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dangermousieHusband and I saw King Kong yesterday. It was very very good, very scary, very fun, and I think I ended up mangling my husband’s arm, I was clutching it so hard.
The audience though was the worst audience I’ve ever seen. They ate 5 course meals, they talked on their cell phones, they popped gum, and to top it off, some people with immense parenting skills brought a four year old. To a horror movie. That is three hours long. And whose starting time was eleven pm Grrrrr.
But the movie itself? Amazing. Definitely somewhere in my Top 10 of the year. I’ve had two problems with it that I will get to later (and one of them isn’t PJ’s problem, it’s the story’s problem) but overall this reminded me what it felt like to be in a movie when you are small, and your imagination is extra-vivid and limitless and everything seems more real. This isn’t 1933 King Kong, which I find innovative and important, but unsubtle and rather dull. This is that King Kong the way Peter Jackson remembered it, the way a kid would remember it, as something magnificent and spectacular and emotionally moving.
KK exhibits yet again what I love so much about PJ’s movies. His adventures aren’t glamorous. They are scary, breathless, and real. Just as the scene in the Moria mines will make your heart pound but will also make you feel the danger as opposed to lean back and go “aaaahhh,” so does all the horror that the characters in KK go through feels real. It makes you think.
I see Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) tied to a post as a sacrifice to KK and somehow PJ jerks me out of my movie-watching complacency, and I think about how horrifying it must be to try to totter on those really thin bamboo-like sticks and how your arms must strain against the rope. I see Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) fight off some kind of gigantic octopedal creature and I don’t think “whoa he is heroic,” I think how painful the pincers must be and how his adrenaline must be kicking in like crazy, and how he is going to have nightmares for years afterwards. I see Jimmy the cabin boy (Jamie Bell) break down after the death of a crew member who takes care of him and I don’t think “Kong had a nice meal,” I think how this kid’s world just fell apart.
This movie has sequences of spectacular horror, and tenderness, and even satire, but the sequence that I think struck me the most is the first one on Skull Island when the natives attack and death is swift, brutal and senseless. Everything slows down to rain-soaked crawl and you can’t hear any screams or words and you see someone stabbed, and someone’s head is bashed out on a stone stump that looks well-worn, and Carl Denham (Jack Black) is about to follow suit, as Ann is dragged away, soaked and half-conscious, and Jack tries to get to her and is knocked out, and this is the most surreal, frightening, nightmare-like scene I’ve ever seen. How ironic that of all the monsters and dangers, the scariest thing comes from men.
PJ also did a very good thing by hiring really really good actors, because they really sell it and manage not to become stereotypes. I really liked Naomi Watts’ Ann (until the ending which I’ll get to later). Unlike Fay Wray who only screamed and screamed, she is a strong woman who is a bit dopey in her mopiness, but manages to win KK over by entertaining him (she is a vaudeville actress). You feel her terror and her strength and her wistfulness. There is a little throw-away bit in the beginning where you learn that all her life people have let her down, abandoned her. Maybe that is why she gets so attached to KK by the end: he might be a giant evil monkey, but he fought for her and protected her and came after her. And that is why she should be lucky she ends up with Jack, because he certainly went through hell and a half to get her back.
I want to have Jack Driscoll’s babies. Well, not really, as am married woman in love with my husband and Jack is fictional, but except for those two criteria, I’d be all over it. Adrien Brody is a big reason I wanted to see KK because he is one of those actors I like to watch in anything and who I get into a scary feeling of empathy with no matter the role (and because his performance in The Pianist was the best thing I’ve ever seen), and I was glad to see that unlike in all his other movies, he doesn’t get starved or locked away in a straight-jacket, or horrendously tortured or what not. And he actually gets the girl, yay! But seeing AB do the romantic gaze thing on the big screen…yeah, I am shallow but I got the price of my admission ticket back. Heee. The thing is, he really sells the desperation of the rescue party part of the movie. When he holds Jimmy protectively as the boy flails and falls apart, you understand the horrors of the scene through the look in his eyes. When he finally finds Ann in Kong’s lair and sees that she is alive, it’s the look on his face that makes me fall in love with that scene (my favorite little scene in the movie is when he stretches out his hand to hers and she to his and they almost meet. Of course, then KK wakes up…) And then there is the scenes in NY where he watches Denham turn KK and all the attendant deaths and horrors into spectacle, with a kind of weary disgust. I think Jack is a very PJ kind of hero, someone who does all those heroic things while scared, and horrified, and probably scarred for life, but on sheer obsessive determination and will-power, and who has a really strong moral compass. Add in the New York lefty playwright intellectual part and you’ve got my ideal man right there.
I loved Jack Black’s portrayal of Carl Denham who is probably one of the most despicable characters I’ve seen on screen. He is incredibly solipsistic but he honestly believes what he says at that moment and he doesn’t realize the kind of monster he is, when nothing touches him but getting the whole thing on camera: he doesn’t let the drawbridge down when Ann and Jack are running from KK because he wants to get a good shot and the fact that it’s two people’s lives at stake doesn’t seem to matter. He lets his crew die and it doesn’t bother him either. But the amazing thing is, he doesn’t realize what that makes him which is why his erstwhile assistant’s final repudiation of him (he is played by Colin Hanks, who was Alex on Roswell, oddly enough) hits him so hard. But only for a moment.
The whole movie is a fascinating study of real heroism versus the illusion, real versus fake. Baxter, the matinee idol who plays Ann’s leading man in the ill-fated movie (and who looks a bit like young Clark Gable) sums it up most succinctly when he decides to abandon the search party by saying that he isn’t a hero, and that real heroes have no hair and beer-bellies and he only plays one on screen. And of course, when they get back to NY, in Denham’s show of KK, he gets into a speech of having with them tonight the one man who risked it all to rescue Ann and since Jack is in the theater looking for Ann you expect the camera to pan up to him and of course, Denham instead introduces shiny Baxter, and Jack smiles wryly, unsurprised. Because the real heroes of this are a cabin boy, a lefty intellectual with far from matinee idol looks, a bespectacled production assistant, and an assortment of not too photogenic crew members. Just like the Ann presented to KK in the show isn’t the real Ann.
So, thus far in this gigantic write-up, I’ve raved about how well-acted, how scary, how brilliant the movie is. Yes, but it does have two significant (to me) problems.
One is the problem with the original story. It’s King Kong himself. I just can’t get that worked up over a death of a giant, human-killing ape. Yes, it was no doubt better to leave him in his natural habitat on the island or what not (though even there, he seems to be killing the native offerings with regularity), but he kills people. He killed various crew members. He killed these people in New York who had lives and families. I am supposed to be rooting for him against the biplanes but I am not, because pilots in biplanes are human and very brave, and when he ends up knocking a biplane or two out of the sky, I think about people in the planes, not the monkey. Yes, he is a somewhat sympathetic monster, but he is a monster nonetheless and should be put down.
The other problem is, alas, the problem purely attached to PJ’s adaptation. It’s Ann’s reaction to Kong. I have no problem with any of her actions up until they leave the island, even her trying to prevent KK from being taken off the island. He did save her life from two dinosaurs etc etc. It’s her later actions that are inexplicable, make me want to hit her upside the head, and make me think she has an bizarre combination of the Stockholm syndrome and fluffy-bunny-veganism gone insane. KK is rampaging the streets of Manhattan, killing you know, real people, that are human and all, and she goes to him voluntarily, and she has fun with him in Central Park, and she tries to stop biplanes from shooting him. Doesn’t it matter to her that he’s killed crewmen that she got familiar with over months of sea voyage? That he is killing people of NY, that he just tore up some planes coming after him? Is this woman insane? I mean, there should be a happy medium between Fay Wray who did nothing but scream and this. This is a giant monkey who shook you enough to give you concussion, who is a killer for years and years and what do you think you are going to do with it, keep it as a pet?
And of course, at that point she is not together with Jack either which makes me go “whaaaaaaa?” The writers want us believe it’s because he never flat-out told her he loves her, which just makes me want to have some of what the writers are smoking and sell it and get rich. Because, why wouldn’t he tell her that on the long voyage back. He doesn’t strike me as shy. I guess I could see if on the entire voyage back she was hysterical about Kong and he, seeing first hand what damage KK can do, sided with the crew on this over her, but we don’t get any indication of such. I can fanwank, but I shouldn’t. And of course that would tie up to her being psycho. More importantly, I am of the school “actions speak louder than words” and considering the horrific nightmare he went through to save her, and he ended up going on alone, after everyone else ditched, I think he earned about a thousand years’ worth of ‘get out of jail free’ cards with her, and if she ditched him because he didn’t mutter inanities in her ear, than all I can say is Jack is better off finding a woman who hasn’t sold her sanity in last year’s yard sale. In fact, this is a stupid change from the original, because they don’t even have to change their script much to have them together. He could just go to the Kong theater because she wants to know how Kong is or what not and the rest can be exactly the same. Heck, seeing her monkey fixation, I am sort of tempted to say he should ditch her anyway. By the end of the movie, I am not all “yay, they are together,” I am “this chick reminds me of Gladys in Doyle’s “Lost World.”” The narrator went on this horrific adventure to prove to Gladys he was worthy of her because she told him he was too dull. He got home to discover she married someone else because ‘unlike you, he never left me’ and which made me and the narrator conclude it was lucky riddance.
But other than those quibbles, it’s an excellent flick.
In non-KK news, more on Smallville.
The crazy slashiness of Smallville has just been categorically confirmed by my BFF. Mind you, she has never been a part of any fandom and I don’t think she knows what the word slash means. When I mentioned my recent forays into the show and I mentioned, off-hand, and as a joke that in this version I believe Lex and Clark are getting it on, she replied in a “light bulb goes on” tone of voice: “You know that makes so much sense. Their scenes are always the most fun to watch and they had this vibe that was kinda off and I couldn’t put my finger on what felt weird with it, but that makes so much sense now, if they are in love with each other.” Heeeeee. She also referred to Clark and Lana as perfect poseable mannequins and said she liked Lex the best. The unanimity I am getting about this show is bizarre :P
I was also thinking vis-à-vis other shows. I just realised that in some ways Smallville (a show that amuses me but that I would never put on a "favorite" list) has a lot in common with Roswell, a show I adore. Only Roswell did right what Smallville does wrong.
Both have a protagonist who is an alien with unusual powers trying to stay normal and uncaught by the baddies. Both have a protagonist who is responsible, good, and adopted, and hopelessly in love with a small-town "girl next door." However, I never failed to believe in Max's love for Liz, probably because they they got together really early on and showed signs of severe devotion to each other (as opposed to Liz dating other people for four years). Also Liz was a wonderful character who I loved and I could see why Max would be crazy about her. Most importantly, their chemistry was out of this world, better than any other chemistry on the show. I never ended up thinking Max and Michael were getting it on.
And hmmm, there is a bit of Lex=older, eviller VM’s Logan and Clark=first season VM’s Duncan only Clark, while hardly the best written part ever is a marvel of subtlely, characterization and great acting compared to Duncan.
The audience though was the worst audience I’ve ever seen. They ate 5 course meals, they talked on their cell phones, they popped gum, and to top it off, some people with immense parenting skills brought a four year old. To a horror movie. That is three hours long. And whose starting time was eleven pm Grrrrr.
But the movie itself? Amazing. Definitely somewhere in my Top 10 of the year. I’ve had two problems with it that I will get to later (and one of them isn’t PJ’s problem, it’s the story’s problem) but overall this reminded me what it felt like to be in a movie when you are small, and your imagination is extra-vivid and limitless and everything seems more real. This isn’t 1933 King Kong, which I find innovative and important, but unsubtle and rather dull. This is that King Kong the way Peter Jackson remembered it, the way a kid would remember it, as something magnificent and spectacular and emotionally moving.
KK exhibits yet again what I love so much about PJ’s movies. His adventures aren’t glamorous. They are scary, breathless, and real. Just as the scene in the Moria mines will make your heart pound but will also make you feel the danger as opposed to lean back and go “aaaahhh,” so does all the horror that the characters in KK go through feels real. It makes you think.
I see Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) tied to a post as a sacrifice to KK and somehow PJ jerks me out of my movie-watching complacency, and I think about how horrifying it must be to try to totter on those really thin bamboo-like sticks and how your arms must strain against the rope. I see Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) fight off some kind of gigantic octopedal creature and I don’t think “whoa he is heroic,” I think how painful the pincers must be and how his adrenaline must be kicking in like crazy, and how he is going to have nightmares for years afterwards. I see Jimmy the cabin boy (Jamie Bell) break down after the death of a crew member who takes care of him and I don’t think “Kong had a nice meal,” I think how this kid’s world just fell apart.
This movie has sequences of spectacular horror, and tenderness, and even satire, but the sequence that I think struck me the most is the first one on Skull Island when the natives attack and death is swift, brutal and senseless. Everything slows down to rain-soaked crawl and you can’t hear any screams or words and you see someone stabbed, and someone’s head is bashed out on a stone stump that looks well-worn, and Carl Denham (Jack Black) is about to follow suit, as Ann is dragged away, soaked and half-conscious, and Jack tries to get to her and is knocked out, and this is the most surreal, frightening, nightmare-like scene I’ve ever seen. How ironic that of all the monsters and dangers, the scariest thing comes from men.
PJ also did a very good thing by hiring really really good actors, because they really sell it and manage not to become stereotypes. I really liked Naomi Watts’ Ann (until the ending which I’ll get to later). Unlike Fay Wray who only screamed and screamed, she is a strong woman who is a bit dopey in her mopiness, but manages to win KK over by entertaining him (she is a vaudeville actress). You feel her terror and her strength and her wistfulness. There is a little throw-away bit in the beginning where you learn that all her life people have let her down, abandoned her. Maybe that is why she gets so attached to KK by the end: he might be a giant evil monkey, but he fought for her and protected her and came after her. And that is why she should be lucky she ends up with Jack, because he certainly went through hell and a half to get her back.
I want to have Jack Driscoll’s babies. Well, not really, as am married woman in love with my husband and Jack is fictional, but except for those two criteria, I’d be all over it. Adrien Brody is a big reason I wanted to see KK because he is one of those actors I like to watch in anything and who I get into a scary feeling of empathy with no matter the role (and because his performance in The Pianist was the best thing I’ve ever seen), and I was glad to see that unlike in all his other movies, he doesn’t get starved or locked away in a straight-jacket, or horrendously tortured or what not. And he actually gets the girl, yay! But seeing AB do the romantic gaze thing on the big screen…yeah, I am shallow but I got the price of my admission ticket back. Heee. The thing is, he really sells the desperation of the rescue party part of the movie. When he holds Jimmy protectively as the boy flails and falls apart, you understand the horrors of the scene through the look in his eyes. When he finally finds Ann in Kong’s lair and sees that she is alive, it’s the look on his face that makes me fall in love with that scene (my favorite little scene in the movie is when he stretches out his hand to hers and she to his and they almost meet. Of course, then KK wakes up…) And then there is the scenes in NY where he watches Denham turn KK and all the attendant deaths and horrors into spectacle, with a kind of weary disgust. I think Jack is a very PJ kind of hero, someone who does all those heroic things while scared, and horrified, and probably scarred for life, but on sheer obsessive determination and will-power, and who has a really strong moral compass. Add in the New York lefty playwright intellectual part and you’ve got my ideal man right there.
I loved Jack Black’s portrayal of Carl Denham who is probably one of the most despicable characters I’ve seen on screen. He is incredibly solipsistic but he honestly believes what he says at that moment and he doesn’t realize the kind of monster he is, when nothing touches him but getting the whole thing on camera: he doesn’t let the drawbridge down when Ann and Jack are running from KK because he wants to get a good shot and the fact that it’s two people’s lives at stake doesn’t seem to matter. He lets his crew die and it doesn’t bother him either. But the amazing thing is, he doesn’t realize what that makes him which is why his erstwhile assistant’s final repudiation of him (he is played by Colin Hanks, who was Alex on Roswell, oddly enough) hits him so hard. But only for a moment.
The whole movie is a fascinating study of real heroism versus the illusion, real versus fake. Baxter, the matinee idol who plays Ann’s leading man in the ill-fated movie (and who looks a bit like young Clark Gable) sums it up most succinctly when he decides to abandon the search party by saying that he isn’t a hero, and that real heroes have no hair and beer-bellies and he only plays one on screen. And of course, when they get back to NY, in Denham’s show of KK, he gets into a speech of having with them tonight the one man who risked it all to rescue Ann and since Jack is in the theater looking for Ann you expect the camera to pan up to him and of course, Denham instead introduces shiny Baxter, and Jack smiles wryly, unsurprised. Because the real heroes of this are a cabin boy, a lefty intellectual with far from matinee idol looks, a bespectacled production assistant, and an assortment of not too photogenic crew members. Just like the Ann presented to KK in the show isn’t the real Ann.
So, thus far in this gigantic write-up, I’ve raved about how well-acted, how scary, how brilliant the movie is. Yes, but it does have two significant (to me) problems.
One is the problem with the original story. It’s King Kong himself. I just can’t get that worked up over a death of a giant, human-killing ape. Yes, it was no doubt better to leave him in his natural habitat on the island or what not (though even there, he seems to be killing the native offerings with regularity), but he kills people. He killed various crew members. He killed these people in New York who had lives and families. I am supposed to be rooting for him against the biplanes but I am not, because pilots in biplanes are human and very brave, and when he ends up knocking a biplane or two out of the sky, I think about people in the planes, not the monkey. Yes, he is a somewhat sympathetic monster, but he is a monster nonetheless and should be put down.
The other problem is, alas, the problem purely attached to PJ’s adaptation. It’s Ann’s reaction to Kong. I have no problem with any of her actions up until they leave the island, even her trying to prevent KK from being taken off the island. He did save her life from two dinosaurs etc etc. It’s her later actions that are inexplicable, make me want to hit her upside the head, and make me think she has an bizarre combination of the Stockholm syndrome and fluffy-bunny-veganism gone insane. KK is rampaging the streets of Manhattan, killing you know, real people, that are human and all, and she goes to him voluntarily, and she has fun with him in Central Park, and she tries to stop biplanes from shooting him. Doesn’t it matter to her that he’s killed crewmen that she got familiar with over months of sea voyage? That he is killing people of NY, that he just tore up some planes coming after him? Is this woman insane? I mean, there should be a happy medium between Fay Wray who did nothing but scream and this. This is a giant monkey who shook you enough to give you concussion, who is a killer for years and years and what do you think you are going to do with it, keep it as a pet?
And of course, at that point she is not together with Jack either which makes me go “whaaaaaaa?” The writers want us believe it’s because he never flat-out told her he loves her, which just makes me want to have some of what the writers are smoking and sell it and get rich. Because, why wouldn’t he tell her that on the long voyage back. He doesn’t strike me as shy. I guess I could see if on the entire voyage back she was hysterical about Kong and he, seeing first hand what damage KK can do, sided with the crew on this over her, but we don’t get any indication of such. I can fanwank, but I shouldn’t. And of course that would tie up to her being psycho. More importantly, I am of the school “actions speak louder than words” and considering the horrific nightmare he went through to save her, and he ended up going on alone, after everyone else ditched, I think he earned about a thousand years’ worth of ‘get out of jail free’ cards with her, and if she ditched him because he didn’t mutter inanities in her ear, than all I can say is Jack is better off finding a woman who hasn’t sold her sanity in last year’s yard sale. In fact, this is a stupid change from the original, because they don’t even have to change their script much to have them together. He could just go to the Kong theater because she wants to know how Kong is or what not and the rest can be exactly the same. Heck, seeing her monkey fixation, I am sort of tempted to say he should ditch her anyway. By the end of the movie, I am not all “yay, they are together,” I am “this chick reminds me of Gladys in Doyle’s “Lost World.”” The narrator went on this horrific adventure to prove to Gladys he was worthy of her because she told him he was too dull. He got home to discover she married someone else because ‘unlike you, he never left me’ and which made me and the narrator conclude it was lucky riddance.
But other than those quibbles, it’s an excellent flick.
In non-KK news, more on Smallville.
The crazy slashiness of Smallville has just been categorically confirmed by my BFF. Mind you, she has never been a part of any fandom and I don’t think she knows what the word slash means. When I mentioned my recent forays into the show and I mentioned, off-hand, and as a joke that in this version I believe Lex and Clark are getting it on, she replied in a “light bulb goes on” tone of voice: “You know that makes so much sense. Their scenes are always the most fun to watch and they had this vibe that was kinda off and I couldn’t put my finger on what felt weird with it, but that makes so much sense now, if they are in love with each other.” Heeeeee. She also referred to Clark and Lana as perfect poseable mannequins and said she liked Lex the best. The unanimity I am getting about this show is bizarre :P
I was also thinking vis-à-vis other shows. I just realised that in some ways Smallville (a show that amuses me but that I would never put on a "favorite" list) has a lot in common with Roswell, a show I adore. Only Roswell did right what Smallville does wrong.
Both have a protagonist who is an alien with unusual powers trying to stay normal and uncaught by the baddies. Both have a protagonist who is responsible, good, and adopted, and hopelessly in love with a small-town "girl next door." However, I never failed to believe in Max's love for Liz, probably because they they got together really early on and showed signs of severe devotion to each other (as opposed to Liz dating other people for four years). Also Liz was a wonderful character who I loved and I could see why Max would be crazy about her. Most importantly, their chemistry was out of this world, better than any other chemistry on the show. I never ended up thinking Max and Michael were getting it on.
And hmmm, there is a bit of Lex=older, eviller VM’s Logan and Clark=first season VM’s Duncan only Clark, while hardly the best written part ever is a marvel of subtlely, characterization and great acting compared to Duncan.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 07:45 pm (UTC)Fabulous King Kong review! Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts about it. I am very much looking forward to it.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 10:02 pm (UTC)About Smallville, maybe I should ask to borrow a friend's copy of the first season, because after your recent posting I'm getting an urge to watch the good bits, i.e. Lex/Clarke scenes version of it... A lot like I'm doing with my current Buffy marathon: I'm watching only the good episodes (well, that's still most of them) and ffing over the occasional boring bits.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 10:13 pm (UTC)I love most of Buffy S1-3 but I sort of lost interest afterwards. And yeah, Clark/Lex is about the only good part of Smallville unfortunately.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-15 10:29 pm (UTC)Sooo looking forward to KK
Date: 2005-12-16 02:31 am (UTC)I wasn't too sure from the trailers, but from the content of the reviews I've been hearing/reading---yes!
Re: Sooo looking forward to KK
Date: 2005-12-16 04:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-21 07:22 am (UTC)My theory? She fell in love with the ape and Jack saw that during that scene where Jack Black knocks out Kong with the chloroform. Or at least he saw *something*. I don't think that him telling her he loves her would have made much of a difference, it just made a difference in his mind.
What do we learn from this movie? Doesn't matter if you are big, ugly and hairy, as long as you will watch the sunset with her, you can still score the prettiest girl in town.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-21 07:18 pm (UTC)ROFL!
But if Jack realized she fell for Kong why did he walk out of his play to go find her?
All I got from the scene with Kong on the beach is that she liked him and felt protective of him etc etc which is understandable. But falling for a giant non-human? I don't think I could have stratched it that far...
no subject
Date: 2005-12-21 11:01 pm (UTC)He had some time to think about it and at this point thought that telling her would make a difference?
But falling for a giant non-human? I don't think I could have stratched it that far...
Grin, I definitively thought that PJ was going with that weird vibe. At least I got the vibe from the movie that all this talk about fate and love (when Jack Black was interviewing her) was supposed to be more about Kong and not about Ann/Jack. Plus the scene where Jack is lying passed out in the car and she just stands there and makes googly eyes at the ape will forever amuse me.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 10:11 pm (UTC)I will say that I couldn't figure out how Ann made it through the whole movie without whiplash at the very least. I also couldn't figure out how she got through that whole last sequence without getting any dirt on her pristine white dress. Symbolism I suppose, but I still couldn't help pointing that out.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-03 09:57 am (UTC)Off to read your post!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-03 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-03 03:39 pm (UTC)