Film Review: King Kong (2005)

Hollywood is not called “the dream factory” for nothing. When young New Zealander Peter Jackson saw the original 1933 film King Kong for the first time, it marked the beginning of a lifelong dream. The magnificent Hollywood classic left such a strong impression on Jackson that he decided to pursue filmmaking career solely in order to create his own version. The path to realising that dream was fraught with difficulties and countless setbacks, but Jackson succeeded when it mattered most. After the Oscar-confirmed triumph of The Lord of the Rings, it was hard to find anyone in Hollywood who would dare to say “no” to him.

Had anyone other than Jackson been enthusiastic about this project, it is unlikely that it would have been made in 2005, at least not with a lavish 207 million US$ budget, an audience expected to swarm cinemas, and critics pre-tuned to praise it in their reviews. This is a remake of a well-known film, and today, with a few rare exceptions, remakes often evoke disdain rather than reverence among critics, a sentiment usually shared by audiences as well. Without Jackson, the new version of King Kong' would be understood less as a remake of 1933 original version and more as a remake of 1976 De Laurentiis's version, which, in its attempt to modernise the plot, succeeded only in offering viewers what was the worts about 1970s.

Jackson had too much respect for the original version to repeat such a fatal mistake. The new King Kong is not conceived merely as a remake, but also as a homage to the original version. For this reason, the story is set not in the present day but in the same era when the original film was made—1933. This not only creates an opportunity for a whole series of small tributes and references to the original actors, directors, and the time in which they lived, but it also immerses viewers at the very beginning into the prosaic reality of the protagonists, a reality that has vanished but remains nevertheless remains fascinating almost a century later.

The beginning of film,' set against Al Jolson's song “Top of the World”, depicts New York as the largest city in the world, adorned on one side with dazzling and spectacular skyscrapers, while on the other side grappling with unemployment, poverty, and hunger brought to its streets by the Great Depression. Among the masses of the impoverished is young actress Ann Darrow (played by Watts), who, after a closure of the vaudeville theatre where she worked, is forced to accept any job offered. By chance, she is recognised as the ideal actress for the mysterious project devised by ambitious and unscrupulous film producer Jack Denham (played by Jack Black). The project involves filming on location in the Far East, and Ann boards the ship Venture along with the other crew members and Jack Driscoll (played by Adrien Brody), a talented New York playwright hired to write the script.

However, Ann, Driscoll, and the crew, led by Captain Englehorn (played by Thomas Kretschmann), will soon realize that Denham's true goal for the expedition was Skull Island, an extremely inaccessible and unexplored piece of land surrounded by disturbing legends. When they finally land there, Denham and his men will discover that the hostile natives are their least problem. Ann will face a far greater issue as the natives capture her to sacrifice her to a giant gorilla they call “Kong”.

King Kong was before its premiere nicknamed “Titanic Killer”, based on claims that Jackson's film would be the one to dethrone Cameron's 1997 triumph from the top of the list of the most commercially successful films of all time. King Kong actually shares many similarities with Titanic—both films have, due to the authors' megalomania and the studios' generosity, turned into the most expensive in history; both films were released around Christmas; both run for about three hours; the endings of both films are more or less known to the audience; both feature something of a tragic love story as a plot element.

While King Kong failed in surpassing Titanic in commercial terms, it can be said that Jackson's film is superior to Cameron's in many ways. The main reason lies in the plot itself, which Jackson borrowed from the original version and which contained potential for both visual spectacle and emotionally charged scenes; unlike Titanic, there was no need to “spice up” the main event of the film with an ultra-clichéd and utterly unconvincing love story for commercial reasons. In Jackson's vision, the titular protagonist is not only an opportunity to showcase the power of contemporary CGI technology, but this same CGI technology gives him a human dimension that his clay and rubber predecessors could not possess.

Andy Serkis, an actor who masterfully portrayed the CGI character Gollum with the help of sensors in The Lord of the Rings, repeats the same trick here by playing Kong and responding to Naomi Watts's performance in the film's most emotionally powerful scenes. It is precisely in those moments, when visual splendour merges with emotions, that King Kong offers viewers what they have long been deprived of in most of routine Hollywood products — film magic.

Some viewers, as well as critics, criticise King Kong for its excessive length, especially in the middle of the film, which contains a series of scenes that seem to be packed in like with a shovel, seemingly solely to fulfill Jackson's boyhood dreams and demonstrate the power of today's CGI technology.

Others will see the problem in the fact that one must wait for these scenes, meaning that a large part is dedicated to character introductions, many of whom will not play a significant role until the end of the film, or whose fate will not be particularly interesting to viewers. These complaints are partially justified in the film's finale, where almost no character appears except Ann and Kong.

On the other hand, the film still leaves strong impression that Jackson, unlike Cameron, realised his dream with far fewer creative compromises. For this reason, King Kong will withstand the test of time far more successfully and will serve as an example of the kind of film Titanic should have been for many future critics and historians.

RATING: 8/10 (+++)

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