While the movie had some very good moments, it also had some very, very tedious ones. It was essentially the typical soulless Hollywood special-effects blockbuster, except it at least had a sliver of soul.
I don’t feel like going into much detail about my serious complaints, but I’ll mention a trivial one that bothered me more than it probably should have. One of the most famous scenes in the original is the t-rex / King Kong fight. But this movie didn’t feature a t-rex / King Kong fight, because the carnivorous therapods that we see clearly have three fingers. Tyrannosaurs have only two.
Ok, I know. The most nit-picky of nit-picks, right? The reason I mention this is because I suspect they probably had all sorts of consultants and specialists in order to get the feel and look of the era correct. Couldn’t they have spared two seconds to ask a paleontologist or an 8-year-old boy how many fingers t-rexes have? Or do a Google search?
Well, then why couldn’t Willis O’Brien have spared two seconds to do a Google search? That’s what ruined the 1933 movie for me; that stupid idiot Merian Cooper couldn’t be bothered to ask a paleontologist or an 8-year old boy how many claws a Tyrannosaur has. Fortunately the 1976 version avoided the danger of inaccurate dinosaurs by having Kong fight a snake instead. That’s probably one of the big reasons why Dino de Laurentiis’ version is so much better than the original.
Seriously, you may also notice that at no point in the new movie does anyone identify the animal a “Tyrannosaur.” Peter Jackson’s crew wanted to keep the three-fingered rex, but as pointed out, tyrannosaurs only have two claws. The Weta Workshop folks therefore came up with a similar beastie, an evolutionary relative of Tyrannosaurus, which they dubbed *Venatosaurus rex * (ravager-lizard king). By sheer coincidence, this creature exhibits the three fingers, oddly chunky body proportions and outsized feet of Willis O’Brien’s creation. So not only did the film crew notice the problem, they came up with an elaborate backstory to honor the original movie’s dinosaur. You can read about *V. rex * and all the other island freaks in The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island, a merchandising spinoff to the new movie.
Hey, I said it was trivial! But seriously, I had no idea it was deliberate. Nor did I realize that the original Kong movie had a three-fingered “rex” in it. I’m willing to buy that it’s just some other dino. I just assumed (like nearly everone else who has posted about the dinosaur) that it was supposed to be a T Rex.
The fight still sucked though. Way too long, way too much bending of the laws of physics, and two too many dinosaurs involved, IMHO. Which makes it significantly better than the sauropod stampede. (That’s where the film really started to lose me.)
At the end of the filmWhen Kong is clutching the side of the Empire State Building, holding Ann for the last time and staring at her, did anyone else expect Kong to start saying, "I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. . . Or was it just me?
Because it’s a deliberate reaction against competent male action heroes. Jackson made a big deal out of the point he was making Driscoll a sensitive playwright instead of a lug. And characters like Denham, who had the idea to bring Kong back to civilization, are seen as bad guys today, “exploiters” who “rape nature.” Thus he couldn’t be seen as a good guy, someone admirable, as he was in the original, he had to be a self-absorbed exploitative villain.
He didn’t have the time. In the 1930s, you could only connect to the Internet by telegraph, which took upwards of 5 months. Unfortunately, Kong was on a tight production schedule, so O’Brien thought it was more important to finish his animation than strive for accuracy.
Yes, it was terrible the way he had to reimagine the character, giving Denham self-absorbed, exploiter lines like “He was a king in the world he knew, but now he comes to civilization merely a captive,” and “We’re millionaires, boys, I’ll share it with you.”
If Denham was supposed to have a reputation for recklessness, it would have been mentioned in the original picture. He’d be characterized by his crew as “Off his nut,” or something. How revisionist of Jackson to take a competent, admirable hero who had the good sense and fortitude to pick a girl out of a breadline and convince her to board a tramp steamer without telling her that he was planning on getting her to cozy up to a giant monster to make a spectacular movie. I mean, this is a guy who was level-headed enough to recoup his losses after getting his footage and several men killed by using a woman to lure the monster. That only got another dozen people killed.
He took the situation in hand, though, and made great gains. What a show to bring back into densely-populated Manhattan! It’s a good thing he had the commensurate intelligence to utilize the prophylactic of chrome chains before he bullied the terrified Ann into posing with him again.
It was real heroic the way comforted Driscoll by saying that Kong “probably” wasn’t hurting Ann as he dragged her around in the night, either – and he cut a fine figure when gave up on her and threw up his hands when Kong started climbing the Empire State Building.
Yes, Carl Denham, as originally written, was a model of admirable competence in pursuit of noble aims. It was just a series of unavoidable and unforeseeable accidents that killed scores of people around him. It was perfectly reasonable of him to keep everyone in the dark about the existence of Kong and his plans for everybody. Like he said, “Trust me.” What could go wrong?
Sorry, I don’t see much of a character change. It’s elaborated, but Carl Denham has always been perfectly parallel to Kong – just this guy, you know? He wants something really bad, and in his pursuit of it, everything around him gets knocked to hell. He’s utterly destructive, and ultimately brings ruin upon himself – but there’s something pure about him, so you can’t hate him, you’ve got to like him, really – and in the end you have to feel sorry for him, too.
Driscoll’s the hero. You’re right about him being radically altered. I think that’s a necessary update – it’s not “political correctness,” it’s that the character was originally written as a remote and initially surly romantic lead. The important thing is to preserve him as a romantic lead. Sensibilities have changed enough that the original character doesn’t read as attractive. (The “movie” that Ann was shooting contains the “real” Driscoll, in the form of Bruce Baxter’s improvised lines: “I think women are a cock-eyed nuisance.”) A slightly more subtle obstacle for her to overcome besides outright misogyny serves the same purpose, but translates better to contemporary audiences. Driscoll thinks she’s a ding-bat, and has a bit of an ego.
Having the Driscoll character split into Driscoll and Baxter managed the trick of keeping the now-comical two-dimensional 1930s “dashing boy” around for the charm that he had, while still having a love interest and hero for Ann that can be taken seriously.
I was more impressed with it than I though I’d be. I went in with little to no expectations, and hadn’t really planned on seeing it in the theater.
I think my initial aversion to seeing it goes way back to when ROTK was released, and it became known that PJ’s next project was going to be King Kong. I haven’t seen the original since I was a kid, and all of the other remakes were total crap, and it just doesn’t rank very high on my list.
I can’t think of many movies that I would be more dissapointed to hear PJ would set his sights on after fulfilling my fantasy cinema fantasies so completely with the LOTR trilogy.
I liked Ann right away, but felt that the build up to the voyage and the voyage itself was too long. I did enjoy the crew of the ship. I adore Adrian, but agree with those who thought the chemistry between Driscoll and Ann just wasn’t there. I don’t necessarily think it was miscasting of anyone, just poor choices in how and to what degree to illustrate that chemistry.
The CGI action orgy that was pretty much everything that happened on the interior of the island was like a tsunami. I was going to be caught up in this film whether I was excited to be sitting in that seat from the opening credits or not. Pretty much all of the film on the island was top notch (except for the bronto-stampede scene, and the suddenly aggressive bats, which have already been mentioned). The emotional counter points as the connection between Ann and Kong is established were perfectly placed and timed in the middle of visual action tidal wave. Soon the viewer is not only being whooshed along by the floodwaters, but also being simultaneously professionally manipulated to swallow, digest, and emotionally invest in the Ann/Kong connection. PJ 0wn3d me.
I was looking all over for a cameo appearance from PJ, and I totally missed it. Thanks for the cluex4, mobo85.
You’ve tried to make a case for your position by pulling quotes out of context from the movie and ignoring HOW those quotes were treated—and how Denham was regarded—by the other people in the movie. Sorry, nice try, but you didn’t quite make it.
Wasn’t necessary to split the character. All you had to do was make Driscoll less of a charicature and more thoughtful—hell, give him Hayes’ personality. Making him a playwright who is suddenly strong and heroic was overdoing it.
You know, the more I chew on it the more I’ve decided that I hate Fran Walsh and
Philippa Boyens. I blame them for the totally asinine Aragorn over a cliff scene and the goofy Aragorn/Arwen modifications (the DVD bonus footage really supports this opinion). Now with this film I think it’s fair to blame them for the totally stupid ice rink scene and the pacing of the Jack-Ann relationship which was forced at best. They might be to blame for the almost universally panned Brontosaur chase and Bat attack scenes, but I suppose those could be the CGI lusting Jackson’s fault. Whatever the outcome I’ve decided that Jackson’s disturbing polygamous relationship with these two has damaged his two big films so far. Call it psuedo-nepotism is action. I almost hope that this film flops so that studio execs have the leverage to force him to dicorce these two idiots.
Like others, I just felt it was way too long. I mean, I could’ve easily trimmed an hour off and gotten a “good” movie out of this lukewarm SFX-fest.
A couple things that my wife and I agreed right away could’ve been trimmed:
-The whole Ann as an actor thing, complete with sad-scene of her troupe getting ousted. IIRC in the original Jack asks her if she’s ever acted and she says something like, “I used to do extra work.” Boom, one line that could’ve saved us 15 or 20 minutes. I feel like that whole section of the movie was just a set-up for her to do pratfalls in the comic-relief/bonding with Kong scene.
-The entire storyline with the stowaway and Mr. Hayes was pointless and could’ve been cut.
-The bug scene could’ve been cut or drastically shortened. Sorry but this did not advance the story and was just gross out for gross-out’s sake.
-The first trip to the island could’ve been cut. Why go, then come back, then go again? That was a waste of a good 15 minutes or so. In fact, the whole storyline with the natives pretty much dissolved into thin air, so it could’ve been cut or drastically reduced without harming the story. Also, the guy pole-vaulting across the rocks was probably the worst effect in the movie.
-The stampede was too long, too unbelieveable, and pretty much unnecessary.
-This list is not comprehensive.
The T-Rex scene could’ve been really great and it was the scene I was looking forward to most after seeing the trailer, but did we really need three of them? THREE?! This is definitely a case where less could’ve been more. Three was just distracting and over-the-top.
I give it a 5.5 out of 10, but if someone did a “Phantom-edit” in all the right places and cut it down to around 2 hours I could probably bump that number up to a 6.5 or 7.
Peter Jackson’s **Kong ** also features a perfectly traditional and competent male action hero, in the form of Captain Engelhorn. He’s the competent guy who knows his business, quietly gets things done, shoots straight, speaks plainly, saves the party from death not once but twice, and though he’s understandably not thrilled about the idea of capturing Kong he does manage to rise to the occasion and devise a plan to make it work out. The only two reasons he isn’t the hero of this film is that he doesn’t get the girl and he’s too pragmatic. He thinks that Ann is certainly dead (and by all rights she should have been, numerous times), so he’s unwilling to endorse a wild goose chase through the jungle with killer natives at their back. If the movie had been angling for a PC axe to grind, I think the first choice for whipping boy would have been Engelhorn, the guy with the German accent who makes his living capturing wild animals for zoos, who unapologetically blows away impoverished islanders, and who maims a gorilla with a harpoon gun. Yet the captain gets off without even a hint of cinematic retribution for his actions.
Actually, that’s another thing I found refreshing about this movie: the refusal of the script to deal out any *karmic * payback or judgement. I have to admit that I was entirely expecting Baxter to pay the ultimate price for his crime of being a mildly self-infatuated masculine stereotype. Instead the guy manages to grow a spine and help out after all. And then at the Alhambra, when Kong gets yet another shot at Baxter undeservedly hogging the glory and dancing with ethnic stereotypes, he manages to survive that rampage as well! That guy must be wearing a lucky-horseshoe vest at all times.
How is he regarded differently than he is in the 2005 Kong? He’s shut out by the motion picture business and can’t get a legit actress because ACTRA and SAG won’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. He sneaks out of New York harbour like a smuggler because the shipping manifest is faked up and he can’t afford to be inspected. Look how the whole deal is forshadowed: Denham’s agent says he knows Denham is basically alright, but his reputation for recklessness can’t be glossed over. He can’t get involved because he has a conscience. The crew of the ship grumbles because they don’t know where they’re going. Driscoll constantly criticizes Denham for not being forthright with Ann, and for putting her in danger. After the first day ashnore, Denham says he wishes he could shoot in available light, so they could stay all night filming the natives – and the captain tells him he’s crazy, that they’re lucky they all managed to get back safely. Then Denham wants to sleep, but the captain is all about keeping alert. Driscoll is looking for Ann, but Denham says, “Forget about it, go to sleep!”
Denham has no idea where to go, and says so. Driscoll does the tracking, and then Denham parrots him like he’s in charge. This is when everyone else’s attitude toward him is illustrated best. The crewmembers object when he gives obvious orders. “Keep your guns ready!” “You’re telling us?” When they see the dinosaur, Denham says “I didn’t expect that,” and Driscoll says, “I’m beginning to think there’s plenty on this island that you didn’t expect.”
When Driscoll makes it back with Ann, he calls Denham “crazy” for not lamming out of there right away. Ann is horrified when she learns she’s going to be used as bait again. Driscoll is pissed off that Denham’s even suggesting it.
After Kong is captured, the captain warns him directly that no chains will hold Kong.
There’s one instance of Denham being treated as a hero figure by another character – when Driscoll tells the reporters that it was really Carl who captured Kong. The reporters don’t buy it, and figure it’s just false modesty. Really, it’s more of a blame-shifting.
This is the way Carl Denham is written. He’s irresponsible, selfish, and singlemindedly pursued his own ends without regard for the consequences. The tragedy of the story lies at his feet. He’s the monster and the protagonist of the film – and Kong is his blown-up image. In order to view him as an uncomplicated hero figure, you have to ignore nearly everything he does and most of what is said about him. He’s constantly warned that he’s acting with reckless disregard for the safety of people around him, but he chases his dream anyway – and a lot of people get hurt. Imagining that he has these qualities in the 2005 Kong as part of some vaguely-defined polemic against the 1933 Denham is just bizarre.
I think you are overestimating the degree to which Denham is vilified – he’s still a sympathetic character - a dreamer.
Maybe, but I think the original Driscoll’s personality has some characteristic charm, in a posturing jerk kinda way. It has a period feel. He just doesn’t work romantically. Nice to have the cake and eat it, too.
Sorry, but you’re reading your own views into the script where they don’t exist. Denham doesn’t have trouble getting an actress because of the unions or the movie industry, he has trouble because their agents are worried about sending them off to work with wild animals. His previous pictures have been men’s action flicks that take place on location in exotic jungles. He doesn’t WANT to use a woman, but the critics keep saying his films need romance. And there is a qualitative difference between leaving to avoid paperwork entanglements over his manifest and leaving as a fugitive thief who has cheated his investors and not paid his workers.
You’ve read into the half-joking complaints about how mysterious he’s being some sort of resentment among the crew, but that is NOT put forth in the movie, just in your personal interpretation of it. And while Driscoll complains about exposing Ann to danger, it’s very much suggested that this is only because he’s in love with her. The captain and crew show no hesitation in following Denham onto the island or at the prospect of going back after Ann and Jack when he comes back.
Neither does Jack or Ann blame him for what happened. In fact, the blame is put squarely on fate and Kong. That’s the main difference between the movies: in the original, Kong is the focus of the fear and the actions against him are clearly justified. In Jackson’s version, he’s just a big, misunderstood teddy bear who’s being unfairly persecuted and the villains are Denham and the rest of the exploitational westerners.
You can try to argue this till you’re blue in the fingers, but you really have no basis for it other than your own imagination, because the film does not back you up.
That’s only because all of the loathing and backlash is reserved for the revisionist Denham. Spreading it around would only have diminished the amount he received.
I kinda thought the part at the end where Denham said, 'Twas beauty killed the beast" was more blame shifting. Denham was the motivating force behind his capture, and once he was in the US, Kong was pretty much doomed. 'Twas Denham killed the beast, with the same lake of concern he showed for all the people who got killed as well.
Now, someone explain to me the Heart of Darkness connection. My memory of that book is pretty much, “Mr. Kurtz, he dead!” which isn’t particularly helpful. And, cynic that I am, the most affecting relationship in the movie was that between Jimmy the cabin boy and Mr. Hayes, so I’m curious about the book.
Way too long, way too much bending of the laws of physics, and two too many dinosaurs involved, IMHO. Which makes it significantly better than the sauropod stampede. (That’s where the film really started to lose me.)