Apostrophe S

“Congratulations! You are officially the 1 bazillionth blogger to write about Peter Jackson’s ‘King Kong’! You get … nothing!”

Michelle and I saw “King Kong” (the remake, duh) at the local supermegaplex today. I know everything I have to say on it has probably been said before, and probably better, but I’ll give it a shot.

First of all, I approve. Most blockbuster crap gets a thumbs down from me. I like stuff that tries something new, or that caters to a small group of dedicated fans. And “King Kong” is about fans. It’s made by and for people who love movies. Jackson has an attention to detail that probably makes him a bitch of a person to work for.

Kong is amazing. It is at once completely obvious that he is CGI and yet impossible to pick out the seams. The animation, drawing and texturing are so painstakingly detailed that I can’t believe anyone had time to do it. I know that Andy Serkis (you know, the guy that did Gollum) was the “man behind the ape,” performing on a greenscreen the same way he did for LOTR. (He also played Lumpy, one of the Venture’s swashbuckling crew. Did you catch that? Oh, and if you pay attention — or watch the credits — you can catch PJ as a gunner in one of the planes in the climax.) But back to Serkis. Really, I’m not sure what experience he had with acting like a 6,000-pound silverback gorilla, but he pulled it off.

That’s another thing. Kong is much more gorilla and a lot less freak monster than his 1933 counterpart. It’s one of the things that Jackson added. And what he added is what really impresses me. Rarely does a director choose to remake a movie without destroying parts of it. Jackon manages to add so much without taking anything away. (He added about and hour and a half, to be precise.) And if you’ve seen the original film, you are rewarded with small homages, such as Kong playing with the busted jaw of the T-Rex to make sure it’s dead as dead.

Another addition, and probably a necessary one, is further motivation for almost every character. A “Heart of Darkness” theme is introduced, although it is left sadly underdeveloped. Ann Darrow’s sympathy for the beast is much more overt. Jack Driscoll is given a literary book-worm personality. Carl Denham is a bit more comedic and perhaps even greedy. There are even a few characters who, despite only having a few scenes and a handful of lines, actually tug at our heartstrings when they bite the dust.

Something Jackson kept was the hollywood over-the-topness of Skull Island, from the thick, dark jungle to the unbelievably crazy and strangely orc-looking natives. The island feels like the last bastion of mystery on the planet.

Now, I can appreciate the “Capote’s” and “Lost in Translation’s” when they come along, but “King Kong” is the kind of movie that makes me excited about the medium again. It feels like the high art of filmmaking with all the pretense stripped away. It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen this year, if not the best.

Some will say that it’s a dumb monster movie, that Kong couldn’t exist. But if that’s what “they” say, then “they” are just missing the point.