I Went to See King Kong
Dec. 18th, 2005 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxI went to see King Kong and I'm such a pushover. I cried--not sobs or anything, but they did manage to make me shed a few tears for poor, poor Kong.
The criticisms I have read are true. The movie should have been trimmed, not because you're bored but because it's really just too much. It would have been neat to have the extra stuff on an extended DVD, but it slows down the pacing. The movie should have moved at a faster clip. Also, some of the CGI is just as bad as the trailers make it look. The dinosaurs do not compare to Jurassic Park's. They never seem as real as those in the original Jurassic Park (Kong on the other hand is beautifully rendered). Unfortunately, you can also tell that some of the chase sequences were created via green screen, which lessens their effectiveness. That said, what excuses all of those very real flaws is that the movie's heart is in the right place -- lovingly so. In this one, King Kong was loved... and he deserved to be. My suggestion, buy the ticket but show up 1hr late, the last 2/3rds of the movie are worth it.
I think Jackson may be showing the flaw of thinking that more is more. Usually we're told "show don't tell," but the truth is, sometimes you tell to expedite matters and get to the heart of the story. I have a book on writing that had one bit of advice that I think makes sense in a storytelling capacity -- show up late. The advice was to move to what people came to see fairly expeditiously. In this case, Jackson simply didn't do that and, unfortunately, the first hour of the movie could have been covered with dialog, just having someone (perhaps Collin Hank's character) complaining to Jack Black's Denham about the director/producer having absconded with the film footage when the studios wanted to shut down his film, all but kidnapping a scriptwriter, and hiring an unknown actress off the street to play his leading lady because his original one discovered that Denham was lying about going to Singapore when he intended to venture to some long lost--possibly mythical island. Done. You would have had the whole gist of the set up without actually seeing it, and then they could have proceeded on to the interesting and important parts of the story.
I know the argument that Jackson was providing context, but, though I understand why in Narnia they added the scenes of the bombing of London to give the audience context and motivation, we really don't need to know much about the Depression in order to understand the way Hollywood works with movie producers, desperate starlets, and script writers who lower their "art" for money. Kids today might need to be reminded (or explained to) why a loving mother would send her children off to the home of an eccentric professor, but everyone is pretty up to speed on the exploitation, desperation, and egotism in Hollywood. And as far as the characters go, up to the island the characters are pretty much what we would expect them to be -- starry-eyed ingenue with ethics, nebbish production assistant, actor who, while looking the part of hero, is actually rather vain and cowardly, producer/director who is an ego maniac, and a writer who is shoved into thebasement hold to write the movie script. The crew has an eccentric cook, a noble first mate (who is African American, educated, selfless and unwaveringly heroic [also quite handsome]. I suspect Jackson tried to ameliorate the racism in the original Kong. I suspect that the whole subtext of the movie about exploitation was meta commentary on the exploitation of the natives in the Kong story), a plucky cabin boy, and a mercenary captain. So, at least to that point in the movie, we didn't need to too much explanation as to who these characters were. As far as Ann's (Beauty) crush on the writer? Not really necessary. They just could have had Jack (the writer/hero) fall for the beautiful actress.
Now, all this isn't to say that the characters are just cliches. Nebbish production assistant turns out to be an intelligent and compassionate guy with his own minor moment of heroism (I've liked Collin Hanks since the days on Roswell, though in his scenes with Jack Black I kept flashing back to Orange County and thinking the two characters/actors still had a brotherly vibe). Cowardly leading man has a moment that proves he has some better qualities. Script-writer surprises himself and becomes action hero and Beauty is far more than just a helpless damsel in distress -- she's the avatar of the audience. But, at least until they reach the island, these characters are pretty much just who they were initially presented to be. No new traits really reveal themselves in the first act. So, again, start the movie 1/3 of the way in.
Then there are the problems with the CGI that I mentioned before. Let me repeat there are problems with the CGI.
So with all of these flaws (which are not insignificant) why do I give the movie two thumbs up? The heart of the movie works, Kong works, Naomi Watts works, and the tragic stroy works.
Kong is a fully realized character. I'm not talking about CGI here (although I will say that as disappointing as the CGI is for the velociraptors, Kong is just as lovingly rendered and animated as he is characterized within the story). Within the movie, Kong is shown as a three-dimensional, soulful creature of intelligence, humor, childishness, heart, and nobility.
When I was eighteen, my sister and I went to the London Zoo. There we saw a pair of silver back gorillas that were two of the most fascinating animals I have ever seen in my life. There was this whole by-play between the two gorillas with each other, and with the crowd of people near the exhibit that made it oh-so-clear that these were animals of intelligence, canniness, and even had a sense of humor. Whenever I read someone protesting evolution saying people cannot be connected to monkeys, I think they've never seen silverback gorillas. If you watch them, there's no doubt that big, scary and hairy though they may be, they are also very, very like us. In this movie, Kong is a person. Yes, he may be a wild animal, but he is also a person -- that's where the movie excells.
There is one moment in the first third of the mostly uneccessary first act where Ann (Naomi Watts) is speaking about the heroine in the script for the movie saying "She doesn't believe that love exists" and that even if she finds love, it will be taken away. "Why?" Denham (Jack Black) asks. "Because nothing good ever lasts." Coming as it did in the first (Kongless) third of the film, I thought that this was supposed to be some sort of characterization of Ann. And maybe it is, but at some point in the last third of the movie, I remembered that conversation and thought, "No. That is Kong." Because... that is Kong. That's Kong's story... and it's tragic.
Ann works because she's the audience's avatar. She is us. Naomi Watts is very expressive and that works. She clearly expreses Anne's thoughts and emotions which -- more often than not--mirror our own. She's horrified by the murders once they're on the island. She fights being strung up and hung out as a sacrifice for whatever jungle creature they're sacrificing her to. And it's perfectly understandable how she wigs out when she's taken by a 25ft gorilla and carried around as carelessly as a 2 year old child carries around a rag doll.
She plays dead in the hopes that Kong will leave her alone. She tries to escape. She tries to pacify the animal that could kill her -- not out of cruelty but...Kong is wild. Sharks don't kill out of cruelty, but they can very most definitely kill you. Like Aslan is NOT a tame lion, Kong is not a tame gorilla. She tries to pacify him, but just as when you playing fetch and throwing balls to entertain a puppy, Kong thinks she when she performs for him, that it should go on forever. When Ann grows tired, Kong throws a childish temper tantrum. A 25ft gorilla throwing a temper tantrum that a spoiled-rotten three-year-old would be proud of, could be very dangerous.
Kong doesn't win us over until after (he allows?) Ann's escape. She discovers that there are monsters in that there forest (stegasaurs, tyrannasaurs, huge centipedes, oh my!) and Kong comes to her rescue. I was reminded of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rahirah's very wise and insightful post recently on the process of winning the audience's sympathy for a character. Showing a character suffering (and Kong does suffer) might win pity, but it doesn't win sympathy or love. Quoting rahirah:
"Have a terrible karmic disaster happen to the character in the present so they can Suffer." This is what a lot of writers THINK will make their characters sympathetic. They are wrong. If it's done well, it may inspire pity or understanding. If it's done poorly, it will inspire annoyance.
The real rule is very simple. Show the character caring about someone else more than they care about themselves. Especially if doing so puts the character to some trouble or inconvenience."
Kong gets it right. We suspect that he allowed Ann to escape because she wanted it so badly. And, while it's perhaps fortuitous that he comes to her rescue when she's being menaced by the tyrannasaurs, that could also just be male territorial behavior. The moment where I thought the movie shifted the viewers into sympathizing with Kong and growing to love him is the moment where, during the battle with the tyranasaurus we (and Kong) see the tyranasaur about to bite Ann. We see Kong see it. We see Kong deliberately choose to turn, sheilding Ann with his own body so that the dinosaur bites him instead -- and it is a big, painful bite. We understand that Kong made a choice to save Ann. He knew he was making a choice, and that choice was bought at great pain and danger to himself. We realize as he does it, that Kong genuinely cares for her. From there on out, Kong is downright chivalrous to Ann. He is her champion. He protects her, no matter what pain it brings to himself. And Ann gains our sympathy because just as we realize Kong's motivation, she does as well. When caught between Kong and the dinosaur, she deliberatly moves toward Kong for his protection. We know that she understands.
That might have been enough to gain some sympathy for Kong, but the movie expands upon it. We're given hints that Kong may be the last of his kind. He is alone. Ann (and we) see it, and understand that he must be lonely. And when Kong brings her to the summit of the island (which is echoed in the ending of the movie) just to share with Ann the beauty of the sunset, we realize that Kong has the soul of a poet. Here in this dark, dangerous, harsh and horrific world that has scarred Kong from what must have been a lifetime of life and death battles, Kong fights... alone and lonely... and, yet, in the midst of all this violence we realize that he is a creature who appreciates beauty and peace. At that moment, I remembered Ann's speach from the beginning of the film about a heroine who didn't believe that love existed, who was alone, and how everything good is always taken away... and I think it's Kong. She had described Kong's life.
And of course Ann is taken away by Jack (who came to rescue her). Kong reacts to Jack like a male gorilla would react to another gorilla coming to take his companion from him. We understand why Kong pursues them... and Ann keeps us on her side when we see her realize it as well. She tries to stop the inevitable by telling the sailors to let her go, Kong isn't after them, he only wants her. And Ann expresses our own sorrow at the sight of seeing Kong captured and brought low. She cries for what is being done to him.
The final act is, of course, a tragedy. We all know how the story ends. What makes it compelling is that we well understand Kong's love for Ann. He sees her as a kindred spirit... and she is. And she's on Kong's side. He goes to her, and she goes to him because she understands, even though he can't, the kind of danger that he is in. She goes with him willingly and there's one brief moment of innocent, child-like joy as they find a spot in Central Park decorated for Christmas where Kong slides on ice and tries to amuse her. But, just as she predicted, nothing good ever lasts and it's time to scale the Empire State Building. Again Jackson shows Kong carefully (even chivalrously) trying to protect Ann (though by that point we need no reassurance that his love for her is pure). We know that his fate is sealed, but he doesn't. He sees the bi-planes as no more than the giant bats he's battled before and (thanks to excellent CGI) we see his shock when he discovers that these "bats" can sting... with bullets. Ann expresses the audience's desires as she tries desperately to also climb to the very top of the building to try to prevent the tragedy that's unfolding. We don't want Kong to be alone at the end. And she just wants to save him. He saves her (again), but her efforts are in vain. She can't save him. It's a tragedy, and she sobs for him.
Beauty killed the beast. . .not Ann, mind you, but Kong's soul which appreciated beauty and longed for it. In reaching out to touch it, he doomed himself and we can't help but feel for him because though he was wild, he was soulful and beautiful and only the audience (and Ann) really understood it.
That's enough to make up for some clunky first act dialog, a slow first act, and some hinky special effects. Flawed as the movie is (and it IS), it has a lovely soul.
The criticisms I have read are true. The movie should have been trimmed, not because you're bored but because it's really just too much. It would have been neat to have the extra stuff on an extended DVD, but it slows down the pacing. The movie should have moved at a faster clip. Also, some of the CGI is just as bad as the trailers make it look. The dinosaurs do not compare to Jurassic Park's. They never seem as real as those in the original Jurassic Park (Kong on the other hand is beautifully rendered). Unfortunately, you can also tell that some of the chase sequences were created via green screen, which lessens their effectiveness. That said, what excuses all of those very real flaws is that the movie's heart is in the right place -- lovingly so. In this one, King Kong was loved... and he deserved to be. My suggestion, buy the ticket but show up 1hr late, the last 2/3rds of the movie are worth it.
I think Jackson may be showing the flaw of thinking that more is more. Usually we're told "show don't tell," but the truth is, sometimes you tell to expedite matters and get to the heart of the story. I have a book on writing that had one bit of advice that I think makes sense in a storytelling capacity -- show up late. The advice was to move to what people came to see fairly expeditiously. In this case, Jackson simply didn't do that and, unfortunately, the first hour of the movie could have been covered with dialog, just having someone (perhaps Collin Hank's character) complaining to Jack Black's Denham about the director/producer having absconded with the film footage when the studios wanted to shut down his film, all but kidnapping a scriptwriter, and hiring an unknown actress off the street to play his leading lady because his original one discovered that Denham was lying about going to Singapore when he intended to venture to some long lost--possibly mythical island. Done. You would have had the whole gist of the set up without actually seeing it, and then they could have proceeded on to the interesting and important parts of the story.
I know the argument that Jackson was providing context, but, though I understand why in Narnia they added the scenes of the bombing of London to give the audience context and motivation, we really don't need to know much about the Depression in order to understand the way Hollywood works with movie producers, desperate starlets, and script writers who lower their "art" for money. Kids today might need to be reminded (or explained to) why a loving mother would send her children off to the home of an eccentric professor, but everyone is pretty up to speed on the exploitation, desperation, and egotism in Hollywood. And as far as the characters go, up to the island the characters are pretty much what we would expect them to be -- starry-eyed ingenue with ethics, nebbish production assistant, actor who, while looking the part of hero, is actually rather vain and cowardly, producer/director who is an ego maniac, and a writer who is shoved into the
Now, all this isn't to say that the characters are just cliches. Nebbish production assistant turns out to be an intelligent and compassionate guy with his own minor moment of heroism (I've liked Collin Hanks since the days on Roswell, though in his scenes with Jack Black I kept flashing back to Orange County and thinking the two characters/actors still had a brotherly vibe). Cowardly leading man has a moment that proves he has some better qualities. Script-writer surprises himself and becomes action hero and Beauty is far more than just a helpless damsel in distress -- she's the avatar of the audience. But, at least until they reach the island, these characters are pretty much just who they were initially presented to be. No new traits really reveal themselves in the first act. So, again, start the movie 1/3 of the way in.
Then there are the problems with the CGI that I mentioned before. Let me repeat there are problems with the CGI.
So with all of these flaws (which are not insignificant) why do I give the movie two thumbs up? The heart of the movie works, Kong works, Naomi Watts works, and the tragic stroy works.
Kong is a fully realized character. I'm not talking about CGI here (although I will say that as disappointing as the CGI is for the velociraptors, Kong is just as lovingly rendered and animated as he is characterized within the story). Within the movie, Kong is shown as a three-dimensional, soulful creature of intelligence, humor, childishness, heart, and nobility.
When I was eighteen, my sister and I went to the London Zoo. There we saw a pair of silver back gorillas that were two of the most fascinating animals I have ever seen in my life. There was this whole by-play between the two gorillas with each other, and with the crowd of people near the exhibit that made it oh-so-clear that these were animals of intelligence, canniness, and even had a sense of humor. Whenever I read someone protesting evolution saying people cannot be connected to monkeys, I think they've never seen silverback gorillas. If you watch them, there's no doubt that big, scary and hairy though they may be, they are also very, very like us. In this movie, Kong is a person. Yes, he may be a wild animal, but he is also a person -- that's where the movie excells.
There is one moment in the first third of the mostly uneccessary first act where Ann (Naomi Watts) is speaking about the heroine in the script for the movie saying "She doesn't believe that love exists" and that even if she finds love, it will be taken away. "Why?" Denham (Jack Black) asks. "Because nothing good ever lasts." Coming as it did in the first (Kongless) third of the film, I thought that this was supposed to be some sort of characterization of Ann. And maybe it is, but at some point in the last third of the movie, I remembered that conversation and thought, "No. That is Kong." Because... that is Kong. That's Kong's story... and it's tragic.
Ann works because she's the audience's avatar. She is us. Naomi Watts is very expressive and that works. She clearly expreses Anne's thoughts and emotions which -- more often than not--mirror our own. She's horrified by the murders once they're on the island. She fights being strung up and hung out as a sacrifice for whatever jungle creature they're sacrificing her to. And it's perfectly understandable how she wigs out when she's taken by a 25ft gorilla and carried around as carelessly as a 2 year old child carries around a rag doll.
She plays dead in the hopes that Kong will leave her alone. She tries to escape. She tries to pacify the animal that could kill her -- not out of cruelty but...Kong is wild. Sharks don't kill out of cruelty, but they can very most definitely kill you. Like Aslan is NOT a tame lion, Kong is not a tame gorilla. She tries to pacify him, but just as when you playing fetch and throwing balls to entertain a puppy, Kong thinks she when she performs for him, that it should go on forever. When Ann grows tired, Kong throws a childish temper tantrum. A 25ft gorilla throwing a temper tantrum that a spoiled-rotten three-year-old would be proud of, could be very dangerous.
Kong doesn't win us over until after (he allows?) Ann's escape. She discovers that there are monsters in that there forest (stegasaurs, tyrannasaurs, huge centipedes, oh my!) and Kong comes to her rescue. I was reminded of
rahirah's very wise and insightful post recently on the process of winning the audience's sympathy for a character. Showing a character suffering (and Kong does suffer) might win pity, but it doesn't win sympathy or love. Quoting rahirah: "Have a terrible karmic disaster happen to the character in the present so they can Suffer." This is what a lot of writers THINK will make their characters sympathetic. They are wrong. If it's done well, it may inspire pity or understanding. If it's done poorly, it will inspire annoyance.
The real rule is very simple. Show the character caring about someone else more than they care about themselves. Especially if doing so puts the character to some trouble or inconvenience."
Kong gets it right. We suspect that he allowed Ann to escape because she wanted it so badly. And, while it's perhaps fortuitous that he comes to her rescue when she's being menaced by the tyrannasaurs, that could also just be male territorial behavior. The moment where I thought the movie shifted the viewers into sympathizing with Kong and growing to love him is the moment where, during the battle with the tyranasaurus we (and Kong) see the tyranasaur about to bite Ann. We see Kong see it. We see Kong deliberately choose to turn, sheilding Ann with his own body so that the dinosaur bites him instead -- and it is a big, painful bite. We understand that Kong made a choice to save Ann. He knew he was making a choice, and that choice was bought at great pain and danger to himself. We realize as he does it, that Kong genuinely cares for her. From there on out, Kong is downright chivalrous to Ann. He is her champion. He protects her, no matter what pain it brings to himself. And Ann gains our sympathy because just as we realize Kong's motivation, she does as well. When caught between Kong and the dinosaur, she deliberatly moves toward Kong for his protection. We know that she understands.
That might have been enough to gain some sympathy for Kong, but the movie expands upon it. We're given hints that Kong may be the last of his kind. He is alone. Ann (and we) see it, and understand that he must be lonely. And when Kong brings her to the summit of the island (which is echoed in the ending of the movie) just to share with Ann the beauty of the sunset, we realize that Kong has the soul of a poet. Here in this dark, dangerous, harsh and horrific world that has scarred Kong from what must have been a lifetime of life and death battles, Kong fights... alone and lonely... and, yet, in the midst of all this violence we realize that he is a creature who appreciates beauty and peace. At that moment, I remembered Ann's speach from the beginning of the film about a heroine who didn't believe that love existed, who was alone, and how everything good is always taken away... and I think it's Kong. She had described Kong's life.
And of course Ann is taken away by Jack (who came to rescue her). Kong reacts to Jack like a male gorilla would react to another gorilla coming to take his companion from him. We understand why Kong pursues them... and Ann keeps us on her side when we see her realize it as well. She tries to stop the inevitable by telling the sailors to let her go, Kong isn't after them, he only wants her. And Ann expresses our own sorrow at the sight of seeing Kong captured and brought low. She cries for what is being done to him.
The final act is, of course, a tragedy. We all know how the story ends. What makes it compelling is that we well understand Kong's love for Ann. He sees her as a kindred spirit... and she is. And she's on Kong's side. He goes to her, and she goes to him because she understands, even though he can't, the kind of danger that he is in. She goes with him willingly and there's one brief moment of innocent, child-like joy as they find a spot in Central Park decorated for Christmas where Kong slides on ice and tries to amuse her. But, just as she predicted, nothing good ever lasts and it's time to scale the Empire State Building. Again Jackson shows Kong carefully (even chivalrously) trying to protect Ann (though by that point we need no reassurance that his love for her is pure). We know that his fate is sealed, but he doesn't. He sees the bi-planes as no more than the giant bats he's battled before and (thanks to excellent CGI) we see his shock when he discovers that these "bats" can sting... with bullets. Ann expresses the audience's desires as she tries desperately to also climb to the very top of the building to try to prevent the tragedy that's unfolding. We don't want Kong to be alone at the end. And she just wants to save him. He saves her (again), but her efforts are in vain. She can't save him. It's a tragedy, and she sobs for him.
Beauty killed the beast. . .not Ann, mind you, but Kong's soul which appreciated beauty and longed for it. In reaching out to touch it, he doomed himself and we can't help but feel for him because though he was wild, he was soulful and beautiful and only the audience (and Ann) really understood it.
That's enough to make up for some clunky first act dialog, a slow first act, and some hinky special effects. Flawed as the movie is (and it IS), it has a lovely soul.
