predicted in the previous Kong review. The relationship between Ann and Jack still flounders under inspection,
and even after a year of its release and multiple viewings on my part, the
casting still feels like a glorious misfire at times. Adrian Brody has a build
more suited for a Heckle and Jeckle biopic instead of an action hero (which is intentional, but doesn't stop it from feeling blatantly wrong), while
Jack Black has rightfully recessed back into typecasting after his stint in Kong. And let's not kid ourselves: bluescreen is terrible. It has always
been terrible, and will continue to be terrible for the rest of our miserable
lives.
Even with its skimpy additional scenes,
which haven't bothered to fix any of the film's previous faults, the extended
edition of King 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. It might not be the excessive five-hour epic I was
expecting from Jackson's fetish for going overboard, but if you don't have the
original DVD, this is a definite must-have. For those who already own the film,
the additional 13 minutes might not make or break your decision, but the extra
features might tip the scales.
 Presentation
It doesn't seem like the transfer has
been upgraded, despite being spread across two discs. But that's not a band
thing, really. Kong has a sharp image, and while the beginning scenes of
the film are appropriately drab for the New York Depression scenes, it 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.
(Note: as I am without a sound system for
the time being, I could not give a “perfect” description of the audio for this
DVD. The following has been ripped word-for-word from the original Kong review)
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.”
Packaging
Using a nice slipcase, which seems to be
the norm these days, King Kong comes in a case that features the annoying
on-top-of-each-other disc placement trend that I've seen slowly saturating the
market in the past few months. Dear DVD companies: stop doing this. It makes
disc switching awkward. Especially trying to get to disc three while having Disc Two on your finger like a giant ring out of a science fiction serial from the
1940s. Dear readers: that was the lamest complaint about DVD packaging ever. I'm
sorry.
Extras
It seems absolutely crazy that the span
of King Kong already consists of three DVDs dedicated solely to extras
(the two disc Production Diaries and the second disc of the original King Kong DVD release), but the Extended Edition continues to pack
as many goodies in as possible. Considering the possibility of redundancy, Peter
Jackson maintains a surprising amount of consistency, starting off with an audio commentary featuring director/writer Peter Jackson and
writer/co-producer Philippa Boyens. Jackson admits to hoping he can keep the
information coming without overlapping the extras on any previous DVD release,
and succeeds well enough throughout the entire set.
 Disc One houses the rest of the bonus
features under the banner The King Kong Archive, which features an
entirely new set of Deleted Scenes - roughly forty minutes of character
interaction aboard the Venture ship. Some of the material is rightfully excised,
but there is much that would have benefited being put back in to the film.
Seeing as how people complained about the time it took to get to Skull Island in
the original cut of the film, character development might not be what most are
looking for when they read the phrase “forty minutes of deleted scenes” on the
back of the box. Each scene is presented in anamorphic widescreen and comes with
an introduction from Peter Jackson.
The Eighth Blunder of the World is
an eighteen-minute featurette comprised of bloopers, flubbed lines, goofy set
antics and a few CGI pranks. It's a fun enough feature, and it reminds me
exactly why I don't hate Jack Black yet.
Apparently plumbing the depths of the Kong archives for something, anything new to include in this set, A Night in Vaudeville features archival footage, interviews and extended
scenes culled from the Vaudeville montage in the film, while King Kong
Homage features comparisons between the original 1933 and 2005 remake of Kong. And finally is the not so hidden Missing Production
Diary.
In addition to holding the second half of
the film (plus commentary), Disc Two features an entirely new set of extra
features, starting with four “Pre-Viz” Animatics (available with or
without the music track) which shows off some interesting computer-rendered
action scenes, while the final Empire State Building Battle segment comes
with an additional comparison to the final film.
 “The Present” is a small
featurette about a cute film that the crew had made in the middle of production
for the benefit of director Peter Jackson's birthday. While the actual contents
of the gift box might be secret, it's still an amusing distraction.
Outside of the DVD-ROM features (a .pdf
file consisting of both the 1996 and 2005 scripts), the rest of the
extras on Disc Two are marketing based; there are three trailers for King Kong, and the whoretastic Weta Collectibles, which showcases
all of the neat toys you, yes you, can buy for a very affordable
price.
While the first two discs might feature
bonus material that comes off a little too inconsequential, Disc three is the
meat of the set, with the three-hour long Recreating The Eighth Wonder: The Making Of King Kong. Combining
the bonus features on all of the Kong releases, it probably adds up to
over ten hours of extras dedicated to the film alone. If I might sound
flippant about this feature, it's not because of the quality - in fact, the
documentary is as in-depth as one can hope for - but spending so much time on
one subject is absolutely exhausting. Can I have a nap now? Oh wait,
there's more.
The last feature on the disc, the set,
and hopefully the final chapter in Peter Jackson's King Kong, is the conceptual design video galleries, forty minutes of sketches,
photographs, sculptures and paintings. Of special interest is the 1996
“King Kong” gallery, which features an interesting
“What-if” scenario.
 Overall
That's it. I'm done with Kong. Jackson's
obsession with giving the fans what they want has paid off at a ridiculous
level. Like the film? Love hours upon hours of extras? Grab a hold of this set
and bar yourself in your room for a while. But if you were one of the naysayers
of the film and were wondering if this extended edition would fix any of your
gripes, stay away. It's just more of the same. However, I am going to lock all
of my Kong paraphernalia into an airtight, waterproof box, and I won't be
opening it for at least another five years.
…when's the HD version coming out?
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