Blogger

Blogger is different to say the least. Having spent some time in 360.yahoo.com and once in a while in LiveJournal, Blogger has some nuances, unlike the other two. Bit of learning curve, for me. But I like it. Let me see how much I can beautify my new home.

King Kong

After a long wait( a week from its release, but considering how excited I was to see this, it was long ;) ) I saw King Kong with A( great company, thanks! ).

Disclaimer : I've not read any story on King Kong nor have see any of the previous King Kong movies, just for one reason that I thought it won't be worthy enuf to watch in previous generation CG

So when I read that Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame was to make a movie on King Kong, I was thrilled, as I found Lord of the Rings was a great movie.

Generally I don't read any movie reviews as like that bit of surprise( good or bad ). I was wondering only one fact that its a 3-hour movie(!!), but having seen the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, I was giving reasons to myself that Peter Jackson doesn't jump to the meat of the movie, instead he lets the story takes its course, which many times people find to be a drag. But I've found that treatment to be fine.

So with an open mind, but with little expectations I start watching the movie. As I expected, he didn't 'jump' to show the collosal ape, instead was driving the suspense up as how these bunch of humans( Newyorkers ;) ) end up in a remote island called Skull Island.

The next few minutes were an absolute waste with so much of gory images of fights with the tribes of this remote island. Funny as is these tribes catch hold of Ann Darrow( Naomi Watts ) and package her to other side of the same island, where King Kong lives. To the size of the ape, the distance between the 2 parts of the island is just a hop away and can equally harm the tribe, but that's ok, let me shut down my logic-processor for now. I've 2.5 hours to cover.

Ann Darrow comes face to face of King Kong and after several mintues of roller-coaster rides, she still has her consciousness and finds a new trick to entertain the ape!!!!! She juggles and somersaults !!!! What in gods name was that? Setting aside the fact that we're able to differentiate that Ann Darrow is not really juggling stones, instead its CG, that was one crazy idea for her to catch the attention of the ape! Please guys... think.

Meanwhile, rhe reluctant crew of the small ship decides to fight the tribe after spraying bullets( sound of those machine guns sucked ) all over the place, the tribes just dis-appear from the movie. Part of the crew get into the world of Dinosaurus!!! and weird big insects. Next few stunts, Peter Jackson tries his level best to tell Steven Spielberg and convince us that he too can handle Dinosaurs. So many of those scenes such as Ann Darrow stuck in the midst of 3 Dinosaurus are an aboluste replica of Jurassic Park - I. Tripping of those Dinosaurs one on top of the other was just yukky as if tons and tons of chappati dough getting trashed. Yuk. Equally gory was showing some of these insects sucking humans alive by their organs. All these are shot in the movie by the ambitious director Carl Denham( Jack Black ), who is very insistent to tape this all for this movie and while he has other plans.

Having lost most of the crew members, those left alive decide to go back, while the 'once in a while hero' Jack Driscoll ( Adrien Brody ) decides to go looking for Ann Darrow( Naomi Watts ). The crew is reluctant, but on his way Jack is again confronted by a fleet of large insects. Crew helps him and others survive. Jack in few moments finds Ann. It just reminded me that a roller-coaster ride no matter where it takes you, how it takes you, after all those twists and turns, comes back to the same place you started. It holds true for King Kong also. For its size, for the sprint, apparently it was just few steps away for Jack to find Ann. Darn, its a waste of its

Jack finds Ann and I really missed an Indian director over there to shoot a beautiful song in South Africa or Switzerland( and ofcourse to come back to the hands of the ape ). Anyway, King Kong fights a turf war for 'its' girl Ann, with Jack. Crew traps the ape to sedate with cans of chlorform( In a secret voyage, somebody was smart enuf to carry gallons of Chlorofrom, anyways.... ) and bring him to the city!!!!

Ann is very happy to see the 'once in a while' hero Jack, but equally sympathetic on the dizzying ape. Time rolls by. Ann moves on to be on a dance troupe. Jack stages his comedy play. All of a sudden, he realizes that his plays' lead herione sucks, he recalls Ann Darrow and drives mad on the streets of New York, which is already being ravaged by King Kong.

Speaking of streets of New York, I read the interview of Peter Jackson and the team trying to recreate them in the set and how tuff it was. It wasn't that much special, I'd say. Few patches and lights does make it clear that its CG after all.

Anyways, I strongly believe that Jack's intention was to find a good heroine for his play, rather that to find his 'once upon a time' love. He confronts King Kong on the way, wonder why ?!( its on his way to find his heroine - makes sense ). King Kong calms down ( briefly ) in seeing Ann Darrow walk out of the smoke ( I expected her to say 'hi', but its ok ). Time for the elevator service for Ann Darrow again and King Kong grabs her and runs thro' the city and climbs the Empire State Building!!

I'm sure Peter Jackson was caught to keep the next few scenes as a replica of old ones that it has to climb the empire state building and fight the planes. These are world war I planes, I gather and those shooters are so darn in-accurate to shoot an ape which is just few 100/1000's of feet away. World War planes, I repeat. King Kong is also able to jump and catch hold of a plane to just toss it out, as trash. Finaaaaaaally the bullets pearce thro the King Kong and its hurt and finally falls down from the top.

A was absolutely right. We were looking for it die, almost to the point of "die already please, or give me that goddam gun, lets get over with this".

3 hours have gone by and the movie is over and as I tried to summarize myself as what went on... I realise that there was no real story as such in the 1st place to carry this. More importantly, I started to doubt the talent of Peter Jackson!

To compare, I think its was the story of The Lord of the Rings which carried him all along to get several Oscars, than the opposite. Now, King Kong turned to be a real test, where in, the story is more of a resurrected character( King Kong ) and with today's tech, what could be done. May be "may be" King Kong was a wrong pick by Peter Jackson. But having picked the subject, I think it was very poor treatment in terms of emotions, thrills etc.