{"id":653,"date":"2011-02-20T17:35:22","date_gmt":"2011-02-20T17:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=653"},"modified":"2014-06-24T18:19:26","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T17:19:26","slug":"king-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=653","title":{"rendered":"KING KONG"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cIt was beauty that killed the beast\u201d is one of the greatest lines in cinema and one of the greatest lies. Oh, beauty made the beast vulnerable but it was greed, Karl Denham\u2019s greed for money and fame, that got the beast killed. It has always been one of cinema\u2019s great injustices that in King Kong<\/em> the Hollywood producer gets the last word to rewrite history for his own ends.<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"So, one of the very few reasons to be grateful to Peter Jackson for his overblown remake of one of the greatest science fiction films of all time is that he at least got Denham\u2019s character right. The guy is a scheming, sneaky, lying creep and Black \u2013 in a performance of twitchy insincerity \u2013 is almost perfect. Of course the iconic line is still there, and Denham still gets to say it, but it feels even more like an unconvincing, tacked on afterthought \u2013 another bit of Denham\u2019s bullshit \u2013 than it did in the original.<\/p>\n

There are a few other positives in Jackson\u2019s remake. There are some nice running jokes \u2013 especially Chandler\u2019s vain Bruce Baxter and his unerring ability to know when to run for his life. The return to New York, with the characters fractured and scattered, is particularly nicely handled and a car chase through New York is exceptionally well done.<\/p>\n

The special effects are spectacular and the action sequences enormous. There is no denying that this Kong is as great a technical wonder as Willis\u2019s stop motion version in the original, and the whole of Skull Island vibrates with tremendous energy. The recreation of depression-era New York is perhaps even more successful. But King Kong<\/em> suffers from the same problem that afflict Jackson\u2019s earlier Lord of the Rings<\/em> films \u2013 he is a director who has no concept of when less is more.<\/p>\n

The original film had one dinosaur fighting Kong? Fine, we\u2019ll have three! And we\u2019ll tangle them all up in a ridiculously over-extended mid-air battle. Why? Because more must be better!<\/p>\n

Nor can Jackson pick a single dramatic shot to make his point. Instead he batters the viewer into submission by showing you the same fantastic thing over and over again from every conceivable angle. You can almost hear him screaming \u201cFeel awe! Feel awe!\u201d from behind the screen as he overplays every money shot.<\/p>\n

There are times in King Kong<\/em> when this approach simply fails. Jackson\u2019s inability to resist flashy, twitchy editing entirely ruins Kong\u2019s first appearance. The stampede scene, however expensive the effects, does not convince as the actors and the scrambling dinosaurs fail to mesh on the screen. And though, as a long-standing Kong fan, I have often dreamed of seeing the spider-pit sequence, I thought this version bordered on the pointless \u2013 perhaps it was right to confine it to the cutting room floor in the first place.<\/p>\n

But my biggest problem with Jackson\u2019s King Kong<\/em> is the way he sentimentalises the great beast. From the ludicrous, misconceived and frankly embarrassing comedy routine with which Darrow (Watts \u2013 no Fay Wray she, not even Jessica Lange) \u201centertains\u201d Kong to the cringe-inducing \u201cice-skating\u201d sequence, Jackson makes his Kong cuddly and cute and sympathetic. I half expected to see Jackson put a silly hat on his \u201cmonkey\u201d and get it to do tricks \u2013 perhaps it\u2019s on the DVD and the inevitable \u201cdirector\u2019s cut\u201d \u2013 as if he\u2019s cut anything from this bloated mess.<\/p>\n

It is entirely wrong that Darrow should laugh and play with Kong. Kong should be a wild and dangerous animal \u2013 the king of his domain \u2013 not some franchise-friendly, cartoon gorilla or circus chimp. Darrow certainly shouldn\u2019t be wandering the streets of New York seeking the beast, or cuddling up to him like a love sick teenager. It\u2019s ridiculous and it is wrong.<\/p>\n

Of course Kong should end up as the object of our admiration. Through the telling of this story we should come to respect and even empathise with this great, alien beast \u2013 his fate is caused not by his own failings but by those of greedy men. But Jackson can\u2019t resist wanting to make us like Kong, sympathise with him and even pity him. It\u2019s a terrible mistake. It diminishes Kong, making him predictable and shows no respect for his animal nature. It also cheapens the iconic final scenes. At the point when our hearts should be pounding with the injustice of it all, Jackson turns the moment into a weird love scene, like the ending of Titanic<\/em> but with less ice and more fur. It\u2019s a farrago and I couldn\u2019t stop myself laughing.<\/p>\n

I love the original King Kong<\/em> and there are certainly moments of Jackson\u2019s version which I admire. But Jackson\u2019s understanding of what is important about his central character, Kong, is fundamentally flawed and the spectacular set-pieces that pad out the inflated three hour running time fail to disguise the thematic flaws at the core of what, in the end, is a silly and overly sentimental film.<\/p>\n

(Originally published Matrix <\/em>176, Nov\/Dec 2005)<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt was beauty that killed the beast\u201d is one of the greatest lines in cinema and one of the greatest lies. Oh, beauty made the beast vulnerable but it was greed, Karl Denham\u2019s greed for money and fame, that got the beast killed. It has always been one of cinema\u2019s great injustices that in King […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":654,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,8,10],"tags":[51,76,43,46],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/kong1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27AP7-ax","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1668,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions\/1668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}