Kong Vs Kong
Posted on | December 26, 2005 at 12:40 pm | 1 Comment
Before viewing Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong, currently in theaters, I bought and watched the special edition DVD of the original 1933 King Kong. I’m sure I must’ve seen the original before, but it was such a long time ago that watching the DVD was like a revelation. It holds together very well for a movie made some 82(!) years ago. The painstaking frame-by-frame use of stop motion animation instead of a guy in a gorilla suit for Kong was inspired and gave the movie a unique and exciting look. The stop motion dinosaurs are impressive also, and Kong’s fight with the T-Rex is riveting. Yeah, it all looks kind of cheesy compared to today’s CGI extravaganzas, but for something that old it’s quite amazing. The acting is also fairly decent, especially Robert Armstrong’s Carl Denham and Fay Wray’s Ann Darrow. You can see how the big ape became infatuated with this beauty.
I devoured the extras on the DVD, though I haven’t yet listened to the commentary track which features (among others) stop motion pioneer Ray Harryhausen, who was inspired by Kong and later went on to craft such pioneering stop motion animation flicks as Jason and the Argonauts. The DVD has an hour long documentary on Kong co-director/producer Merian C. Cooper, who lived quite the adventurer’s life. Aviator, biplane pilot shot down during WWI (where he had to land the burning plane by steering it with his elbows and knees because his hands were burned), German POW, anti-communist freedom fighter in Poland, Russian POW, African explorer (where he got the idea for Kong), film studio executive, WWII colonel – the man did it all, and with gusto.
The other documentary on the DVD is a three hour long look at the making of the 1933 movie. It features extensive interviews with remake director Peter Jackson and other modern connoisseurs of Kong. Jackson and his special effects team even figured out how a lot of the visual effects in Kong were done and used them to fashion a version of the missing “spider pit” sequence from the original movie. That reimagined sequence appears on the disc, though it is not incorporated into the movie itself. Again, there’s a lot of interesting material in the documentary, including showing how the visual effects wizards used a lot of different special effects available at the time combined together to give the movie its unique look.
So, after watching all that, I was ready to see the remake. I have to say that I was impressed, and was not bored for a minute. Critical complaints have centered on the length of the movie (over 3 hours) and indeed there’s a lot of stuff that’s not really necessary to advance the plot. But I enjoyed watching that filler anyway, as it did flesh things out and just made the movie generally more exciting (the seemingly endless monster encounters on Skull Island). I read one review that said the remake was “soulless”, which I don’t understand at all. Yeah, it’s a lavish tribute to the original movie, but Jackson still imbued it with some of his own soul and it wasn’t just a homage. You can practically see the blood and sweat on the screen. And he certainly imbued Kong, computer-generate creation though he was, with a soul. It was truly moving, but mostly it was just fun. My criticisms are few. Yeah, Jack Black really did not make a good Carl Denham, though at least he played it somewhat non-campy and it’s good to see him stretching out. The occasional slow motion blurry reveals were annoying. But nevertheless, I rate this Again! on my movie rating scale, though because of its length, I’m not sure I really want to see it again right away.
But I do wanna know how Ann Darrow was able to climb up those Empire State Building ladders in those enormous high heels…
As for my ongoing report of the movie-going experience itself… I went with my friend Bryce to an 11am showing last Wednesday. It was in a big screen theater, yet not very crowded. People tended to clump together in the center as usual, even though they could’ve spread out more. The guy sitting directly in back of me (looked to be in his early 20s) actually spoke to someone on his cell phone for a minute during the movie, and he also kept kicking my seat (accidentally, one assumes) like a young child. Backward glances and glares did nothing. But for the most part, people were quiet and respectful and there didn’t seem to be any technical difficulties.
Latre.
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One Response to “Kong Vs Kong”
December 26th, 2005 @ 1:27 pm
It features extensive interviews with remake director Peter Jackson and other modern connoisseurs of Kong.
Would that make them Kongoisseurs?