Re: KONG_

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Patrick Norton (ptnorton@suscom-maine.net) wrote:

<You missed the best parts.>

  Indeed. 

  The heaviest complaints I have heard on the movie have been specific issues
with the animation, especially Krentz' cogent comments on the "brontosaur" body
structure, which seems to have been modelled from the skin down, rather than a
skeleton outward, as WETA had done earlier with the cave troll in "Lord of the
Rings". Kong was clearly modelled in this fashion as well. Flexibility was
given too great a turn in massive animals such as the "crocs" and the V-rex,
and some scenes, while they begged credulity, were occassionally at least funny
(the dangling vines scene, while I admit maybe intended to be serious, was a
bit funny to me). Other complaints (from different fora) include vague comments
on the story line or dialogue.

  However, there is something of a pattern play in Kong, and I would like to
direct viewers to consider this. This is a movie that is probably not about
Kong. Sure, Cooper (who gets a cameo mention along with RKO and Fay Wray) is
credited with creating a script and film that helped reveal the innate conflict
with man vs nature that the classic 1933 film has been used to impart to us.
But Jackson (and it is "Peter Jackson's King Kong," btw) has added something to
it, a tribute in modern tempo. 

  So, action scenes abound, in which the first film there were two: Kong's
fight on the ESB, and the confrontation with the Stegosaur at the arrival on
the island. Here, we have something that Jackson scenes to have learned from
reading Tolkein, who's tempo has been commented on by many a literary scholar:
he writes with alternating, dare I say modulating, instances of action and
inaction, good and evil, peace and chaos. Jackson's Kong seems to have been a
movie of threes, and a movie not about Kong, but about Ann Darrow, since in the
beginning, we focus on her, her past, and her incorporation into the film, her
meeting with Jack, and her being used by Carl. 

  Everything, even Kong, focuses on her arrival, kidnapping, and eventual
rescue, to the time when she goes to Kong in the end, something Cooper left
out, perhaps to enforce the bestial quality of Kong, who kidnaps Ann AGAIN in
NYC. Here, we have a huge, burly, errant child, who forms a friendship with a
determined woman. In the pattern of threes, I remark, we are given perahps a
movie in three acts: NYC, SKULL ISLAND/KIDNAPPING, and NYC, REPRISE. Phases
from introduction and set up, the arrival and development and eventual capture
of Ann and the enveiglement of Kong, and the corruption of man in subverting a
misunderstood creature and his eventual demise. 

  In this, we have three major action scenes: a brotosaur stampede, a v-rex
fight, and the last stand fight. We have three principle characters: Carl, Ann,
and Kong (Jack seems secondary to Carl, but also secondary to Ann). And we have
three defining, calm moments of the movie with Kong and Ann, each furthering
the effect of the movie's thrust to show the two's relationship. All three sets
of themes seem to sequence into telling the acts of the tale, and are
punctuated by three minor action scenes: arrival at skull island, capturing
kong, and kong's escape. 

  These themes pulsate in the movie, and as a whole, show the filmaker's skill.
Not that I don't think the effects were improvable, but I argue that the movie
isn't an effects movie, and if you could sit through any Lord of the Rings
extended installment, this movie should be a cakewalk. Movies that run one and
a half hours seem overly short to me now, as our need to tell a convincing
story should operate as a primary aspect to the tale, not temporal budget
reasons.

  Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)

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