Where to start ...

... on King Kong?

I've talked about the movie with lots of people and thought about it probably too much. So. here's my contribution to the noise:

I have no problem with special effects, action scenes, or three hour movies. In fact, I'm usually a big fan of them. My only other experience with Peter Jackson before KK was LOTR and that left me fairly impressed. You can see much of the same style in this movie, but where LOTR was a gigantic story that needed a large space to be told, KK seemed a little stretched. To make it simple, here are the three things that bugged me:

1. Poor character development, contrived ideas and random, pointless subplots - All of this adds up to a sketchy story. Naomi Watts was really good in the role she was given, but, unfortunately we never really got to know her very well. Yes, we get that she's sad and poor and wants more in life ... but that's only because we're told this by her old theater friend. Who is this guy? Why does he have such a deep understanding of her life? No idea. He's there for two scenes to tell us about Anne and then he's gone. Then Jack Black reveals Anne's inner self as he tries to convince her to join his cast. The problem with this is that for the entire movie we are being convinced that Black's character is a meglomaniac who doesn't care too much about anyone but himself. I think many of the main characters are just as superficial.

Then we have the story of the first mate and Jimmy ... if I get this wrong, please someone explain this to me because it makes no sense. Throughout sea voyage we see these two guys. There's a cryptic story about Jimmy stowing away on the ship with a broken arm (?). Then there's the whole Heart of Darkness thing. It's like the actors are looking into the camera and screaming "HEART OF DARKNESS ... SEEMS SIMILIAR TO WHERE THIS MOVIE IS GOING ... GET IT?" The first mate's "stay in school" speech to Jimmy does little to help. Then ... they both (apparently) get killed.

Finally, there's the mystery of Skull Island. I do find it cool that Jack Black's character doesn't reveal where he got the map, but everybody seems to know about the place. How is that? Well, it's because they found a sailor who got off the island and then stabbed himself in the heart. Convienient.

2. Some of the best scenes were dragged out to the point of absurdity - One perfect example is when Kong gets Anne back to his cave. Once there, he stands outside and roars, shaking Anne. During this scene the camera goes all shaky, it gets blurry and goes into slow-motion. For like two minutes. I laughed out loud in the theater when I saw this. We should remember this technique from LOTR where it was used much more affectively. In KK it seemed to last forever ... for no reason.

All of the best action, in my opinion, takes place on the island. But even there, it seems to never end. I understand that it's good to make the audience think they are about to get away and then make it keep going, but come on. The dinosaur stampede made me think of Blues Brothers. Those dinosaurs just kept coming and piling up. It was funny, not exciting.

And we come to the infamous insect scene. Holy crap. Everyone in the theater was squirming in their seats. It was a nightmare that came to life onscreen. It wasn't gruesome but it was brutally realstic. Like Cow said, the camera did not look away. I'm tempted to say it was too much ... but it was so real and that's what they were going for. It just seemed that there was no point for it, like they decided "we can show this, so we should put it in, and make it excruciatingly neverending." The T-Rex fight was also nuts. It was outrageous, but was good because it had a point: Kong protected Anne.

After all that, the action back in NYC was kind of lame. I'll get to that a little in my final point ...

3. People and monkeys do not fall in love. You can say that Anne and Kong's relationship wasn't romantic, but that sure seemed like what they wanted us to think. From them enjoying the sunset together to their frequent longing stares, the entire movie was about a relationship that they never really developed and wouldn't happen anyway. Yeah, it's a movie but the movie wasn't a fantasy about intelligent animals, it was about a giant ape. At the end, when Jack Black says that "beauty killed the beast" I have to reply, "No, Mr. Black, bullets killed the beast. And you bringing it here, that helped too."

In the end, I think the story is really about how people try to control nature and what happens when they fail. This movie tried to have us believe that there was more than a typical animal/human relationship between Kong and Darrow. There is nothing especially timeless or moral about that. When I heard that Jackson was doing this movie, my first thought was "Why?" After seeing it I would say that it was a chance to use brilliant special effects, film breathtaking scenes, and remake a classic film. However, the only reason the first film is known is because of its pioneering special effects. There is no genuine heroic story in King Kong.

The cinematography was beautiful, terrifying, and breathtaking when it needed to be, but the story never caught up.

Man ... I feel mean. But that's how it goes.