Last weekend my wife and I went to see the new Peter Jackson version of King Kong.
I'd never understood the appeal of the original film. I mean, any movie that you can sum up in under two minutes, and capture all the emotional nuance and excitement in that time frame, just isn't going to do it for me. I suspect audiences in 1933 went to see the giant gorilla; nowadays, a giant gorilla is not the most exciting thing to deck the screen, and I prefer my film to have some actual plot interest. So I was skeptical of the film when Peter Jackson announced his intention to remake it, because the original was, let's face it, really quite boring.
Now, if anyone could turn a cardboard franchise into something delightful, it's Peter Jackson. I have been a fan of his since Braindead/Dead Alive, and a great fan since Heavenly Creatures, which I saw three times in the theater alone. The Rings trilogy was an unparalleled triumph, of course, but even the Frighteners was quite a good film. He is, without rival, my favorite director.
On the other side of the coin, I despised Meet the Feebles. So he's not God.
But it was with hope, not to say great expectations, that we went to see Remake of Kong. We had already seen the excellent Harry Potter film and the excellent Narnia film and would have rather taken boric acid suppositories than watched Cheaper by the Dozen 2. Spikey boric acid suppositories. And Syriana was not playing at any convenient time.
Well. It was very loud, and it was very long, and it was very silly.
The acting was fine, although there was entirely too much of it. The special effects were of course awesome. And, for better or mostly worse, there was a lot of Peter Jackson gross-out. I did enjoy the Sumatran Rat Monkey crate, but the giant bugs were, like at least half of the film, entirely unnecessary.
"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose." Bill Gates wasn't the first to state that truism, nor the most poetic, but I just read it on slashdot and it seems apropos. My hope is that Peter Jackson knows this about success, and made this movie only because he wanted to make it and had the opportunity to, and counts himself well served regardless of the film's popular result. My worry is that he made this film thinking that the world shares his opinions of what makes a film great, and will continue making films that appeal specifically to him, and to fewer and fewer other people.
Based on the pattern of his career, I remain optimistic. And I don't begrudge him his King Kongs, his Meet the Feebles, if he follows them with gems such as Heavenly Creatures. After all, it is necessary for a creator to take trips to the well; to reconnect themselves with their reasons for creating. And if Jackson's well happens to be on Skull Island, so be it.
His next film better be a doozy, though.
- Sun Ra