I’m only saying what is specifically in the film. Denham is criticized from all quarters. None of that is imaginary. Denham promises Ann “a life of ease” and a long ocean voyage, knowing that he’s going to set her up with a giant beast. He is reckless. Everyone knows he’s reckless. Everything that happens is ultimately his fault, and everyone warned him against it. He’s still a sympathetic and attractive character.
Not much different today. The way the new material is written, who do you believe the audience is supposed to sympathize with? The studio executives who want to shut him down, or Carl, who wants to get his baby made?
Denham has never been a hero, and he’s never been a villain. He’s a reckless idealist. In the story, he wants to do something bigger than anyone’s ever done before, and it all goes for shit. I don’t see how you can dispute that, it’s all there in black and white.
I think the main thing is that Jimmy picked up the book thinking it was going to be a “Ripping Yarn,” based on the dust jacket. “Adventures on a tramp steamer!” Of course, it turns out that it’s not an adventure, it’s a bitter tragedy. Jimmy is expecting adventure on the Venture, but he gets a buttload of tragedy instead. The horror! The horror!
You can push the analogy a bit if you want, by equating Denham with Marlowe, Kong with Kurtz, Ann with Kurtz’ fiancee, and the natives with… well, the natives:
Marlowe is an idealistic thrill-seeking adventurer, headed towards Kurtz. Kurtz is worshipped by the natives. The natives take advantage of deep fog to mount an attack against Marlowe’s men. Marlowe tries to take Kurtz (against his will) back to civilization (and his bride) and he dies. Kurtz had gone bugshit crazy, but his fiancee has a rose-coloured view of him, and is in deep mourning. She thinks of all the great deeds he had done, and a lost love – she is unaware of the atrocities he’s commited. The end.
Just saw it tonight. Easily as good as the Lord of the Rings movies. Maybe better, I’m still too jazzed from it, need more time to digest it. It definetly had a lot more depth to it, I think.
Two things:
I’m going to defend the brontosaur scene. I didn’t find it that implausible that they could survive that. Horses have to be trained to trample people; their natural instinct is to not step on living creatures. It’s not inconceivable that brontosaurs (or whatever the Skull Island analogue is) might be nimble enough to not trample every living thing in front of them into paste. It wasn’t realistic, but it was close enough to real for the purposes of a movie about a giant ape.
One complaint I’m seeing a lot is about the bats in Kong’s home. I don’t think that was his home. Where he stopped originally after taking Ann, where the corpses of all the natives with the necklaces were; that was his home. The cave with the skeletons was the graveyard for the giant apes, where they go to die when they’re old and sick. He goes there to get away from the ship’s crew looking for Ann. Note that, until they find Ann’s necklace, they’ve been relatively unmolested by the wildlife. That’s because they’re in Kong’s territory: he’s cleared out all the other large predators. Once the move out of his territory, they come under assault from all the various beasts and bugs. This is an important distinction: not only does it explain the bats (who only attack when startled), but it also is what turns Kong into a character: he has a sense of his own mortality. He’s seen all his own kind die. He’s all alone, and old, and scarred, and tired, and he knows that eventually, he’s going to climb up to that cave, and he’s never going to climb back down. This is directly refered to at the end, when one of the reporters wonders why he would let himself be cornered at the top of the Empite State building. He went up there because he knew he wasn’t going to climb back down.
One question I had: when the natives first attack, they skewer the sound guy with a spear, gangpile the rest of them, and then force them onto a headsman’s block. They cut one guy’s head off, are about to do it to Denham, when the captain shows up and shoots the native with the stone axe. Who got his head chopped off? He must have been a member of the film crew, but when they’re back on the ship, they only mention the sound guy.
Incidentally, it was an awfully calm day up on top of the Empire State Building, wasn’t it? The breeze was barely ruffling Adrian Brody’s hair. What with the balmy snowfall in Central Park, that has to be the wierdest weather day in New York history.
My problem with it is that the matting of the actors with the CGI is so shitty, that you can’t help but scream, “That looks like shit!” Only one of the actors thinks to duck into a cranny in the canyon to avoid the stampede, and this is thwarted when one of the velociraptors claws through rocks to get at him.
Then, when the party spills out into a clearing and one of the guys spins around to take shots at the raptors. Somehow, this causes the lead bronto to trip, which starts a chain reaction, with brontos falling all over one another and turning into one giant meat avalanche. Strangely, the raptors don’t stop to enjoy their free lunch, but continue to chase the actors up the side of a mountain.
I really enjoyed it overall–gave me that Big Movie feel that I just don’t get from most movies these days.
About the bats, I thought that they were stalking Driscoll as he made his way over to Ann. That’s why they were following him and landing on the edge of the cliff. I think they launched an attack at the wrong moment and Kong just happened to get in the way. Actually, that’s really the only scenario that works in my mind. Otherwise it makes no sense.
And about Denham, as one poster above complained-he never redeemed himself. I don’t think he was supposed to be redeemed. He was what he was, a self-absorbed idealist from the start-not a very nice guy but he remained true to himself. Definitely not much of a hero but definitely not a coward either. He lost friends and film crew members but the one and only time that he shed a tear was over his destroyed film. Certainly, he was not at all what the character was in the original film, but at least he was protrayed honestly. I think if he’d redeemed himself in the end, it would have come off as more than slightly contrived.
I give the movie 3 stars out of 4. I did really enjoy it and it did not seem too long. Having said that, there are a parts of the movie that could definitely use some tightening up, especially in the beginning, although there were little spots along the way where it was dragged out a bit. I agree with several of the other nitpicks: The brontosaurus stampede, the bug scene (the guy sis shooting at him, rather haphazardly, to get the bugs off), I thought they survived the fall off the log too unscathed. I also thought the timing in NYC was a bit odd. Kong escapes from his show, which I presume was in the evenint, sometime between 8-10 pm and he knocks around some cars, chases Brody, gets the girl, plays on the ice, gets chased and ends up at the top of the Empire State Building to watch the sunrise. ALl that other stuff did not feel like it was supposed to take 8-12 hours to me.
Overall a very entertaining movie, very well done, generally excellent FX (although I agree that some were not great), but falls short of greatness.
Saw it yesterday, and I liked it. I wanted to love it, but I just liked it. It was just to darn long and filled with pieces we didnt need to see, or didnt add anything to the movie.
What was the deal with the first mate and the orphan boy? Any point in the 10mins they wasted showing those scenes?
I think this movie would have been sooooo much better if they could have just cut some of the first 45mins of the movie. Once they get to skull island the movie takes off and 2 hours just fly by…I loved it all from there! I mean I got sad during an ending I knew was comming! Thats good film making!
I agree with another poster who talked about shots of coal digging, or pistons. If they had gotten to skull island in about 20-25mins after the movie started I would give this 10 out of 10 stars, but rating it now; 8 out of 10.
It’s not like those shots were just there to pad it out, though – they were showing the crew preparing to get the Venture underweigh, while Denham was stalling Driscoll with the cheque.
(I’ll have to concede to RikWriter that this deceit is rather more than anything '33 Denham did, but it’s not out of character, considering how he got Ann onboard. Anything for the movie.)
I might say the same to you. What points have you brought up? That people are only “joking” when they warn Denham that he’s taking crazy risks, or suggest he has no conscience in using an actress the way he plans to? You really think it’s trivial coincidence that Denham is consistently warned that things will turn out badly due to his recklessness, and that it does, indeed, turn out bady? What’s your argument that he’s an uncomplicated hero? I haven’t heard anything besides a simple assertion.
You could argue that the 2005 Denham is less irresponsible than the 1933 version – after all, in the 1933 version, he enlists an entire crew and a young girl to go on a fool’s errand to capture a giant monster and bring it back to Manhattan without telling a single soul of his true intentions. The 2005 Denham is surprised to find a giant monster on the island - the chloroform is there serendipitously and he only decides to capture Kong because the movie is a bust and he sees it as a way of recouping his losses.
Sorry to argue this so emphatically, but King Kong has been one of my favourite movies for thirty years, and I don’t remember ever thinking of Denham as the hero of the picture. Driscoll has always been the hero. The situation is created by Denham, but Driscoll does most of the heroics. Denham puts Ann in harms way twice, and Driscoll rescues her both times.
I addressed every charge you made against the 33 Denham and you failed to respond in your original answer, and you’ve done little more than reiterate your original statement now.
Now, there’s no need to describe his relationship with Hayes in such harsh terms. I thought the matter was handled with taste and dignity.
Actually I don’t think he was one of the film crew; he didn’t appear quite nattily dressed enough. I figure he was one of the *Venture * crewmembers whom Denham cajoled into taking them ashore, probably by writing him a check for 2000 dollars. I didn’t get a sense that any of Denham’s people would have had the skill to ready and lower the longboat on their own. This also explains why the film crew only mourns Mike the sound technician; the other guy wasn’t a member of their group.
And I don’t think they actually cut his head off: it looked to me as though the ceremonial weapon was a type of Polynesian war club.
But I’ve only seen the movie three times by now; I’ll have to quadruple check that next time.
…what are you blaming Boyens and Walsh for? Most people seem to love the movie, and the ice skating scene, which you call “stupid”, is praised by almost everybody, including the critics who hated the movie. Fran Walsh is Jackson’s wife, and has worked with Peter since “Meet the Feebles.” The thought that Jackson would dump his wife because of studio pressure is absurd: Peter would sooner stop making his own movies than bow to studio pressure on a matter like this. Calling them “idiots” for co-writing three of the biggest money-making motion pictures of all time is a stupid proposition.
You didn’t like parts of the movie? Can’t complain about that. I don’t understand the personal attacks and the desire for a movie to bomb just so a couple of writers you “hate” can loose their jobs. Thousands of New Zealanders laboured over this movie, Universal loved the three-hour cut and took a gamble on the movie: I personally love the movie. So what is it that Boyens and Walsh should take the blame for?
Making lots of money doesn’t equal high art. Britney Spears has sold out larger venues than Tom Waits has ever been able to play, doesn’t mean the Britster’s a better artist than Tom.
So do you like the movie because you think it’s a “good” film, or because it was done by the home team?
Hollywood’s also looking at using a computer to pick scripts, which IMHO, indicates that Hollywood cares less than ever before about a decent story line, and the only time I’ve heard a studio publicly announce that they didn’t love releasing a film is after it’s flopped. (Unless it involves a certain mouse and a certain documentary.)
That being said, there was simply no way Universal wasn’t going to release this film. Jackson’s made so much money off the LOTR franchise that he could have pitched the idea of him filming himself jerking off for 3 three hours and Hollywood would have bought it, since they knew that enough fans of LOTR would pay to see it that they could recoup their investment easily.
I went to see this movie primarily because of how many LOTR loving Dopers disliked this movie and given that I hated LOTR (Yes, I do realize that this makes me the Anti-Christ.), I figured that I’d at least enjoy this movie, which I did. That doesn’t mean that this movie wasn’t deeply flawed, it was, and those flaws, IMHO prevent this movie from being a great film (which it could have been).
Many of the effects were poorly rendered, there were a few scenes which could have been cut and it would have improved the story, and some of the scenes were, IMHO, poorly written.
I thought it was fabulous, although I would have gladly traded 20 minutes of CG effects (little snips here and there wouldn’t have lessened any of the grandeur) to get to know the situation from Jack Driscoll’s perspective a little better. He was the only character that I felt would have benefitted from a little “expansion”.
Sorry, but that sentiment only brings you down to the level of ‘Evil Incarnate’.
In order to earn your full ‘Anti-Christ’ credentials, you’ll have to admit hating the LOTR, Star Wars, Harry Potter & Star Trek franchises as well as ALL super-hero films.
…so what? Omniscient “hates Boyens and Walsh”, calls them idiots, and hopes the movie bombs just to stick it to them. Not only were the LOTR movies some of the biggest money makers of the last few years, they were also among the best reviewed: by both the critics and the public. If you doubt me, go check out rottentomtoes, IMDB or even the Amazon reviews. But lets say that the LOTR movies aren’t “high art.” Does this mean that Boyen’s and Walsh are idiots? Did they ruin the movie? Would Jackson be better off without them? Would he be able to make movies without them?
…I love the movie for the reasons I layed out in my opening post. Do you irrationally love American films? Why would you assume I would irrationally love New Zealand films? As I stated in my review, the parts that threw me out of the movie the most were the “New Zealand” bits. I couldn’t stand “Meet the Feebles”, I thought it was a dreadful movie.
…ummm okay. So Universal had the final say on the length of the movie, and they agreed to the final cut. What has that got to do with the Computer Script Checker?
…fair enough-and as I stated there is nothing wrong with criticising the movie. There are many posts here making critical comments on the movie: and I’m not arguing against that. But Omniscient attacked the writers, calling them idiots, and blaming them for failings of both King Kong and some other Peter Jackson movie that he doesn’t name. I don’t believe that he is right, and his personal attack on Boyens and Walsh is just as dumb as other fanboy rants against Lucas, Spielberg, Wheldon and their ilk. These guys work at an incredible level to bring us movies that hopefully we might enjoy. At the end of the day we may end up not liking some choices, we may even end up hating the film, but should that mean we should personally attack those behind the creative process? Should we wish the failure of a project of this scale simply because of a couple of alleged writing missteps? I’m sure you would argue “yes”, and I agree you have the right to do so, but I also have the right to comment on it, point out any outright falsehoods, and defend the movie or writers where I see fit.
when Kong escapes and there’s a close up of a horrified Denham, Jack Black had said (ala Mr. Burns), “I’m dreading the reviews tomorrow, I can tell you that.”
Well, let’s see here, I’ve had zero interest in the Harry Potter saga. Never read a book, never seen a film, I hated the last Star Wars film (see my Pit thread entitled “I, For One, Am Sick of Our Jedi Pimping Overlord” for my thoughts on that.), I actually am willing to discuss Shatner’s Star Trek flick, and I couldn’t care about most superhero films. That evil enough for ya?
Reviews, are, of course, fickle things and what everybody likes this year, may turn into their most hated flick just a few years down the road. Titanic was a hugely profitable film and highly reviewed, but many people seemed to have changed their mind about it over the years.
As for Jackson being better off without them, that’s a tough call. Certainly, IMHO, Jackson could benefit from having someone else working with him on the films to insist that obvious flaws in his films are corrected.
You were the one you stated that Kiwi’s worked their ass off on the film. I can’t recall a single instance in this or any other thread, where I’ve brought the nationality of a film crew into the discussion. I don’t give two shits about where the folks might be from, I’m more concerned with if they can make a good movie or not. And I happen to think that Meet the Feebles is some of Jackson’s best work. (I loves me some depravity.)
Only that Hollywood is more interested in the bottom line than quality of script (not realizing that quality of script is often the determining factor in a good bottom line). Jackson could have turned in a 16 hour cut of the film and you can bet Universal would have busted ass to figure out how to release it that way. Why? Because if Jackson got his panites in a wad about the whole thing, and made a lot of noise in the press about Universal “quashing” his vision, the movie wouldn’t have made a dime.
Well, admittedly, pinning the entire blame for the film on two of the writers (Jackson’s name is also listed in the credits) is a bit much, since we don’t know who is responsible for what. Still, given that their names are listed first in the credits, it’s safe to assume that they wrote the bulk of the script. It all depends upon what you consider to be the greatest flaws in the films. If it’s the writing, then the writers bear the bulk of the blame, if it’s pacing, acting, or the effects, then the director gets the blame. (Though, to be fair, it may be that the director’s forced to do certain things due to contractual obligations. However, I don’t think that would be a problem for Jackson.) IMHO, Jackon’s directorial mistakes outweigh any problems the script might have.
And the bigger they are, the harder they fall. It’s precisely because Speilberg, et. al, have done such an excellent job in the past, that when they do make a mistake, people come down on them harshly, when they might have ignored that mistake if it was done by a lesser director. Admittedly, these critiques may boil down to, “Waaaaah! He didn’t make the movie I wanted him to!” but at the same time, dismissing all criticism of a particular film as the whining of fanboys is simply wrong.
Sadly, however, some times it takes a spectacular failure for a director to realize he’s been listening to too many hangers on, and not paying attention the things that he needs to do.