The Chinese calendar may identify 2005 as the year of the rooster, but for diehard, life-long fans of the Eighth Wonder of the World, it’s been the year of the ape. Ever since I saw that giant simian beat his chest on my parents’ mammoth Zenith console TV as a kid, I’ve been obsessed with all things Kong, and now that fire is again stoked by two major releases. In addition to finally getting the original 1933 film restored on DVD courtesy of Turner Home Entertainment, we can now behold a remake from celebrated filmmaker Peter Jackson.
Like Jackson, I do what I do professionally because of Kong and the awe that Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion animation instilled in me at a tender age. And, like Jackson, I used to make my own Kong models and cracker-box skyscrapers for him to knock over. But unlike Jackson, I haven’t been given $207 million to take that playtime activity to the next level. But I’m fine with that, because there’s no topping the original, try as you may.
The first Kong movie was made by RKO Pictures for around $1 million, a fortune in the 1930s but now barely enough to cover the on-set pampering of a star like Naomi Watts. Today, it takes $300 million to bring Merian C. Cooper’s and Ernest B. Shoedsack’s epic yarn to the big screen, and improvements are still few and far between.
I’m generally a fan of Jackson’s work and even more so of the stellar visual effects created by Weta for his Lord of the Rings trilogy, so I was expecting great things from this latest voyage to Skull Island. Sure, the effects are good where it really counts and many of the action sequences are cleverly conceived and genuinely thrilling. But there’s something missing, a certain sense of mystery and wonder gets lost in the whiz-bang presentation made possible by modern technology. CG is a powerful tool that allows filmmakers to bring things to the screen that were once unimaginable, but some things are better left to the imagination. Finding that balance seems to be the task at hand for today’s moviemakers.
I may be ostracized for admitting this, but I actually believe Dino De Laurentiis’ 1976 version of King Kong did some things better, even though Jackson’s entry is a more faithful re-imagining. In fact, some sequences in the new movie seem almost rotoscoped from the original black-and-white negative. Pete’s heart is in the right place with this loving tribute, and it’s hard to begrudge him for wanting to put his own stamp on what may very well be the greatest adventure story ever told. But maybe Peter Jackson is a bit too much like Karl Denham, a master showman who would stop at nothing to capture the magic of Kong and claim it for himself. Perhaps Kong was better left alone to battle stop-motion dinosaurs behind a massive wall on some uncharted island.
It goes without saying that Willis O’Brien’s animation in the original King Kong isn’t the most skilled. He was pioneering techniques in those days and merely laying a foundation that would later be smoothed over by the likes of Ray Harryhausen, Jim Danforth, Dave Allen, Phil Tippett and digital wizards at Weta, including Randy Cook, one of the best stop-motion animators now working in CG. O’Brien’s Kong is a bit jerky and doesn’t exactly move like a real ape, but maybe that’s what makes him so fascinating. He has a mythic, otherworldly quality that the new CG gorilla seems to lack. Harryhausen has often said that there’s folly in bringing too much realism to fantasy, an observation that grows wiser by the day.
All that said, I still recommend Peter Jackson’s King Kong for the sheer spectacle and the breathtaking climax. In fact, I’ll take any Kong you can throw at me. As a kid, I sat through many Sunday afternoon screenings of Toho’s King Kong Vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes (which both feature one of the worst ape suits ever put on film), as well as such rip-offs as American International Pictures’ 1961 Konga. Saturday mornings offered the goofy but highly entertaining 1966 Rankin & Bass cartoon, King Kong: The Animated Series, which Classic Media recently released in two volumes on DVD! I even sacrificed precious hours of my life watching De Laurentiis’ attempt at a sequel, King Kong Lives, in which the massive monkey survives his fall from the Empire State Building with the aid of an artificial heart and puts the new organ to work wooing a giant female gorilla. I kid you not.
I’m sure Jackson’s won’t be the last attempt at breathing new life into the King Kong mythology. But what exactly is it about this tale that has captured the imagination of so may over the years? At face value, it seems like a silly premise: an overgrown monkey falls in love with an actress and ends up taking the ultimate plunge for her. However, Freud would have had a field day examining the psychological implications of the story, which exposes many truths about human nature. It’s true that a lot of women tend to latch onto the most beastly primates they can find, and most men would risk life and limb in search of a missing blonde as attractive as Fay Wray, Jessica Lange and Naomi Watts. Imagine how things would have turned out if Kong had run off with Kathy Bates. How soon would they have chalked that one up as a loss and gotten the hell off the island?
In the end, the story of King Kong is bigger than any one film and it’s great that Jackson and his band of vfx masters are bringing that story to a new generation, one that largely refuses to watch anything in black-and-white. Perhaps the new film will even inspire the PlayStation set to skateboard down to their local video stores and seek out the original, and still the best. Long live Kong!
If you live in the Los Angeles area, don’t pass up the opportunity to see the 1933 King Kong on the big screen courtesy of The American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theater. There will be two screenings on Saturday, Dec. 17, at 8 p.m. and 10:15 p.m., which will be preceded by the fantastic 1949 giant ape pic, Mighty Joe Young, at 5 p.m. In addition, the Cinematheque will be screening RKO’s sequel, Son of Kong, along with the new Turner Classic Movies documentary I’m King Kong’The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 16.
Leave a Reply