King Kong (2005)

King Kong (2005)

by

Santiago Pliego

After directing the last movie of The Lord of The Rings, Peter Jackson decided it was time to fulfill his childhood goal of making a movie about the most famous beast to have ever appeared on the big screen: King Kong. A true epic, King Kong is a three-part tale which retells the famous story of the giant gorilla in a more stylized, more exhilarating, and longer way than the original film.

King Kong’s story is not complex, but Peter Jackson really knows how to work with the material in front of him and make it explode with life.  In the beginning, we have Carl Denham (Jack Black), a filmmaker who is having a hard time finding a deal with a production company because they do not believe in his ability to make an adventure/romance film. When the studios decide to pull off his funding, he takes the money, supplies, and men that they already provided and, after hiring unemployed actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), runs away from the police and escapes on The Venture, a ship headed to Skull Island, an uninhabited island unmarred by man in which Denham wants to shoot his picture. Also on the ship are Denham’s crew, his screenwriter Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), his lead actor Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler), and the ship’s sailors and captain that unwillingly but forcefully join the adventure. Jackson’s cast is outstanding as are the performances delivered by the actors. Jack Black’s serious role is still sprinkled with some smart and funny lines, but not overtly in a way that make his character a clown. Especially noticeable in this movie was the use of good actors—some famous, some not quite famous—for secondary characters. Andy Serkis’ portrayal of a rough and rugged sailor is brilliant, as well as Evan Parke’s rendition of Ben Hayes, the ship’s first mate. Other actors that shine are Jamie Bell, Thomas Kretschmann, and Colin Hanks.

The film’s visual appeal is grand and very ostentatious, but with the help of Weta Digital (Jackson’s VFX company), the film delivers some outstanding settings and visual effects coped with explosive audio that rightfully earned this film the Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Audio Editing. Skull Island vibrantly comes to life in carefully executed on-location shots and digital set extensions. Jackson masterfully delivers a world that is not only fascinating and new for the characters but also for the audience. His use of long, wide angle shots complements this movie with more components to be called epic. Yet, many times we still get to see the characters in closer shots, particularly in the first act, where most of the character development occurs. And of course, the CG models of the creatures inhabiting Skull Island are absolutely stunning. After six years, VFX capabilities and technology have soared and it seems that many single movies keep raising the bar each time they come out; nevertheless, the work done by Weta Digital in 2004-5 with the available tools is breathtaking. When analyzing CG models, it is also important to note the setting of such models. In James Cameron’s Avatar, the CG models were implemented in a very surreal, CG-world, giving us barely any separating lines between setting and characters/objects. The challenge that Weta Digital must have faced in King Kong was rendering CG models in a non-CG setting. And not only that, they also render vampires, giant insects, and dinosaurs that interact with a real set and real people. In the end, Weta Digital pulled off one of the best conjunctions of real settings and computer-generated imagery.

            The film’s story is not only told trough vivid images and intense action scenes void of characters ala Michael Bay. Jackson takes his time to provide a lot of backstory for the characters and the aspirations of each person in the trip even before the actual dangers begin. Unfortunately, the clarity of the character development does not translate into the theme of the movie and in the end, the audience might be left with a little bit of a confused mind when it comes time to analyze what the film is saying. For the most part, the movie deals with destructive ambition and the consequences that making sacrifices for the wrong things will bring. Carl Denham is obsessed with finishing his movie; so obsessed, in fact, that while other crew members are getting eaten, killed, or trampled, he is there, with his camera, filming their demise to fulfill a scene in his movie. When they first arrive to Skull Island, the adventurers realize that the natives in the island sacrifice people to King Kong in order to appease him. In a sense, Denham is just like these degenerate, demonic natives: he sacrifices people to quench his obsessive desire of finishing his movie (the first theme). Everyone in the adventure suffers because Denham just won’t give up on his project. Eventually, though, the reason why the remaining characters stay on the island is to rescue Ann because she was taken away by King Kong. Ann’s relationship with Kong is best described as a “Beauty and the Beast” relationship. Kong is a savage beast who will kill and destroy mindlessly even though he has a mind and is quite capable of understanding and communicating, as is evident when Ann is with him. Even though he is similar to Denham in the fact that he destroys and kills without thinking about it, Ann manages to “reform” him through teaching Kong what beauty is (the second theme). Eventually, the rescue party finds Ann and saves her, while at the same time—and roused by Denham’s stubborn persistence—they capture Kong to bring him to New York and exhibit him as “The Eighth Wonder of the World.” Just as in the original King Kong movie from the thirties, Kong escapes the theater and climbs the Empire State Building with Ann in his hands, where he is shot down by planes and killed, though not before he signals to Ann (using a sign that she used before) that the view from the top of the building is “beauty.” The third theme (from Denham’s perspective) is a criticism at the concept that humans will most of the time destroy what fascinates them, no matter how wonderful and better it might be. Similar to Avatar, this last theme appeals to our sense of emotions and we feel angry at Denham and pity for Kong when he is killed. This is when the film gets a little bit messy. It might just be the fact that Kong is an animal, or that Jackson does not convict Denham’s character, but in the end, the movie does not provide a clear moral line to follow. When Kong is killed, we feel sorry for him and angry at the humans who caused all his suffering. Yet, Kong killed people out of irrational, animal anger. He crushed the streets of New York City and ate sailors and would have caused a great deal of more damage if he hadn’t been stopped by those planes. The problem in the end is that Kong’s character is limited because he is a mute, savage brute following his instincts. While Denham is indeed in a moral mess, Kong isn’t really in a moral mess or in a morally-straight path: Kong is simply in no moral line at all because he is an animal. Denham’s obsession with finishing his movie was definitely bad, but his treatment of Kong wasn’t wrong. He simply was exercising his right to be lord over creation. Kong, on the other hand, was instinctively an animal and that instinct had to be stopped by those planes. It is through great cinematography and clever CG that we “feel” Kong’s sorrow and sadness, even though, as Denham, he is also a beast that must be stopped when he kills people. Denham, in the end, does not die or get stopped, and this simply adds to the thematic problems in the film. It is not to say that the rest of the movie is wrong in terms of its themes. As a matter of fact, the themes proposed by the first two acts are great. It is only in the end of the third act that the line between who is good and who is evil is not clearly delineated and an ending inconsistent with the characters’ nature is presented.

All in all, King Kong is a must see modern-epic that provides excellent characters and breathtaking aesthetic elements. The only complexity of the film is in the end, and unfortunately, it is not cleared. Still, Jackson provides a refreshing narrative that captivates and terrorizes us at the same time in a way that few filmmakers are able to do.