He’s big. He’s expressive. He’s the darling of the box office. I’m talking about director Peter Jackson, who after pulling off a near impossible coup by daring to adapt all three Lord of the Rings books into movies for New Line Cinema simultaneously, has attempted a visually impressive, and stunningly difficult follow-up, this time remaking one of the earliest box office effects-driven movies, the 1933 Merian C. Cooper directed King Kong. The first coup payed off in spades, and the result is that Peter Jackson effectively rules Hollywood at the moment. When he brought the story he’s loved all his life in front of Universal executives and asked them for $200 million to make it, they all bowed humbly (resulting in several scraped chins) and said “Sure!”
Sure, there wasn’t really a market for a story about a giant ape who falls for a beautiful actress, nor a need, but clearly Jackson has been obsessing over remaking this–it shows in every frame of the three hour five minute film. The question is: does Kong work?
As far as the effects go, the Weta-created computer graphics are second to none, especially when it comes to the big ape himself. Using sophisticated motion capture controls and the acting talents of Andy Serkis (who played Gollum in Jackson’s LoTR), Weta has produced an amazing creature with nothing less than a full range of emotive expressions, even down to tea-coloured eyes that seem to harbour more talent than Charlize Theron on her best day.
The film is no slouch when it comes to other effects, which range from miniatures melded with CG backgrounds, to blue and green screen compositing, to CG creature interaction with the human actors. If it all seems too big, too unbelievable for your imagination, it’s because Jackson and his uber-talented production team have truly gone to great lengths to convince you it’s all there, it’s all happening. And with only a few moments of uncertain green screen compositing, the film is most definitely the most amazing technical achievement ever realized on film. Period.
That said, it is a shame the film lacks other particular qualities that would have truly made it great. What it excels at in production design and special effects, it lacks in a good story. Its characters are even worse. The lack of three dimensional characters in this otherwise convincing world make following the underwhelming story a chore. More than once I found myself questioning motives, uncertain as to the reasons why a character did such and such. When it came to the story, I found there was only a shell, like a hardened candy coated exterior. This shell serves the bare minimum needs of a plot; its only major requirement seems to have been to support the onscreen entanglements of an expressive CG monkey, his prehistoric playmates, and a little lady named Ann Darrow.
The story (what little there is) follows meglomaniacal director Carl Denham (Jack Black) as he attempts to find a special actress who can play the role of a lifetime. He finds Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) outside a burlesque, where he convinces her he’s a trustworthy soul who has the best in mind for her. “You can trust me! I’m a movie producer!” he says, garnering a laugh from the audience, and this is one of the first mistakes that Jackson and Co. make with Kong. At the outset, Denham is played for laughs. Later, his behaviour is oafish, if not good-intentioned. By the end of the film, he’s become a nightmarish emcee of his own Monkey show. However, his character changes are not true arcs, but are instead caricatures, and one is never quite convinced of his motives or mechanizations.
Denham then hooks Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), a New York playwright and hapless hero. Together, the three, along with German Captain Englehorn (Thomas Kretschmann), Lumpy the Cook (Andy Serkis in an amusing human role), a haughty B-movie star Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler), and other assorted crew members, make their way to Skull Island with the help of a mysterious map Denham has in his possession. (How he got said map is never told.) There’s supposed to be a burgeoning love story between Anne and Jack, but it comes across like hard tack at a cotillion. It’s actually a relief when the ship bangs into a couple of rocks–it takes away from the tension of watching a poorly wrought romance leaking off the screen into the audience.
The island is where the major events occur. Of course, the island is full of ooga-booga natives, voodoo’d up and ready to sacrifice a virgin (or a blond actress, either one) to the great Kong. The rest of the island adventure features the crew attempting to rescue Darrow from Kong, and finally, to capture Kong alive. In between they battle dinosaurs, gigantic insects, and endure probably the least interesting death-by-worm sequence ever put to film.
One thing Jackson and his crew know how to do best is instilling a kind of gentle humanity into their primo effects work. Even Gollum had his moments of honesty, where keyframed expressions went beyond simple computer artwork, transcending the effects and amplifying the special. Here Kong is a wonder and a leap of evolution (excuse the pun) in the further blurring of the line between special effects and acting. Much of the credit goes to Andy Serkis for instilling into the lines and movement of Kong a kind of gracious wildness. When he stares at Darrow with knowing eyes, it is not a monster of the unknown who does so, but a creature with a heart and, daresay, a soul with passion. Animators too give Kong his expressive looks, his hearty way of seeming both violent and utterly kind at the same time.
If there are implications in Kong’s seeming advanced evolution (or the coincidental name of Watts’ character Ann, who shares a last name with evolutionary advocate Clarence Darrow in the famous and noteworthy Scopes’ trial), Jackson seems content not to push them. Jackson allows the oddly characterized Denham to take the heat for the ultimate demise of the gorilla. Clearly, the satire of Hollywood’s own movie-making history is part of the story; most of it, though, has been excised in favour of a more personal demonstration of the errors of gloryhounding at the expense of everything and everyone around you–it is a reduction of effectiveness, and anyone who has seen the original would agree.
In one scene, Driscoll says of him, “He has an unparalleled genius for destroying the things he loves.” In that sense, Denham is meant to stand for all of humankind. Perhaps Jackson should heed the warning. While this remake won’t be the demise of the great misunderstood gorilla from the land of the fantastic, it doesn’t seem to offer anything of value to the source material. One might ask why make it at all? Like Carl Denham, who has good intentions, Jackson too doesn’t quite succeed in making the movie of our dreams. But like Denham, there’s no doubt Jackson will make quite a bit of money from his monkey of a movie.
Fringe Rating: out of 5