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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 7, No. 2 |
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THE OLD AND NEW KING KONG
WHAT A DIFFERENCE HALF A CENTURY MAKES At left, Naomi Watts is at peace in the giant paw of her protector in Peter Jackson's 2005 "King Kong." At right, Fay Wray screams in terror as she first beholds Kong in the 1933 original film version. The relationship between Beauty and the Beast is the single most significant story difference between the films made 52 years apart. |
It just goes to show what
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When first I learned Peter Jackson, the Oscar-winning filmmaking wizard who gave us the superlative "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, was going to remake "King Kong," I actually smiled broadly.
You would not believe how seldom I smile, even narrowly, at the news somebody is going to remake one of my favorite pictures. I've cringed way too many times at past remakes, most especially the 1976 attempt to remake "King Kong." You'll certainly remember that one: Kong climbing the pre-9/11 World Trade Center towers, clutching Jessica Lange in one paw, while jet fighters launched missiles at him. That film was 90 per cent turkey, only 10 percent gorilla.
But Peter Jackson had done a sensational job of filming the three fantasy novels that comprise the "Lord of the Rings" saga, had won the 2003 Best Picture Oscar with his third in the trilogy, "The Return of the King," and won the best director Oscar as well. He did it by being most respectful of the original material and using all his considerable skills in making those three movies glow with the sort of all-around quality few filmmakers can summon up today.
And that same level of commitment, I'm happy to say, has turned out to be his key to turning the new "King Kong" into much more than a satisfactory remake of a cinema classic. His 2005 "King Kong" is nothing short of a modern masterpiece.
Jackson loves the original film, it's plain to see. He pays homage to it in virtually every frame of the new film, keeping the story in the same 1933 period and his climax in a beautifully re-created 1930s Manhattan. But he certainly didn't just copy everything in the 1933 original while jacking it up to 21st century levels with better special effects. Jackson has re-interpreted "King Kong" for the modern moviegoer. Like the original, this is a film for the ages--and perhaps the best-ever model for the right way to remake a classic.
Too many of us think of the original "King Kong" as just a horror film with a spectacular climax atop the Empire State Building. Perhaps that's because so few of us were adults when it premiered in 1933 and didn't see it until much later, probably after World War II, after nuclear bombs and space flights, when the world was a completely different place and it was much harder to make us marvel at a giant ape running amok in downtown Manhattan.
The original "Kong" was a bold concept in its day, styled precisely for its 1930s audience and its unique period--The Great Depression. This is quite obvious if you screen the beautifully restored digital DVD version of the 1933 film--with all its rich background features--that was just released a month before the new "Kong" reached theaters.
Try to imagine yourself in a 1933 movie house, maybe just a few pennies jingling in your jeans, watching sights such as you'd never seen before on any movie screen. You hadn't seen any "Jurassic Park" dinosaurs on the screen unless you'd seen that wobbly brontosaurus in the 1925 silent version of "The Lost World." So when a dinosaur raised its mighty head up out of that lake and started gobbling sailors in "Kong," you were ready to jump out of your seat. And when the ferocious Kong, on the loose in Manhattan, derailed an elevated train and began to hammer one of the cars flat--with screaming people inside--you couldn't believe your eyes.
And, finally, when this behemoth began to scale the sides of the tallest building in the world, carrying lovely Fay Wray in one paw, you were ready to believe the ads: Kong really was the Eighth Wonder of the World!
Filmmaking partners Merian C. Cooper, who produced the 1933 "Kong," and Ernest B. Schoedsack, who co-directed it with Cooper, knew they'd have to come up with something unique and sensational to convince moviegoers to spend their precious money on movie tickets at a time when they needed every dime to feed themselves and their families. Looking back, it's fair to say those depression era-folks also needed something to restore their sense of wonder--and "King Kong" rewarded them grandly in that department, grossing more than $1 million at a time when it only cost 10 cents to buy a movie ticket.
Cooper and Schoedsack had spent years adventuring together around the world, combining their talents to make two of the most acclaimed documentaries of the silent era--"Grass" (1925) and "Chang" (1927). Their "King Kong" told the story of a filmmaker named Carl Denham, rather obviously modelled on Cooper himself, who wanted to take a beautiful young actress named Ann Darrow to a remote jungle island and film her as she encountered wild natives and savage beasts.
This was a very logical dream for an ambitious and adventurous 1930s movie producer. That was the kind of adventure Americans were reading about in the pulp magazines of the time. By 1933, they also were seeing them on movie screens. Wild animal trapper Frank "Bring 'em Back Alive" Buck was busy making the films that were making him a household name; Clyde Beatty, a daring circus showman who stepped into cages with wild beasts, made his starring debut that same year in "The Big Cage" and real-life "explorer" Martin Johnson was starring his pretty wife, Osa, in his African adventure films like "Congorilla," doing what Carl Denham wanted to do with Ann Darrow: Have her menaced by whatever wild animals he could flush into her path.
America's fascination with gorillas wasn't just a passing fad, either. The year before "King Kong," Universal had made "Murders in the Rue Morgue" with Bela Lugosi using a razor-wielding gorilla in his crazed experiments with young women. Gorillas were standard "monsters" in even the cheapest horror films. Still to come, later in the 1930s, was the legendary Gargantua, the real-life gorilla billed as "the world's most terrifying living creature" while it toured with the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus. Gargantua was page one news in his day--and he didn't even have to run amok in downtown Manhattan to get headlines there.
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Gargantua, a circus attraction clearly inspired by the success of the original "King Kong" |
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In the original film, Carl Denham doesn't expect to find anything quite as exciting as the mysterious Skull Island, home of giant monsters from the prehistoric era, including an enormous gorilla the natives worshipped as a God. They called him "Kong."
Spirited off by the natives, Denham's leading lady, Ann Darrow, is prepared as a sacrifice to the monster, but the giant ape finds the tiny white doll in his paw endlessly fascinating and, rather than tear her to bits, as he had done her predecessors from the sacrificial altar, he keeps her as his treasure, his special toy he'll defend against all comers.
In the breathlessly-paced 1933 film, the plucky actress Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) spends most of her screen time screaming her lungs out. Little wonder. Kong is as big as a house and snaps tree-trunks in half as he forces his way through the forest to the sacrificial altar. But he's instantly taken by the sight of her. She is so blonde, so white, so different from the black native girls he always gets as sacrifices that he doesn't quite know what to make of her. He scratches his head in puzzlement. You can almost read his mind: "Hey, this is a toy worth keeping!"
Was the original film a bit racist, suggesting even a gorilla would prefer a white girl over a black girl? Probably so, given the disciminatory Hollywood posture of the time. But if you cut Kong a little slack, you can imagine what a novelty a white girl would be to him. It reminds me of the story James Baldwin told in "The Fire Next Time" about walking into a remote Swiss village one day and being surrounded by astonished children who had never before seen a black man. The Swiss kids were as fascinated by Baldwin as Kong was of Ann Darrow and Baldwin was suddenly a local attraction.
In the 1933 movie, Ann never really gets comfortable with Kong. When he battles a T-Rex to the death to keep her from its jaws or tackles a pterodactyl who nearly plucks her off the ledge of his mountain cave, she isn't impressed with his valor. She looks fatalistic--as if she's concluded she's just meat the mad dogs are fighting over.
But the most significant difference between the 1933 "Kong" and the 2005 edition is the nature of the relationship between Kong and Ann Darrow. From the start, Naomi Watts plays Ann as a more intelligent, thoughtful woman who realizes Kong can crush her at any moment, but for some reason wants to keep her instead.
This time Ann seems to sense that Kong is an intelligent primate who might be capable of a higher level of thought than a giant reptile. She attempts to reach him in some manner, almost the way a hostage might psychologically seek to please her captor, trying to find some level of mutual understanding. On the Broadway stage, Ann has often played slapstick-style comedy. It's what she knows best: How to get a laugh. So, she goes into a bit of her stage routine, which at first bewilders Kong, then clearly intrigues and amuses him.
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death, Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) feels sorrow and empathy for Kong. |
By touching Kong and risking his anger, Ann also is showing him she no longer fears him. It's acting, of course, because she's petrified with fear inside. Yet her behavior is something Kong has never seen in a human. She is seeing him as an entity, not a monster, and she's inviting him to interrelate with her. When he does, a bond is created. He seems to know this amusing toy won't amuse any more if he swats her too hard. So he handles her gently as a child would a favorite doll he desperately doesn't want to break. Does he love her? Hardly. More likely, he's enjoying her act and he doesn't want it to end.
Great credit goes to Jackson for avoiding the Disney-esque moments of the 1933 film in which Kong scratches his head like a moron whenever he sees something odd. This Kong behaves much more like a real gorilla and he's never "humanized" to the point where he becomes a comic figure--even later, in the film's most delightful moment, when Kong slips and slides on an outdoor ice rink in Manhattan, possibly Rockefeller Center, and discovers he can scoot about on his hindquarters.
Gone also are the often-censored moments of the 1933 film in which Kong peels away Ann's outer garments and sniffs them, inhaling her femaleness with clear appreciation. Though Naomi Watts is every bit as fetching as Fay Wray was, Jackson doesn't let his giant gorilla behave like a fetishist. Not that it wouldn't be gorilla-like, of course. Obviously, Jackson never wanted us to forget Kong was a giant monster capable of killing anything within his reach. The less he showed him "cutting up," the more his ability to scare the hell out of us was retained.
In the new film, Jackson reaches for a
much higher plateau for the Darrow-Kong relationship. In the
1933 film, Ann is able to feel pity for the beast once he's consigned
to hell by the Air Force, but she looks literally frightened
out of her wits every second she's out on that ledge above Manhattan
and practically leaps into the arms of hero Bruce Cabot when
he finally hauls her to safety.
Jackson gives us a wholly different interpretation. By the time
Kong has taken Ann to the top of the Empire State Building, she
has entered what seems almost a Zen state of mind. She trusts
Kong's great strength and determination and no longer fears him.
She seems to feel her destiny is to be with him to the end and
even when she realizes she's almost beyond the reach of human
help, she fixes her eyes on him and seems blissfully relaxed
and resigned.
There's a photo you see in so many ads for the new "Kong" (and at the top of this column) that shows Ann resting in Kong's palm, her eyes locked with his, as they wait for the climax of their relationship on their perilous perch atop the Empire State Building. It reminds us of their bonding moment on another high perch back on Skull Island. It's the defining moment of the film.
It's the most symbolic frame of the film because it shows Beauty unafraid in the hand of the Beast, looking into the eyes of a great creature whose own expression is now similarly benign and, at least for a time, at peace. Kong seems to know his reign is coming to an end in a strange land, against enemies he doesn't understand, and he wants to have these few moments alone with the source of the only pleasure he's known in a lifetime of lonely torment and physical strain.
What's Jackson trying to tell us? Let's hope that remains one of the secrets of the film, one that will bring us all back to it time after time. I'd like to think we're seeing a metaphorical moment--the one human being who has forced herself to see this great beast as he really is, to find the human quality in Kong, has made a friend for life, a friend who is about to die for her, willingly.
It's a lesson each of us could take into our dealings with others--and perhaps a lesson nations could use when dealing with each other in these troubled times.
But I'm sure the great majority of moviegoers aren't especially interested in the "subtext" of a movie like "King Kong." I'm just delighted that there is one and that Jackson's "Kong" is a work of art we can experience on several levels, if we so choose.
The bottom line, though, will be its ability to deliver the thrills the ads promise. Believe me, it does. Some have complained that the first hour drags. Not for me--and I know the story inside and out. Jackson spends that hour meticulously setting us in the period, doing a marvelous job of explaining The Great Depression and what it was doing to people like the characters we'll be following in the film.
There are some sequences that are simply stunning in their complexity and awesome in their effect. For example, I believe I've seen a dinosaur stampede before, done quite well, in fact, in one of the "Jurassic Park" films. Well, there's one in this film, too, but it involves so many humans and digital creatures together in so many ways that you have to applaud what you see on the screen.
Then the film comes up with a sequence that blows away anything of its like that I've ever seen: Kong is trying to fight off three T-Rexes simultaneously while holding Ann Darrow in one hand. That's bad enough--the 1933 film only gave him one T-Rex and allowed him to put Ann on a tree trunk while he did battle--but then they have this whole battle take place while Kong and the dinosaurs are falling through a great tangle of vines in a deep canyon.
Everybody who saw the original remembers the great sequence in which Kong destroys the log bridge that the rescue party of sailors is crossing, dropping them to their deaths in that deep canyon. Cut from the original was a nightmare sequence showing the dying and wounded men being devoured by spiders and other giant crawling things at the canyon bottom. The footage of that scene was destroyed and could not be restored to the original film as some of the other censored scenes were in the 1980s.
Working from the original drawings used by the film's original monster-animator, Willis O'Brien, Jackson's crew has re-created the deleted sequence and turned it into one of the worst nightmare moments of the new movie. (When a giant leech takes in the head of one sailor, your heart may stop beating.)
Jackson's continual homages to the original
film are too many to mention. Among the better examples: When
Carl Denham (Jack Black) learns that "Fay," the star
he planned to use in his epic, has been signed instead for a
picture at RKO, he grumbles about "that Cooper." (Merian
C. Cooper, the original "Kong" producer, became head
of production at RKO.)
Another homage: In the sequence in which Denham appears before
a Broadway audience to reveal the captured and shackled Kong
on stage, the musical score picks up the original 1933 theme
by Max Steiner. This is a tip of Jackson's hat to one of Hollywood's
greatest composers and one of his immortal scores. The opening
credits of the film also echo the triangle-shapes design used
in the opening title cards of the 1933 film.
In the original, we also see a closeup of the pilot and gunner who fire the fatal volley at Kong. Those parts were played by Cooper and Schoedsack, who co-directed the movie. In the new "Kong," the fatal shots are fired by Jackson himself and Rick Baker, the veteran movie monster-designer. The in-jokes never seem to let up, but they'll only be noticed by real devotees of the original film.
After all the nervous hoopla and all the wringing of hands by fans of the original film, the new "King Kong" has turned out to be a magnificent movie and a genuine box office smash hit. Unless, of course, I just dreamed all this and haven't really seen the darn thing yet.
©2005 by Ron Miller. The scenes from the 1933 "King Kong" are courtesy of RKO Radio Pictures and Turner Broadcasting. Scenes from the 2005 "King Kong" are courtesy of Universal Pictures. This column first posted Dec. 19, 2005.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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