Of course, if anyone else calls you "Beast," I'll rip their lungs out.
King Kong
I saw the film on opening day, but, having waited so long to write this review, I must now frame my words in the context of King Kong's surprisingly weak box office performance. Oh, it's nothing serious - $50 million on your first weekend is nothing to sneeze at, and the international gross is already in profit. But still, expectations were around $75m, with some even going as high as $100m, the numbers attained by the Lord of the Rings films. After the first weekend, spokesmen kept saying that they were confident in the film's quality and that word-of-mouth would boost ticket sales, but that hasn't materialized either. Despite strong critical reviews, excitement among the public doesn't seem to be there. Just the other day, when mentioning the movie to Allie (a_rowan_dryad), she responded, "Oh, was that actually good?" Actually good?? This is the biggest movie of the season! By the hottest director in the world! This is Peter Jackson's dream project, which he has been trying to make for 10 years! This isn't Aeon Flux here, this is a sure bet. And yet The Chronicles of Narnia, which was not at all a sure bet, featuring a cast of unknowns and a director doing his first live-action movie (Andrew Adamson, of Shrek), beat Kong's opening weekend by over $20 million and continues to breath down its neck. So, the execs at Universal must be scratching their heads pretty hard right now.
First of all, let me make plain that the critics are right. Jackson's King Kong is a powerful film, delivering all the action, strong characters, and emotional resonance it promises. That said, it made two critical mistakes. The first was the release date. The December opening was chosen because the Lord of the Rings movies opened in December and did well, and the studio was clearly trying to ride on their success. But while the winter season has certainly grown in box office importance, it has only done so for certain kinds of films. It is and always has been the Oscar-film season, and, since Toy Story, has become the family film season, doing well for Pixar and Harry Potter. I believe that The Lord of the Rings' success in the timeframe is a result of its origin in "classic" literature, which enabled it to fit in both with the family crowd and the serious "Oscar-film" perception. King Kong, however, no matter what parallels they tried to draw between it and the Rings trilogy, is inescapably a monster movie - a summer popcorn blockbuster, like Jurassic Park and Jaws and the other Kongs before it, and it should have opened in the summer. And it would have mopped up. There was absolutely nil competition. I mean, seriously, The Dukes of Hazzard, Fantastic Four, and War of the Worlds are the only films I can remember from the entire three months. Silence any studios complaining about the low box office this year. The reason people didn't see any movies was because there was nothing to see. Had King Kong opened in July, it would have cleaned house. But here in the Christmas season, it is not only competing against very strong performances from both Narnia and Harry Potter, but also against its own identity.
That explains the soft opening weekend. The other mistake was running time, and that explains the soft word-of-mouth. The movie runs three hours and seven minutes. Now, what one needs to understand about running time is that it is not a factor of how much time you need to fit in all the stuff you like. Different kinds of stories sustain different running times, and the story of King Kong is a two-hour story. Though there is not one bad scene in the entire film, not one moment that is truly boring, we grow restless because the premise simply does not sustain three hours of sitting still in a dark room. And that sticks with a viewer. Even as I write this, it affects me - I was about to write "though, on the whole, I enjoyed it" and then changed it to "though, on the whole, I thought it was a good movie." Isn't that interesting? That I would call it a good movie and yet be hesitant to say I enjoyed it? It's that restlessness. And even though, on the whole, I thought it was a good movie, when people ask me about it, the first thing I say is, "It really was too long, but..." So, there goes your word-of-mouth. Whatever I say next doesn't matter, because people are already weighing the decision to see the movie as an investment of time.
On to the review itself. Kong is, as I said above, very good, but still flawed. It demonstrates all of Peter Jackson's primary strengths, and all his weaknesses.
Solving the problem of running time is unfortunately complex. I sat down to think of what could be cut. The first thing that came to mind was the dinosaur stampede scene. It was long to the point of monotany, and would be much better off to have 80% of it cut out, mostly from the first half. The T-Rex fight was also too long, but the choreography was insanely cool, so that one is forgiveable, especially with the stampede trimmed. After that, I would cut the subplot between the crewman and the young boy who idolizes him. Everytime the story turns to them, the camera slows down, and the music changes, and it is as if we have changed the channel to an entirely different movie - one which is not as good. But, so far that's not much - maybe 15-20 minutes tops. And after that... I can't think of anything else that doesn't belong. There aren't any easy cuts. Much more time is spent on the first acts of the movie - the last act goes pretty fast. But the early stuff is also the best stuff.
The problem is that the film isn't really too long. That's just the short-hand way to put it. What it was was unfocused. Narrative focus (and thus narrative drive), seems to be Jackson's particular weakness. I noticed this a great deal in the editing and score of the last two Rings movies, and blamed it largely on Howard Shore's music. That, I think now, was a mistake, because I see the same problems here. Jackson is brilliant with the individual elements of storytelling. He creates fascinating characters, and truly respects them. His imagination is vivid and he is masterful at conveying emotion and mood. He is the best director at camerawork since Steven Spielberg. But, how these elements relate to each other, and how they evolve together over the narrative, especially the character's places in the overall story, he seems not to put so much thought into. And it's because, I believe, Jackson doesn't really think about what his story is about. In his book, "Adventures in the Screentrade," William Goldman explains that the first step in writing a script is to decide what your story is about. And then, to decide what it's really about. Redemption. Love conquers all. Whatever. That is the backbone that defines your story. Without that focus, Jackson tends to wander, and the problem goes all the way back to the script. He's a brilliant director - he's just not an especially good writer.
The result is an ending that is beautiful and moving, and yet, somehow inelegant - it doesn't tie the story threads together into something meaningful. King Kong is at heart, at least in its previous incarnations, a fable, and a fable is practically defined by the meaning that can be found in how it ends. Typically, you would think of Kong as a fable of man against the forces of nature. The 1976 version (a highly underrated film) had more fun with the tale, and made it also a fable about the death of the chivalrous but unsophisticated man who has no place in our modern world (from Charles Taylor at Salon.com: "...Jack seems almost as hairy as Kong, but he's also a '70s sensitive guy. He wants Dwan, but he wants her to be free to make every bad choice dangled in front of her. Kong, on the other hand, the unreconstructed male, just takes Dwan to his place."). The characters not only have to be interesting and rich and believable, they also have to serve a purpose to your story. That is the weak spot of Jackson's Kong. It has no such symmetry, and the last act does little to explain the choices the characters make, or how those choices bring about the eventual conclusion. We don't see why Kong decides to climb the Empire State building, he just all of a sudden does. We don't see Kong's emotional struggle when he puts down Ann to battle the airplanes, he just does. Most criminally, we don't get into the head of Jack, to see how he is dealing with and responding to the decisions made by Ann, and so their reunion at the end rings false. Jack Black's Carl Denham recites the same final lines from the original, but, without the original's tightly woven fairy tale structure, the words seem irrelevant. While the bulk of the film is a moving love story, the ending goes off with a piffle, without coming to any conclusion about human nature (or ape nature), or nature's nature, or about anything, except that, in the words of Dino de Laurentis, "When the monkey die, everybody cry."
Which is too bad, because the movie does a lot right. In terms of sheer screen chemistry, Ann and Kong make a wonderful couple. Despite the obviously odd nature of their pairing, we never doubt their motiviation to defend each other, and there is a very real affection that is lacking in most human screen couples. The early scenes, as I said, are the best, especially the setup in New York, and the sequence in which Ann is kidnapped and offered to Kong - Jackson's most rivoting moment since the Balrog chase in Fellowship of the Ring. The movie is near flawless up to that point, but afterwards occasionally loses the necessary urgency. The effects are not as believable as you might expect, especially at times that Ann and Kong physically interact, but realism does not seem to be the point. The movie goes instead for a hyper-real fairytale look that, while not strictly realistic, is absolutely gorgeous to behold. The performances are all solid, but the standout is Naomi Watts as Ann, whom I was the most unsure about before the film was released. She probably has the toughest job of all the actors, and she absolutely owns the role from start to finish. There is no moment that we doubt she is looking into Kong's eyes instead of a marker on a blue wall, and she plays emotions under the surface well enough to keep the movie going even in the long stretches where there is no dialogue (since, obviously, she and Kong can't talk to each other). Jack Black is fun as Denham, and Adrien Brody's Jack is well-rooted and believable, but underused, especially in the last act.
If each new version of the story is going to add a new element (the '76 addition being the concept that Ann/Dwan likes Kong instead of fearing him), Peter Jackson's addition may be the conception of the natives. Whereas the previous two films simply featured your standard-issue, Hollywood Unga-Bungas, Jackson creates a vicious and tortured peoples, not at all unlike the self-mutilated Reavers from Firefly. After all, what would you expect a civilization that lives in the shadow of countless giant monsters to become? This conception neatly sidesteps objections of racism by creating a peoples who are clearly not comparable to any real native cultures, as well as creating a terrifying new danger for visitors to Skull Island.
I look forward to seeing what they come up with for the 2033 version.
I saw the film on opening day, but, having waited so long to write this review, I must now frame my words in the context of King Kong's surprisingly weak box office performance. Oh, it's nothing serious - $50 million on your first weekend is nothing to sneeze at, and the international gross is already in profit. But still, expectations were around $75m, with some even going as high as $100m, the numbers attained by the Lord of the Rings films. After the first weekend, spokesmen kept saying that they were confident in the film's quality and that word-of-mouth would boost ticket sales, but that hasn't materialized either. Despite strong critical reviews, excitement among the public doesn't seem to be there. Just the other day, when mentioning the movie to Allie (a_rowan_dryad), she responded, "Oh, was that actually good?" Actually good?? This is the biggest movie of the season! By the hottest director in the world! This is Peter Jackson's dream project, which he has been trying to make for 10 years! This isn't Aeon Flux here, this is a sure bet. And yet The Chronicles of Narnia, which was not at all a sure bet, featuring a cast of unknowns and a director doing his first live-action movie (Andrew Adamson, of Shrek), beat Kong's opening weekend by over $20 million and continues to breath down its neck. So, the execs at Universal must be scratching their heads pretty hard right now.
First of all, let me make plain that the critics are right. Jackson's King Kong is a powerful film, delivering all the action, strong characters, and emotional resonance it promises. That said, it made two critical mistakes. The first was the release date. The December opening was chosen because the Lord of the Rings movies opened in December and did well, and the studio was clearly trying to ride on their success. But while the winter season has certainly grown in box office importance, it has only done so for certain kinds of films. It is and always has been the Oscar-film season, and, since Toy Story, has become the family film season, doing well for Pixar and Harry Potter. I believe that The Lord of the Rings' success in the timeframe is a result of its origin in "classic" literature, which enabled it to fit in both with the family crowd and the serious "Oscar-film" perception. King Kong, however, no matter what parallels they tried to draw between it and the Rings trilogy, is inescapably a monster movie - a summer popcorn blockbuster, like Jurassic Park and Jaws and the other Kongs before it, and it should have opened in the summer. And it would have mopped up. There was absolutely nil competition. I mean, seriously, The Dukes of Hazzard, Fantastic Four, and War of the Worlds are the only films I can remember from the entire three months. Silence any studios complaining about the low box office this year. The reason people didn't see any movies was because there was nothing to see. Had King Kong opened in July, it would have cleaned house. But here in the Christmas season, it is not only competing against very strong performances from both Narnia and Harry Potter, but also against its own identity.
That explains the soft opening weekend. The other mistake was running time, and that explains the soft word-of-mouth. The movie runs three hours and seven minutes. Now, what one needs to understand about running time is that it is not a factor of how much time you need to fit in all the stuff you like. Different kinds of stories sustain different running times, and the story of King Kong is a two-hour story. Though there is not one bad scene in the entire film, not one moment that is truly boring, we grow restless because the premise simply does not sustain three hours of sitting still in a dark room. And that sticks with a viewer. Even as I write this, it affects me - I was about to write "though, on the whole, I enjoyed it" and then changed it to "though, on the whole, I thought it was a good movie." Isn't that interesting? That I would call it a good movie and yet be hesitant to say I enjoyed it? It's that restlessness. And even though, on the whole, I thought it was a good movie, when people ask me about it, the first thing I say is, "It really was too long, but..." So, there goes your word-of-mouth. Whatever I say next doesn't matter, because people are already weighing the decision to see the movie as an investment of time.
On to the review itself. Kong is, as I said above, very good, but still flawed. It demonstrates all of Peter Jackson's primary strengths, and all his weaknesses.
Solving the problem of running time is unfortunately complex. I sat down to think of what could be cut. The first thing that came to mind was the dinosaur stampede scene. It was long to the point of monotany, and would be much better off to have 80% of it cut out, mostly from the first half. The T-Rex fight was also too long, but the choreography was insanely cool, so that one is forgiveable, especially with the stampede trimmed. After that, I would cut the subplot between the crewman and the young boy who idolizes him. Everytime the story turns to them, the camera slows down, and the music changes, and it is as if we have changed the channel to an entirely different movie - one which is not as good. But, so far that's not much - maybe 15-20 minutes tops. And after that... I can't think of anything else that doesn't belong. There aren't any easy cuts. Much more time is spent on the first acts of the movie - the last act goes pretty fast. But the early stuff is also the best stuff.
The problem is that the film isn't really too long. That's just the short-hand way to put it. What it was was unfocused. Narrative focus (and thus narrative drive), seems to be Jackson's particular weakness. I noticed this a great deal in the editing and score of the last two Rings movies, and blamed it largely on Howard Shore's music. That, I think now, was a mistake, because I see the same problems here. Jackson is brilliant with the individual elements of storytelling. He creates fascinating characters, and truly respects them. His imagination is vivid and he is masterful at conveying emotion and mood. He is the best director at camerawork since Steven Spielberg. But, how these elements relate to each other, and how they evolve together over the narrative, especially the character's places in the overall story, he seems not to put so much thought into. And it's because, I believe, Jackson doesn't really think about what his story is about. In his book, "Adventures in the Screentrade," William Goldman explains that the first step in writing a script is to decide what your story is about. And then, to decide what it's really about. Redemption. Love conquers all. Whatever. That is the backbone that defines your story. Without that focus, Jackson tends to wander, and the problem goes all the way back to the script. He's a brilliant director - he's just not an especially good writer.
The result is an ending that is beautiful and moving, and yet, somehow inelegant - it doesn't tie the story threads together into something meaningful. King Kong is at heart, at least in its previous incarnations, a fable, and a fable is practically defined by the meaning that can be found in how it ends. Typically, you would think of Kong as a fable of man against the forces of nature. The 1976 version (a highly underrated film) had more fun with the tale, and made it also a fable about the death of the chivalrous but unsophisticated man who has no place in our modern world (from Charles Taylor at Salon.com: "...Jack seems almost as hairy as Kong, but he's also a '70s sensitive guy. He wants Dwan, but he wants her to be free to make every bad choice dangled in front of her. Kong, on the other hand, the unreconstructed male, just takes Dwan to his place."). The characters not only have to be interesting and rich and believable, they also have to serve a purpose to your story. That is the weak spot of Jackson's Kong. It has no such symmetry, and the last act does little to explain the choices the characters make, or how those choices bring about the eventual conclusion. We don't see why Kong decides to climb the Empire State building, he just all of a sudden does. We don't see Kong's emotional struggle when he puts down Ann to battle the airplanes, he just does. Most criminally, we don't get into the head of Jack, to see how he is dealing with and responding to the decisions made by Ann, and so their reunion at the end rings false. Jack Black's Carl Denham recites the same final lines from the original, but, without the original's tightly woven fairy tale structure, the words seem irrelevant. While the bulk of the film is a moving love story, the ending goes off with a piffle, without coming to any conclusion about human nature (or ape nature), or nature's nature, or about anything, except that, in the words of Dino de Laurentis, "When the monkey die, everybody cry."
Which is too bad, because the movie does a lot right. In terms of sheer screen chemistry, Ann and Kong make a wonderful couple. Despite the obviously odd nature of their pairing, we never doubt their motiviation to defend each other, and there is a very real affection that is lacking in most human screen couples. The early scenes, as I said, are the best, especially the setup in New York, and the sequence in which Ann is kidnapped and offered to Kong - Jackson's most rivoting moment since the Balrog chase in Fellowship of the Ring. The movie is near flawless up to that point, but afterwards occasionally loses the necessary urgency. The effects are not as believable as you might expect, especially at times that Ann and Kong physically interact, but realism does not seem to be the point. The movie goes instead for a hyper-real fairytale look that, while not strictly realistic, is absolutely gorgeous to behold. The performances are all solid, but the standout is Naomi Watts as Ann, whom I was the most unsure about before the film was released. She probably has the toughest job of all the actors, and she absolutely owns the role from start to finish. There is no moment that we doubt she is looking into Kong's eyes instead of a marker on a blue wall, and she plays emotions under the surface well enough to keep the movie going even in the long stretches where there is no dialogue (since, obviously, she and Kong can't talk to each other). Jack Black is fun as Denham, and Adrien Brody's Jack is well-rooted and believable, but underused, especially in the last act.
If each new version of the story is going to add a new element (the '76 addition being the concept that Ann/Dwan likes Kong instead of fearing him), Peter Jackson's addition may be the conception of the natives. Whereas the previous two films simply featured your standard-issue, Hollywood Unga-Bungas, Jackson creates a vicious and tortured peoples, not at all unlike the self-mutilated Reavers from Firefly. After all, what would you expect a civilization that lives in the shadow of countless giant monsters to become? This conception neatly sidesteps objections of racism by creating a peoples who are clearly not comparable to any real native cultures, as well as creating a terrifying new danger for visitors to Skull Island.
I look forward to seeing what they come up with for the 2033 version.