King Kong ***** (2005, Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Andy Serkis, Jamie Bell) – Classic Movie Review 412

Fresh from Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson had the chance to pay homage to the 1933 King Kong classic monster movie that he had adored all his life, and gleefully grabbed it with this loving 2005 second remake.

As the 1976 version of King Kong wasn’t at all faithful, and there was no CGI back then, Jackson has a chance to offer something entirely new, and he does. It is a splendid, often awesomely thrilling piece of work, though of course it still doesn’t replace the original, as we don’t suppose he’d presume to want to. It just honourably adds to it.

Always the great show-off master craftsman, Jackson delights in the pleasures that come from a mega-budget and in an imaginative use of new technologies that knows no bounds. Even if it cost the annual budget of a small country (New Zealand, say), the money is up there on screen, though.

King Kong won three Oscars, but the one that counts is the Best Achievement in Visual Effects award for Joe Letteri, Brian Van’t Hul, Christian Rivers and Richard Taylor, who also won the Bafta. There were also Oscar awards for Best Achievement in Sound Mixing and Sound Editing. That says it all. The visual effects are stunning, the making of the movie.

You could say it ought to look great – it cost a shocking £207 million, though it took back just over that in the US. And it was extremely popular in the UK, where it took £30 million. Incidentally, Shelly Bay, Wellington, New Zealand, stands in for the film’s Skull Island. The studio work was done at Beach Road, Parnell, Auckland.

More surprisingly at awards time, it won the American Film Institute award for Movie of the Year, They said: ‘King Kong is why we go to the movies. It’s a love story. It’s funny. And it’s also a chest-thumping, larger-than-life, thrill-a-minute adventure tale that knows no equal in its use of digital effects to tell a story. And though Peter Jackson continues to awe audiences with his imaginative use of new technologies, it is his great love and respect for the original film that both preserves and expands upon the themes that have made it a classic. In that sense, King Kong is not only a valentine to American film history – it is American film history.’ I’ve no quarrel with that, though I think it’s slightly overstating the case, making you want to quarrel with it.

Jackson sets his story at the time of the original film 1933, when Carl Denham (Jack Black), an ambitious a New York movie producer, coerces his cast and hired ship’s crew to travel to mysterious Skull Island as the perfect location to finish his movie. There of course they encounter the mighty Kong, a giant ape who is immediately smitten with the film’s leading lady Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) and snatches her off. Carl and Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), Ann’s new love, must travel through the jungle looking for Kong and Ann, while avoiding all sorts of prehistoric creatures and beasts. Carl, meanwhile, has a secret agenda for Kong.

Acting wise, Watts makes a surprisingly strong impression this time, lucky that it isn’t just a passive screaming, waiting-to-be-rescued role. Brody is good in offbeat casting but Black is perhaps a less wise choice as male lead here. It’s up to Andy Serkis to impersonate Kong, in the same way he did Gollum, and he gets a ‘real’ role as Lumpy too. Kong works very well like this – no 40ft mechanical monster this time! – making it seem much more ‘human’ and realistic and ultimately more sad.

Based on the old story by Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper, Jackson’s screenplay, written with his wife Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, is literate and as smooth as silk, providing intelligent, credible dialogue and thrilling action sequences.

The running time is 187 minutes and 201 minutes in the extended edition.

Kong: Skull Island (2017)  is released in the UK and US on 10 March 2017, directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts (The Kings of Summer) and starring Brie Larson, Tom Hiddleston, Toby Kebbell, Samuel L Jackson and John Goodman.

Besides the 1933 King Kong and the 1976 version of King Kong, there is The Son of Kong and King Kong Lives.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Film Review 412 derekwinnert.com