King Kong

"She" and I went to see King Kong the other day. I had been looking forward to it for a while, she hadn't and would have preferred to see the Narnia film. As it turned out she enjoyed Peter Jackson's epic more than I did.

Kong is an archetype. You can trace the literary resonances as far back as Polyphemus and Odysseus, perhaps even to Enkidu and the prostitute in the epic of Gilgamesh. More recent references are to Arthur Conan Doyle's novel, "The Lost World," and Victorian accounts of intrepid adventurers penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. The philosophical base upon which the story is constructed is Rosseau's concept of the noble savage corrupted by contact with civilization. Filmic references abound, from Windsor McCay's "Gertie the Dinosaur," to Harry Hoyt's film version of Doyle's novel, to numerous retellings of "Beauty and the Beast," to Frank Buck's enormously successful "Bring Them Back Alive" which had come out little more than a year before the first iteration of Kong appeared. The point of all this is to note that King Kong is deeply embedded in our common western culture.

The Kong story has had three major studio treatments as well as numerous incidental ones in cartoons, Japanese monster flicks, etc. The earliest of these, produced in 1933 by Merian Cooper, is one of the most influential movies ever made. Willis O'Brien's animation set the standard in the industry for decades. It is a staple of film courses everywhere.

In this original version Kong was an uncomplicated figure -- a monster. His was a Darwinian world of nature red in tooth and claw where only the strong survived. He had no mate, no soft side, no human aspects. To the humans he encountered, he was a terror. Critics have tried to read all sorts of meanings into the figure of Kong, but that is simply a projection of their own hangups. What is presented on the screen requires no such elaboration, Kong simply is.

Modernity intrudes into Kong's world in the form of a film crew. Again, the motives of the characters are uncomplicated. Carl Denham, the producer/director has the simple expectation of making money by filming a simple love story in a spectacular and exotic locale (although he may suspect that it is more spectacular than anyone else knows). Ann Darrow, the female lead simply needs a job. The captain of the ship that transports them simply wants to make a buck, as does his crew. Jack Driscoll, the first mate, is a big, strong, inarticulate lunk who is simply trying to do his job and is severely distressed by any complicating factors, such as love or a young women in need of protection. The relationship between Kong and the natives of Skull Island is similarly uncomplicated. They hate and fear him. They build a wall to keep him and ther other assorted horrors at bay, and placate him by periodically offering him a young girl (to do what with we can only guess -- the film certainly won't tell us).

The plot begins to move when the Skull Island natives decide, quite reasonably, to sacrifice Ann, rather than one of their own women, to Kong. Denham leads a rescue mission that arrives too late. Ann has already been carried off by the beast.

From this point the film proceeds along parallel tracks as a rescue party tries to save Ann from her fate while Kong and his captive get to know each other. Again there is little complexity.

The rescue party suffers various attacks, the most telling coming from Kong himself, and is forced to turn back. Only Jack Driscoll continues on determined to save the woman he has come to love [although that love is manifested primarily as a protective instinct].

The relationship between Ann and Kong is similarly uncomplicated. On the ship she had been attracted to big, strong, inarticulate Jack [clearly showing her preference in men]. Now she finds herself in the company of bigger, stronger, even more articulate Kong. In this segment she is nothing more than a classic "damsel in distress." Just as with Jack she arouses a protective instinct that may be love in the brute, but his attraction is in no way reciprocated. Kong fights various assailants that threaten Ann, saving her life time and again, but she remains terrified by him. Eventually Jack, her true love, spirits her away from her monstrous captor/protector. Then there is a chase as Kong seeks to retrieve his prize from Jack. Unsuccessful, he takes out his anger on the native village, destroying it and eating alive several of its inhabitants. The carnage ends when Denham, using modern technology, renders Kong unconscious.

Then comes the third, and most famous, episode of the film. Kong is brought back to New York where he is exhibited for profit. He breaks loose and rampages through Manhattan looking for Ann. She, meanwhile, has hooked up permanently with Jack and has no interest in again becoming Kong's prisoner. Kong finally locates her and carries her screaming up to the top of the Empire State Building where he is attacked by modern technology and falls spectacularly to his death while Ann falls into the arms of her man. Denham offers his famous epitaph -- "Beauty killed the Beast" -- that makes it clear that Kong was never anything more than a beast, an inhabitant of a primitive, primeval world that could not coexist with modernity. The "love" he felt for Ann was unrequited. There is no sense that she ever viewed him as much more than a terrifying threat to her and others' lives. His death for her was a relief, not a tragedy.

There's nothing very complicated here. As Merian Cooper, the producer, said, "'Kong' was never intended to be anything but the best damned adventure film ever made, which it is; and that's all it is."

In 1976 Kong suffered a remake at the hands of schlockmeister Dino DeLaurentis. This time the story was fraught with social and political significance [this was, after all, the dread Seventies]. All the major roles and motivations were reconfigured to fit the prejudices of the times. Ann became "Dwan" a somewhat improbable composite of bubble-headed Hollywood starlet and proto-feminist who denounces Kong as a "male chauvinist ape." Jack is reconceived as a hippie type environmental activist. The Carl Denham role is replaced completely by Charles Grodin as a heartless, dishonest, and exploitative agent of [what else?] a giant oil corporation. Kong himself has developed an Alan Aldaesque soft side. And the relationship between him and his captive, Dwan, takes on serious sexual overtones, even to the point of having Jessica Lange bare her talents in a deleted scene that eventually wound up on the pages of some men's mag [Playboy, I think].

The less said about this stinking pile of horse hockey the better.

Now comes Peter Jackson's reimagining of Kong. In some ways it is a magnificent rendition -- filled with the adolescent exuberance that Jackson brings to all his work. There is some fine acting talent on display, and much of the CGI work is spectacularly effective [but some, I admit, is a bit cheesy]. But there are important problems with the narrative that render the entire enterprise something less than satisfying.

First of all there is the problem of pixel power. We have now reached a point in the technology of movie making where computer-generated images can be seamlessly integrated into live action shots. This is an extremely powerful device, and nobody wields it better than Jackson. There are amazing sequences in this film -- but that's the problem. Some of them are just too amazing. They cause our disbelief to come crashing down as we marvel at the technical wonders wrought by the CGI team at WETA. By being too good, individual sequences diminish the work of the whole.

Two bits will illustrate the problem. The first is the famous dinosaur stampede. Here Jackson's competitive approach to moviemaking is on full display. A little history:

1) Cattle stampedes were a stock element in old Hollywood westerns and provided a thrill for audiences of earlier times.

2) In 1962 Howard Hawks and John Wayne, in the twilight of their storied careers, made an incredibly self-indulgent film called Hatari, set in Africa, featuring a famous stampede sequence in which the actors chase rhinos, buffaloes, giraffes, and other exotic animals across the veldt. One can imagine Hawks grinning while filming it while thinking -- "That'll show John Ford!"

3) Then in 1997 Stephen Spielberg decided to put Hawks in his place by restaging the stampede sequence from Hatari using CGI shots of panicked dinosaurs being harassed by adventurers.

4) Now Peter Jackson tries to one-up Spielberg by confining his dinosaur stampede to a narrow chasm, rather than open fields, and having the dinosaurs chase the adventurers. This ups the emotional ante a bit, presenting the viewer with a chaotic sequence of images portending imminent disaster for our heroes, but it is too much and goes on for far too long. At the end we don't care that the heroes survived. Rather we are just glad that the whole thing is over. A little restraint [a word that apparently is not in Jackson's dictionary] would have been in order.

A second sequence, one of which Jackson seems inordinately proud, is the T-rex fight. One of the high points of the first Kong was a fight to the death between the giant ape and a tyrannosaurus rex. Of course Jackson was going to restage it, but this time he ups the ante by having Kong fight not just one, but three [count 'em, THREE] T-rexes at the same time, with one arm tied behind his back [not really, just disabled by having to carry Ann, the heroine, in one hand and protect her while fighting the lizards] and, to top it all off, in three dimensions. Instead of staying on the ground, much of the fight takes place in a lattice of vines in which lizard attacks can come from all directions. Too much..., TOO MUCH!

The result is to present the viewer with a series of set pieces, astounding in themselves, but more an exhibition of technical mastery than story-telling. Any attempt at presenting a coherent narrative is lost in all the fuss.

Then there is the problem of PC. Earlier versions of Kong were branded "racist" by critics and Jackson seems to be overly sensitive on this subject after his experience with LOTR [all those blond, blue-eyed, Aryan heroes, etc.] So, he counters this by having a sympathetic, intelligent black character who mentors a disturbed white youth. He even goes so far as to have the boy reading Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" to remind the audience of white colonial guilt. The sub-plot, such as it is, might satisfy PC monitors, but it is a distraction from the main story-line, and is simply dropped half way through the film leaving the viewer to wonder, "what was that all about?" And the Chinese cook [another racial stereotype] is gone, replaced by Andy Serkis [who also plays Kong]. As he did with his Smeagol character Serkis again shows us that, however brilliant his treatment of bizarre semi-humans, his human characters are less than convincing, perhaps because he makes them equally bizarre. Can't he play anything straight?

Then there are some bizarre character changes. In the original, Carl Denham is a simple figure, a dynamic, resourceful leader who charges ahead with his project and overcomes all obstacles in pursuit of his goal. He is blunt, decisive, and forceful -- a successful entrepreneur. Here, however, Jackson transforms him into a slimy con-man, one who has failed at the movie business, who lies to and deceives his associates, and who escapes the US one step ahead of the law. Why? No reason, it seems, other than that Jackson likes trickster characters and may even see himself as such. And even more strange, the strong, silent he-man first mate, Jack Driscoll who single-handedly saves Ann, is here transformed into a sensitive, artistic type -- a screenwriter [yes, a screenwriter!]. They even make a joke about the screenplay killing off the first mate. Adrien Brody as an action hero, what were they thinking?

Actually It is pretty obvious what they were thinking. A few years ago James Cameron hit the ultimate jackpot and became "king of the world" by fusing a boy's adventure story [the sinking of the Titanic] with a soppy romance ["oh, Jack..., Jack..., speak to me Jack"]. The result -- fourteen year old boys and fifteen year old girls of all ages happily paid time and again to wallow in their fantasies. Titanic thus doubled the potential audience for fantasies and it showed at the box-office.

Jackson and his two female screenwriters tried something similar with LOTR, grotesquely expanding the role of Arwen, and transforming her from a great and terrible lady into a spoiled teen.

Arwyn: "But Daddy, I love him!"

Elrond: "Nonsense, girl. He's not one of us. I won't hear of it."

A: But Daddy!!! [tears well up in her enormous eyes]

E: It's for the best. He'll bring you nothing but trouble. Believe me, it's for your own good. I forbid you to ever see that boy again."

A: [stamping her foot] "I'll hold my breath until I turn blue. I'll starve myself. I'll just pine away until I die. You'll be sorry!"

E: "Go to your room [the one in the far, far west wing] and stay there!"

A: [sobbing] "But I want to have his children!"

E: "GO!"

Fortunately, Tolkien's epic was strong enough to overcome the distortions Arwen's inflation caused [such as Aragorn's supposed death and resurrection]. Here, in Kong, the romantic story just drains away any excitement the adventure narrative generated. The burgeoning love story between Ann and Kong is just plain ridiculous and leads to all sorts of bizarre thoughts [just how are they going to consummate this thing]. And, when Ann falls into Jack's arms at the end you are left to wonder "huh, what's that all about?"

I could go on and on, I haven't even mentioned the infantile attempts at humor [which plagued LOTR, too], but this is already too long. In sum, King Kong is a mess, a grossly overproduced, incoherent and thoroughly implausible dramatic presentation. Jackson is immensely talented, but he needs some oversight -- a producer to rein in his excessive whims..., and he needs to get a new screenwriter -- one he doesn't sleep with.

NOTE: I had originally written this back on December 16th, but had inadvertently saved it as a draft instead of posting it. I was reminded of it by reading Bilious Young Fogey's review [check it out here] and looking back to see what I had written, discovered my error. So here it is, better late than never.