I am starting to worry about Peter Jackson�s capabilities as a director. From all the footage shot, a good movie director can sift out the unnecessary parts, the filler segments, the scenes that have little or no impact to the story to make the best possible cut to both please the big cheeses signing the cheques and the target audience. Why-oh-why is King Kong more than 3 hours long?! Don�t get me wrong, it is an excellent movie, quite often breathtaking, but it shows tell-tale signs of bad storytelling.
What do I mean you may ask? Well, first of all let me compare it to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. LOTR had an epic storyline, dozens of important characters with enormous depth, and an gargantuan amount of source material and potential for the imaginative. The original King Kong focused on one storyline, and three main characters. This remake has an extended cast, all with their own sub-plots and stories, in particular the ship�s captain (Thomas Kretschmann) and Jimmy (Jamie Bell), and once we are back in New York for the finale the characters disappear with no resolution to their own particular story! What was the point Peter? This was just uninteresting filler to pad out the film until the stuff we paid to see comes along. It is for this and other similar reasons the movie falters in its pace.
Okay, enough bashing, lets talk about what�s good. Well, everything that should be really. Kong is the work of pure genius, thanks in part to Weta Digital, but mainly to the work of Andy Serkis who deserves much higher recognition for his talent. The action throughout the film is nothing short of impeccable, from the initial Kong versus T-Rex encounter right through to the final Empire State Building moments. Each scene is beautifully realised with extraordinary effects to make you feel each punch, bite and bullet. The effects work is amazing, though I can't help but feel that the transition to the small screen will hamper the effectiveness of the miniature shots - the swooping passes of Skull Island�s native village occasionally looked like a Warhammer model! I will give Peter Jackson his due though, when he produces good cinematography it�s more beautiful than mother nature could ever have dreamed of!
Jackson also deserves credit for picking a nearly spot-on cast. Naomi Watts and Adrian Brody get the balance just right and can hold their own against the visual might of Kong. However Jack Black at times seems to tread a fine line between comedy and drama with his comic relief. Colin Hanks disappears into the scenery and Jamie Bell is merely okay (note: watch the extras on the DVD with him, what�s with the American accent? He�s from North-East England for crying out loud!). If Peter could just whittle out the pointless stuff and reduce the running time by half an hour he�d have a flawless film, capped off by a tear-jerking finale. So close. |
