Hi everyone, Nina Kincaid, Research Librarian at Large here with a DVD review of Peter Jackson's King Kong, specifically the 2-disc Special Edition from Universal. No dating stories from me this time... the movie is long enough as it is! Let's get right to the action...
Peter Jackson was sitting high in the director's chair after his Lord of the Rings trilogy swept the Academy Awards. So much so that he was pretty much able to write his own ticket for his next project... specifically, his most-treasured pet project ever of remaking King Kong, and netting himself a $20 million paycheck, at the time the highest for any director ever.
So here we are, about two years later, with a film that had a final cost reported to be around $207 million, about $30 million over budget, and a running time over 3 hours, about twice the length of the original. Barely making its budget back in the domestic market having to fight alongside King Aslan and Harry Potter, it did well in the international market and one can only assume will clean up on DVD. Plus, it also picked up a few Academy Awards of its own. But is it the film Peter Jackson wanted to make?
Well, we won't find out in this edition, because we don't get a commentary track. I would have loved to have heard one, but sadly, it looks like we'll have to wait for a rumored extended edition on DVD. Jackson typically talks frankly about his films, and I'll be curious to know what he says about this one.
Personally, I really enjoyed the film. Was it a film for the general audience? I am of the opinion that it was not. Kong fans around the world know one thing for certain... there are two kinds of people in this world: Kong fans, and everybody else. Peter Jackson, a Kong fan if there ever was one, made this film for the Kong fans. It's the movie we've been waiting 72 years to see. To Hell with everyone else!
It has its faults of course, but I would not say that length is one of them. I am one of those people actually hoping for a 4-hour extended edition. No, I think the biggest fault of the film is uneven editing.
We all know the basic story. Movie crew travels to remote island, find giant ape and dinosaurs, ape falls in love with girl, lots of carnage, crew capture ape and bring it back to NYC, ape runs amok, captures girl, climbs Empire State Building, gets shot by planes, and falls to his death. Roll credits.
The cast does well with their roles. Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow was as plucky in her part as Fay Wray must have been all those years ago. The casting of Adrien Brody as playwright Jack Driscoll was a shock for many, but again, I think given the way the character was written, he pulled it off. As far as Jack Black goes, his characterization of director Carl Denham polarized most viewers, but I thought he shined. I've heard people say he was trying to be like a young Orson Welles... I saw him more as a P.T. Barnum huckster, a guy on his last nickel with creditors all over him, trying to figure out how to pull his fat out of the fire and make a quick buck. It worked for me.
I think Jackson admirably tried to flesh out the story, and provide real motivations for the characters by setting the film in 1933 Depression-era New York. And, like a true fan, he gives us the Skull Island our imaginations have dreamed about since seeing the original, where we get not only the infamous "spider pit" sequence, but also Kong fighting not one, but three T- (okay V-) Rexes. The fight is as fantastically realistic a brawl as I've seen since Ang Lee went for unchoreographed brutality with Hulk vs. the Hulk Dogs.
But therein lies the problem... too much time is spent setting up some scenes, or giving the fans what they want, that about two-thirds of the way through it's as if we run out of time on the island and Jackson said "holy cow we've got to get to NYC!" All of the time spent setting up a mentor/protege relationship between first mate Mr. Hayes and cabin boy Jimmy ends up being completely wasted... for naught, if you will. Tighter editing could have solved this.
That's my biggest complaint about the film. The relationship between the two characters is carefully laid out and planned, and the natural progression for Jimmy to be taken under the wing of playwright Jack Driscoll is even handed to us on a platter, and then literally goes nowhere. There is never any payoff which then makes the one wonder, "why bother? You could have used the time to show us more dinosaurs, Mr. Jackson!"
The other problem with the film is the music, which is fairly generic. Understandable, given that Howard Shore left the film with less than two months to go and James Newton Howard was brought in to score the entire film. It's not bad... it's just not great.
But Kong himself is fully realized in this film like no other Kong before, and that is truly saying something. There is one scene were he puts Ann down in the jungle and uproots some foliage to eat and turns his back to her that simply had my jaw on the floor. If you've ever watched real gorillas in the mist, the realism of Kong's movements, from his feet to his teeth and gums, is simply astounding. And his death scene, which was precipitated in the original by a dramatic, death-throe ballet, is all done with the eyes in this version, with his already lifeless body draped over the cap of the ESB, his eyes longingly gazing at Ann.
The DVD is presented in an anamorphic widescreen transfer with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The picture is phenomenal, as you would expect considering how much digital work there is in the film. Some of the scenes looked better on the DVD than they did in the theater, at least to my eyes. I don't know if they "cleaned up" some of the compositing in the film for the DVD release. The opening scene of the zoo looked better, but the dinosaur chase in the ravine still looked a bit dodgy.
There is one audio track, a Dolby 5.1 english track. English, Spanish, and French subtitles. The spatial rendering of the audio is fantastic, especially the ambient sounds of the jungle and New York City coming alive in the rear channels. Your subwoofer should also get a decent workout.
Disc Two has a nice set of extras, if you are a fan or a movie enthusiast. The big draw of the Special Editon is the release of all of the Post-Production Diaries previously released on the KongIsKing.net website, but in much better quality. This gives people who bought the Production Diaries DVD set back in December a chance to complete the set. The only one curiously missing is the one that showcases Howard Shore and the orchestra preparing the music for the film, with about 27 weeks to go. Shore was let go soon after. If you are interested, this one is still available (as of this review) on KongIsKing.net. While not as in-depth as say, the extra features on the LOTR:EE DVDs, these diaries are a lot of fun to watch the crew work at an insane pace to get everything done in post.
There are two other features, the first one being a tongue-in-cheek pseudo-documentary about Skull Island. This one is definitely very geeky, but again, it's fun if you're a fan. In it, the crew simply pretends as if Skull Island is a real place, and explain its unique geography, topography (did you know the island is sinking?) and why the eco-system is in the state that it is in. The creature designers talk about the evolutionary characteristics of the dinosaurs and other wildlife that live on the island, explaining why they look and act the way they do. They certainly did their homework to enable them to realize the island in the film so successfully.
The second is more of a historical piece on New York City during the Great Depression, and has various scholars talking about certain aspects of the time, like Prohibition, and how those aspects were worked into the film. It gives the crew a chance to show off their handiwork as you marvel at all of the little details which you would probably never actually notice when viewing the film itself.
In a way, it made me wish for a Special Edition release of Dino De Laurentiis' King Kong from 1976, where they could have a documentary on that whacky era of the Seventies and how it influenced that film, putting it in the proper historical light. Might give audiences a better understanding of that particular version.
Well, that's it for me... for now. Discuss away!
