Finally saw King Kong yesterday, and for the most part didn't like it. It was a tremendous thing to get on film, with incredible action scenes, but it went on, and on, and on, and in the end end, the only thing I really liked was the interplay between Kong and Ann. And while there was plenty of that, and it was terrific - there was so much else that you were just ready for somebody to shoot the damn ape and get it over with.
Where to begin? Well, first of all, unlike Lord of the Rings, the story here was pretty simple, and everything but the ape and girl was secondary, but the film constantly gets sidetracked into side stories that, while interesting and well done, detract from the central story. For example, in order of appearance we didn't need the subplot between Ann and the older actor, we didn't need the subplot involving the movie star actor (although it was well done, it was not strictly necessary), and so forth. No getting deeply into the director's motives and desire to film everything - as interesting as it was, it just took too much time explored in this level of detail. One of my favorite characters was the first mate Mr. Hayes (although he was far too well-read and well-spoken to be a credible first mate on a tramp steamer) but his main role was as part of a subplot involving a crewmember that had nothing to do with the main story. Absolutely no excuse for that subplot making the final cut. Frankly, I'd rather they cut a couple of the crew members and thinned the cast. Also, the entire subscene where the men survive the fall of the log just to be attacked by some really disgusting bugs was unnecessary. And certainly cost a fortune in terms of effects shots. (It also bothered me a lot and I'd have been a lot happier without the creepy crawlies).
What the film did in many places was do something I thought was impossible - make the 1976 movie look good by comparison (only in spots - let's not get carried away here). The "making of" book on that film was one of the first film books I read, and the extreme money and time pressures forced the director in that film to cut numerous action scenes just to get the film done. I'm not saying Jackson didn't do some nice work - I'm just saying that this film just lay there for an hour before they got to the island, then each action scene dragged on and on and on. The dinosaur stampede was so uber-Jurassic Park it just quit being believable after a while. On the other hand, the battle between Kong and the three T-Rexes- while it went on forever - was outstanding. I think I actually yelled twice watching it I was so caught up in it.
But that actually raises a good point, which is that anything - and I mean anything - with Kong in it was worth seeing. The ape is really an ape, and is unbelievably (unless you'd seen Gollum in Lord of the Rings) interesting. You just want to see what he does, and the scenes with he and Ann darrow you just can't take your eyes off the screen. Everything else just fades away - except that it just keeps coming back over and over and over to get in the way. Just let the two have their doomed romance and let us watch it (am I the only one that thought that from the time they saw one another after he broke free in New York this was just Titanic redux? I think that's a compliment, because it means that I totally bought into the relationship. I completely got that this was a proud, intelligent honorable creature that really cared for his little blonde toy, and that she got that, and was honored by the feelings he showed for her. That was the heart of the movie, and Jackson nailed that. I just wonder what the film would have been like if he'd cut about 45 minutes of the rest of the film to focus on that. I expect he'll get attacked for overemphasizing the filmmaker subplot because he is a filmmaker, and perhaps there is some truth to that, but I think he just let too many subplots breed and multiply out of sheer love for the story. I think that perhaps in Lord of the Rings because he wasn't quite as emotionally invested in the story he could make the decisions to cut things and redo things. Here, I'd be curious whether he really cut all that much. And a good trimming is what this story needed.