King Kong (2005)- A Retrospective

One of the most ambitious monster movies ever made. Peter Jackson set out to take the classic American creature feature, King Kong, and turn into a classic American epic. It’s got everything. Thrilling adventure rivaled only by that OTHER epic film series Jackson made, schlocky scares that only the maker of Dead Alive & The Frighteners could provide, a swirling whirlwind of romance, a splash of existential dread and one of the greatest monster fights ever put to screen this side of the Pacific.

The cast is spectacular. Jack Black gives possibly his best performance as Carl Denham, a morally bankrupt film director who’s guided only by his unrelenting ambition (which he insidiously characterizes as artistic integrity).  Make no mistake. If King Kong has a villain, a “true monster,” it is not Kong. Or even the biplanes that shoot Kong down from his iconic perch atop the Empire State Building…it is Carl Denham. His obsessive yearning to be taken seriously as a filmmaker and make a name for himself not only puts the lives of his whole crew in danger, but gets several of them killed. It also, of course, leads to the tragic death of the titular Kong. Conversely, if this film has a hero, it isn’t Adrian Brody’s sensitive screenwriter Jack Driscoll. It certainly is Denham’s leading man, played humorously by Kyle Chandler. Some might argue that it’s Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow, the down-on-her-luck Vaudevillian actor trying to claw her way out of poverty before being thrust into an island adventure as the sacrificial “bride” of Kong…and some might even be right. She’s a terrifix character played flawlessly by Watts, showing incredible strength, humor and compassion throughout the film…that said, to me, the hero (and true star of the picture) is Kong himself. Played to perfection by the incomparable Andy Serkis and brought to life via groundbreaking motion capture technology, Kong is a flesh-and-blood character with thoughts and emotions. He undergoes an epic and thrilling journey towards his own tragic demise from the moment he and Ann meet. Additionally, His fight with the 3 V-Rexs in the middle of the film proves to be one of the greatest monster battles ever conceived on film. 

Ultimately, while some might call it bloated and overlong, I believe Jackson sought to craft something massive and unforgettable (somewhat like the villain of the picture).  The cinematic landscape he created here is truly massive and beautiful, from the congested and smoggy streets of Depression-era NYV to the ominous-yet-mystifying wilderness of Skull Island. I think Jackson, for the most part, succeeded in what he set out to do. This is truly a classic Hollywood epic in the vein of Cecil B. Demille or Stephen Spielberg, but never sacrifices the intimate character beats of its story in lieu of its massive scope. For while Denham’s doomed film crew certainly embark on an adventure, there is far more to their experience. This is all captured in the form of Jimmy, a young orphaned sailor played by Jamie Bell, who works aboard the ship commissioned to escort Denham and his crew to Skull Island. Naive and ambitious in his own ways, Jimmy too wishes to make a name for himself among the crew that adopted him. He carries with him a stolen library copy of Heart of Darkness, naively mistaken in the belief that the downward spiral through existential doom that he’s reading is actually a jaunty adventure story. As he and the crew venture deeper in the wilderness of Skull Island, he realizes his mistake and utters a line that captures the darker themes of the film: “This isn’t an adventure story, is it?” Their journey into Skull Island is actually a journey inward, as the men of Ann Darrow’s rescue party are pushed to the brink of their own sanity as they combat the dangerous fauna of the island…and the reckless ambition of Carl Denham as he leads a number of them towards their deaths. 

It is this darkly intimate undertone and its juxtaposition to the epic grandeur of the film that fascinates me and makes Peter Jackson’s King Kong one of my favorite movies of all time.