King Kong [Blu-ray]

King Kong [Blu-ray]
by Peter Jackson

King Kong [Blu-ray]

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Blu-ray details

Actor: Adrien Brody, Colin Hanks, Jack Black, Naomi Watts, Thomas Kretschmann
Director: Peter Jackson
Brand: *
Blu-ray: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language); French (Original Language); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 200 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2012-01-10
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Universal Studios
Product features:

Condition: New
Format: Blu-ray
AC-3; Color; Dolby; DTS Surround Sound; Dubbed; Subtitled; Widescreen

Blu-ray Reviews of King Kong [Blu-ray]

Blu-ray Review: more is less... much less
Summary: 2 Stars

It seems self-evident that any work of art is a product of its time. It also seems self-evident that there's no point in remaking a movie unless there was something wrong with the original, or you've found a new way to approach the material. (David Lynch's rework of "The Fly" meets both critieria very well. Ditto for "The Thing" which is not so much a remake as a "make".) The problem with Peter Jackson's "King Kong" redo is that there's no way to "improve" on one of the greatest films ever made, without changing it beyond recognition.

To see the original "King Kong" as a technologically dated exercise that would have been "so much better" if only it had been made 70 years later, is to miss the way that the medium and the message * were inextricably linked in 1932. For example...

The scene in which we hear the unseen Kong tramping through the trees to Max Steiner's music, suddenly appearing in front of the screaming Ann, scares the s*** out of children (and not a few adults). It's one of the great cinematic moments, its effectiveness deriving from its in-your-face crudity. (No offense to Willis O'Brien or the Delgado brothers -- quite the opposite.) The original Kong wasn't a giant gorilla, but a horrifying id-monster portrayed by a frighteningly ugly stop-motion puppet.

In converting Kong into a realistic animal, Jackson has, at a single stroke, discarded the horrific and dream-like/nightmare elements that made the original a classic. Realism is not fundamentally frightening or horrific. If you don't understand this, watch "Nosferatu" or "Vampyr".

This realism, in turn, greatly weakens the original's "beauty and the beast" conceit. Ann's affectionate response to the big lug relects a late-20th-century view, fostered by NatGeo specials, that gorillas are intelligent, affectionate creatures -- not ugly, brutal, or automatically threatening. Fay Wray's Ann screamed her head off, overwhelmed by fear she would be killed or devoured. Naomi Watts' Ann, though frightened, sees Kong as a misunderstood critter. "Who could ever learn to love a beast?" Well, when you love a beast -- he's not a beast any more.

This is the film's fundamental error of re-conception -- Kong is no longer a rampaging monster, brought to his knees by Ann's irresistable European blondness. ** He is now a monster only in size, munching on bamboo, rather than Ann. The original Kong was a brutal beast throughout the story, allowing us a moment of cathartic pity when he's killed. The new Kong, sympathetic throughout, doesn't evoke this contrast of emotions. "It was beauty killed the beast" no longer makes much sense.

In describing the sacrificial maidens as "brides" of Kong, the original makes the not-so-subtle suggestion that Kong "molests" his victims before killing and eating them. (Kong's ripping off Ann's clothes to sniff them supports this, though Cooper and Schoedsack said they'd put this in because seen wild monkeys smelling human clothes.) But the new version has Ann showing a great deal of affection for Kong -- an affection which, if carried too far, would suggest beastiality, with Ann the perpetrator.

Another major failing *** is that "economy of expression" are not words in Jackson's vocabulary. He can't resist overdoing /everything/, simply because it's doable. If the original had /one/ disgusting creature, Jackson has three or ten or fifty. The scene in which Kong is gassed and Ann bids him "farewell" is ludicrously drawn-out and overdone, the restored "spider pit" sequence is -- like my movie reviews -- numbingly overlong **** -- and then there's the allosaur battle. I won't describe it, because I don't want to spoil your incredulous laughter at its utter preposterousness. It was at this point that whatever sympathy I had for the remake vanished.

The original was a model of terseness, starting slowly, but never stopping once it got up to speed. ***** The remake is not only overlong, but overwrought. Individual scenes and sequences run on for two or three times any reasonable length, to the point where the audience (this viewer, anyway) screams "Get on with it!".

Jackson's pacing isn't so hot, either. Cooper knew when to pause briefly, then pick up again. The first hour of Jackson's version (which is actually quite good) shows that he (mostly) understands "structure" and "pace", but the rest of the film is a hotch-potch of action scenes, without any sense of development or "build".

It's understandable that Jackson didn't want to exactly repeat the original, but too many iconic scenes have been lost, which seems inexcusable in a three-hour film: Kong smelling Ann's clothes; Kong choosing the wrong woman from the hotel, then throwing her to the street; Kong destroying the elevated train (Jackson's destruction of a street car doesn't come close to Cooper's "German expressionist" treatment). On the other hand, he exactly reproduces the few seconds of Fay Wray and Bruce Cabot running through the jungle, a delightful moment for those familiar with the original. Would that there had been more of this.

There is /one/ sequence that shows how good this film might have been. The initial encounter with the natives and Ann's subsequent capture is much superior to the original - far more atmospheric, better staged, and more exciting. Nothing else in the remake attains this level.

The BD was my second viewing of this film (the first having been on DVD). It clarified why I was offended. Jackson has so altered the original -- and not to much of a good end (other than getting rid of most of the silly dialog) -- that you sit there going "No, no, no, no, no. This is /dumb/." "King Kong" is less obnoxious the second time around, simply out of familiarity. That doesn't mean it's a good film, or that Jackson made the right dramatic or aesthetic choices. He didn't.

The original remains exciting (and silly). The remake is something worse than a bad film -- it's a pointless, overlong bore.

"King Kong" is nothing if not a great BD demo disk. Much of the film is just plain beautiful (though I do miss the Doré skies of the B&W original), and is, technically, one of the most-startling films you'll ever see. Kong really looks like a living animal, and all but a handful of the CGI effects (such as the failure of the rowboats to look as if they're actually making contact with the water) are seamless. One Amazon reviewer's claim that you can see the green screen in some shots (I assume he means a green nimbus around the foreground objects) is absurd.

The BD, unlike the DVD, has virtually no supplemental material, other than a running commentary. Jackson states that the commentary will try to steer clear of material presented in the supplements -- of which there are none. If you have one of the multi-disk DVD editions, you might want to hang onto it.

Science note... Neither the original nor Jackson's remake (the latter especially) pay any attention to the fact that a small island cannot support large a variety of creatures -- big ones, especially -- that need food to survive. The apatosaurs, in particular, would strip the island of its treetop vegatation in just a few months. (This has been observed in elephants.)

Another science note... Someone complained that Kong moves as if he were weightless. This is a common problem in CGI animation (see "Shreck" and "Spider-Man"), but it isn't true here. The real problem is that Kong makes impossible leaps. The reason is that mass scales as the cube of body size, but stregth scales only as the square. If a normal-size gorilla can't leap several times the length of its body, I guar-on-tee one the size of Kong won't be able to do it, either.

Writer's note... Does it ever occur to directors to have someone vet their script for errors? One of the American producers follows Universal (the studio) with a plural verb, rather than a singular, in the ungrammatical British fashion. And the Army officer, griping about Kong's invasion of the "sacred" New York, calls him a "mutant monkey". Though the word dates to the turn of the 20th century, it was not in common use in 1932.

* Yes, yes, yes... Marshal McLuhan actually said "The medium is the massage."

** I was going to say Caucasian, but Caucasians are dark-haired.

*** How often does one encounter a film which can be described principally in terms of all the things wrong with it?

**** It has been reported that this scene, in which the sailors who fall from the log are eaten by creatures in the pit, so revolted some viewers that they walked out. Cooper and Schoedsack said the scene was removed because it brought the film to a dead stop. Jackson doesn't seem to be aware that a long, poorly paced scene can have the same effect.

***** There is probably no other movie in which most of the film is a continuous "chase" sequence, with barely a moment's rest. ("Speed", perhaps.)

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Description of King Kong [Blu-ray]

Academy Award winning director Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings Trilogy) brings his sweeping cinematic vision to King Kong. Get ready for breathtaking action in this thrilling epic adventure about a legendary gorilla captured on a treacherous island and brought to civilization, where he faces the ultimate fight for survival.

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