This time of year, I dig into the vaults to try to find interesting things to watch. I’m not much of a Hallmark or Lifetime kind of person, and the sort of entertainment they run year round seems to spill to the rest of the broadcast universe this time of year. That’s great if it’s your cup of tea. It’s not mine, just being honest. So, I end up watching a lot of old movies. I’d like to share my opinion of King Kong, the 2005 remake of the 1976 remake, of the 1933 classic.
Hopes were high
Peter Jackson was on top of the film world in the early ’00s. He’d won quite a lot for his Lord of the Rings films, and those films still do hold up today. So, he decided to tackle the classic monster movie genre next. He chose King Kong, one of the most well-regarded monster movies of the 20th century. The original was a masterpiece of special effects for its day, and a modern parable about the downside of the advancement of technology at the same time.
The film was packed with A-listers of the day: Naomi Watts, Adrien Brody, Kyle Chandler, and Jack Black fill out the top of the bill. It was also a vehicle for young Colin Hanks. Featuring the latest tech in motion capture by master Andy Serkis (who doubles as a cook in a hilarious role), it promised to outdo Jurassic Park and climb to the top of the adventure movie world.
Jackson avoided the cringe aspect of the 1976 remake by setting his film back in the 1930s, a time when Americans were more gullible and ready for savage entertainments. By all contemporary reports it was a success. Roger Ebert gave it four stars and called it “surprisingly involving and rather beautiful.” In a year crowded with Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Batman films, it barely missed the top 10, still grossing a respectable $218 million.
Upon rewatch…
…there’s a lot about King Kong that still holds up. The acting is top notch, unsurprisingly. The message is still there: our passions are what destroy us, not the least of which is the passion to create change when we don’t have to. There’s plenty of self-deprecation aimed at the movie industry, too. But in 2022, I can’t give it four stars. It barely gets three, just barely. Why? Because for all its majesty, it’s problematic and the effects don’t work as well as we thought they did then.
Let’s talk about the effects, because that’s the easy discussion. A lot of the effects do work incredibly well for a 17-year-old film. They look better than a lot of what you see today, because back then people were willing to pay for good CGI. Andy Serkis’ motion capture is excellent, as is the digital hair. But for every shot that works flawlessly, there’s something that drags you out. Since digital double technology was years away, the film has to rely on real people filmed on green screen for its effect sequences. Unfortunately the people weren’t always in the right places, and the result is a weird shift when people were moved in the computer. Sometimes this involved animating their hair or clothing, and it just doesn’t work.
Another thing that really doesn’t work is the teeth. This is a movie about monsters that bare their teeth, and the teeth don’t work. There was not enough time to render all the subsurface lighting, and the result is that they don’t react to the light and details look painted on. It’s a small thing in the midst of otherwise good work, but it takes you out of the action every time.
What does work is the CGI New York. It’s as believable as can be, especially the aerial shots. It must have taken a huge effort to get done. You really do believe you’re in depression-era NYC.
The harder discussion
There’s a harder discussion to be had here and it involves our contemporary feelings about women and minorities versus the way those people were actually treated in the 1930s when the film takes place. This blog doesn’t skew political, and I have to remind you that all opinions are my own. I don’t think of myself as “overly woke” but I do realize that attitudes change. Keep that in mind as I go down the road in the next paragraphs.
It’s impossible to ignore that Naomi Watts’ character, Ann Darrow, is literally the only woman with any real speaking part. Not only that, even though every male character stays fully clothed throughout the film, Ann Darrow is reduced to a camisole fairly early in the adventure. I’m not unappreciative of the visual, but this bit of imbalance sticks out quite a bit more today than it did in 2005. It’s just unnecessary to the story and makes people like me write paragraphs like this. I will give the film credit for endowing Ann Darrow with some agency of her own, though. It’s a step in the right direction.
The other, and far more perilous, discussion involves the natives of Skull Island. They are depicted as evil and wretched. They’re really just meaningless stereotypes. Given the island’s supposed location in the sea between Hawaii and Asia, they’re also surprisingly dark skinned. Here come a few white adventurers who stomp on all the local customs, trap and steal their god, and kill the natives indiscriminately when they fight back. Now, this is problematic. That’s probably how it would have gone down in the 1930s. But, this isn’t supposed to be a history lesson. The film could have been just as good if the island had been devoid of humans, and this sort of discussion could have been avoided.
The legacy of King Kong
King Kong’s success spawned a new generation of monster movies, not the least of which was the unrelated Kong: Skull Island from 2017. It proved there was an appetite for this sort of film. However, it also showed how expensive films like this can be. Since 2005, we’ve seen CGI quality drop. There never seems to be enough time or money to do it right. This tends to mean that films like King Kong largely hold up visually since no one has really done it better since.
On the other hand, Peter Jackson’s Kong weighed in at over 3 hours. Few films since have been so long. The long run time means fewer showings per day. That’s important especially now. Theater owners struggle like never before now, and a long film might just break them. Half an hour of repetitive action could have easily been cut. I would love to see what a skilled editor could do when trying to get this film down to a taut 1:49.
I do give King Kong three stars, because it still gets a lot right. It’s just those things that it gets wrong which really, really pull you out of the action.
As I write this, King Kong is streaming on Peacock and is available for rent from major streaming stores.
