The Fake Life - Love movies? We do too!

Thursday, November 23, 2006

DVD Review: King Kong - Deluxe Extended Edition

The answer to the question of how many films it takes to burn off the goodwill from creating the best-loved trilogy of the last 20 years, it turns out, is only one. Peter Jackson's King Kong is a deeply flawed movie. The recent news that financial disagreements between Jackson and New Line means he won't be directing the adaptation of The Hobbit have led to many suggesting that he is not the right man now to direct it anyway. How horribly fickle we are.

This three disk extended edition DVD was this close to not being made at all after the film only limped to the new blockbuster box office threshold of $200m. Very much modeled on the four disk extended editions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the lack of that final disk tells us a great deal about the sword of Damocles that hangs over even the very highest profile directors in the industry. As does the lack of a sexy fold out case, replaced here with three normal boxes. Still, it has been made (mostly) to the very highest standards and is full of the juicy extras we have come to expect from Jackson's DVD releases. This is the edition to get of Peter Jackson's grand adventure and, perhaps, folly.

The question is whether you would want to. I'll assume that you, like me, have seen the theatrical cut by now, but when I sat down to watch the film again I ended up turning it off just after the spider-pit sequence, only two-thirds of the way through. Beaten down by the seemingly endless first act on the boat going to Skull Island and still faced with the extended fight with the bat creatures as Jack Driscoll tries to rescue Ann Darrow from Kong's mountain top retreat, the extended fight when they try to capture Kong just outside the great perimiter wall, and the extended fight as they battle him again in the cove at the bottom of the island before the film even gets back to New York, it all became too much. I was breathless from exhaustion from the relentless spectacle and breathless from how thin the narrative air was. I went to bed and watched the rest the next day.

And this is the problem with the movie. Very little of it is all that bad, and from minute to minute it is glorious and exciting. But the plot is for a 90 minute movie, and this film's minutes just keep multiplying. This was always Jackson's dream project. It was the film that first inspired him to make films, and he first attempted to make it, using stop-motion in his garage, when he was twelve. Thirty years of obsessing over a movie means you acquire a great deal of detail you have to put in, but you lose track of the wider picture.

It seems a bit mean to criticise his passion by itself, though. Lord knows we need a bit more child-like enthusiasm in our directors. What proved his downfall was being given complete freedom by the success of The Lord of the Rings. He was given an unlimited budget, as complete control as you can get and all the resources he asked for. The budget came out somewhere around $250m and the running time is three hours. No-one was there to hold the little kid back and this film is what came out.

There's no need for the Brontosaurus stampede, yet not only was it included it lasts ten minutes, taking in a long build up, several different variations on stampeding, collapsing cliffs, a massive Bronto pile-up and then another, final section where velociraptors chase the survivors up a another cliff. Or how about the famous Kong vs V-Rex fight - it has a build up, it has a fight with two dinos, then three, then they fall off a cliff, then there's a fight while suspended in vines, then a final fight on the valley floor. Or how about the already mentioned 'capturing Kong' sequence, taking in those many repetitive parts.

The actual story and character elements in these sequences are very small (he even mentions that the only bit of story in the spider pit sequence is that the camera gets broken, which he put there so the sequence couldn't be cut), so their distension is purely because they had the money and they could have fun with their dinosaur toys and visual effects. The making of's these sorts of films are usually filled with 'well we would have really liked to have done 'x' but we didn't have the money' stories. Not for this film, and this film is the producer's answer to any director asking for more cash. It's too much and, while it can never be accused to being boring, all you can do with such narratively empty sequences is gawp and after a while your jaw gets tired and the fun dries up. These days you could have an sfx fight that lasts an entire movie (effects genius/whore, Robert Zemeckis, currently making Beowolf entirely in CG, has been quoted as saying there's nothing that can be written that can't be brought to the screen for $1m a minute), but nodding off halfway through the punching is the reason why you shouldn't.

The good bits you remember of the film are great. When the effects work they are astounding, Naomi Watts is great, Kong is even better, and worth watching the film for by himself, the final act, while still too long, works perfectly and is genuinely, if a touch sentimentally, emotional. The bad bits are all exactly how you left them too. When the effects are bad (usually involving compositing real humans on the fake landscapes) they are awful, and the tone varies between quite dark and extremely goofy, sometimes in the space of a couple of shots.

Re-watching this movie doesn't diminish the good or rejuvenate the bad. The film does not cohere and, until they return to New York, is essentially a big grab bag of stuff that Jackson wanted to see on screen.

There's ten minutes of extra footage in this edition, and it really doesn't make much difference. The main addition is a swamp attack scene with the crew on rafts getting nibbled by scorpion-crab-things and getting chomped by a giant eel-thing that adds nothing to the plot, is about as good as the Bronto stampede and, once again, goes on too long. As I was already a bit grumpy by this point, the beats where Denham's camera is somehow saved from destruction yet again added to the bad taste of the extremely silly that runs through the movie.

There are some small additions to dialogue which, again, add very little but are in no way bad, so giving your attention a little prick of newness while you are watching. There's a cameo of some of the art department as soldiers in the back of a truck in New York. Again, it is small, adds nothing, but has a fun punchline.

The one good bit of addition is a Triceratops attacking the sailors almost as soon as they enter the jungle. It's night-time, there's no set up and the dino simply jumps out of nowhere and starts flinging them around. You never get a clear look at him and the scene is shot very close and chaotically. Think the Cave Troll attack in Fellowship of the Ring. This very dynamic introduction actually fits well with the next scene where Kong is running through the jungle carrying a screaming Ann, again with no clear shots of the monster. This introduction gives a much more visceral sense of the danger, chaos and sheer physicality of the island and its inhabitants, something that is lost when you see Carl Denham jogging quite safely in between the legs of stampeding Brontos.

So that bit can stay, but the other bits are all so short you don't feel them weigh down that three hours any further anyway.

Technically the transfer seems beautiful. Clear and crisp and, when the shots work, beautifully atmospheric. The sound is deep and detailed and only really suffers from the 'too much stuff' problem that afflicts most modern action films.

So the film is still very much the amazing but ultimately unsatisfying experience it was last Christmas. The extras were where I found most of my fun, though not always in the ways the DVD producers probably wanted.

The presentation is very similar to the DVD of the theatrical cut, taking the art deco stylings of the opening credits and placing them round a central image of the film camera Carl Denham uses. It's effective, and doesn't spend too long transitioning from screen to screen with bad cgi and looped clips from the film. It still takes too long (those transitions are a real bug-bear with me) but at least it's tastefully done here.

That lack of a fourth disk means the deleted scenes (another forty bloody minutes, replete with individual introductions from Peter) and other oddments are snuck in next to the film on the first two disks. The third disk is reserved for a three hour documentary covering Peter's childhood fascination with Kong, the various false starts, and the production all the way from first drawing to premiere. If you've seen the documentaries on the Lord of the Rings disks, you'll know what to expect here, from structure to content to tone.

It contains all the interviews, back stage footage and juicy sfx test shots you could want. It's good watchable stuff, but then I do love all those incomplete fx shots. What was really interesting, though, was that the documentary tells exactly the same story as the LOTR documentary. Humble director explains his childhood love for a great work of art, gets the opportunity to direct the film, gathers a group of hugely talented professionals who also really love the work of art, they go through many hardships and hard work to make it happen, but through their dedication, plucky optimism and love for the work of art, they finally succeed in doing the impossible with much emotion and big hugs at the end. This narrative fit over LOTR very believably but it doesn't seem to fit quite so well this time. This could just be because I have now noticed the formula so am now trying to look behind it to see the seams. But noticing what hasn't been included is interesting.

Always the problems (present on all films, of course) are mentioned in passing, then shown being solved politely and just in time. Where is the conflict? The arguments? The grumpiness? Its lots of fun to see Jackson's reaction to the news that Andy Serkis went to Somalia to study gorillas against his specific instructions. Is that a shadow of pissed-offness passing over his face?

I was willing to buy into the narrative of everyone being nice on the LOTR documentary simply because I was in love with the films, so watching the documentaries was like carrying on the celebration of their glorious existance. Watching this documentary with a slightly cooler head meant I could have more fun trying to see where the documentary was being straight and where we were being told a story.

There's a great moment during the art department's commentary on The Two Towers (yes I listened to it) during the bit when Merry and Pippin are about to be eaten by Orcs when one of the artists, meekly and almost embarrassedly, suddenly feels he has to pipe up about the stupidity of the line 'Meat's back on the menu boys!'. 'But Orcs don't even have menus!' he says (roughly. Don't make me listen to it again to get the exact quote). It's a wonderful humanising moment of dissent, and something I wanted more of from this documentary.

I wasn't there, of course, and I've never met Jackson or any of the other people involved and, while it is fair to say he is a very shrewd operator underneath the hairy amiability (let's see how this Hobbit thing plays out, shall we), there's no reason to think he is not a thoroughly nice man. I certainly want him to be, having been a fan since Bad Taste. Watching the carefully smoothed veneer of the narrative start to crack is always fun though, as is seeing the line between documentary and PR puff piece.

The deleted scenes are all predictably pretty good but disposable. You may each find some little tid-bit you wish was back in the film, but I imagine it will be a different bit for each person. The bloopers are kind of funny, there's a short film the cast made on set that is funnier, and the barely hidden easter egg is a 'lost' production diary that ends with a genuine LOL. The 1996 and 2005 scripts are both included too if you really, really haven't got anything better to do.

The other main extra is the commentary, of which there is only one, between Peter Jackson and co-writer Philippa Boyens. It's reasonably informative, works hard not to repeat subjects covered in the documentary and is as amiable as ever. Peter does seem a little defensive in this one though. He keeps returning to the length of the 1st act, talking about wanting to add drama and add tension. He keeps saying variations on 'there are parts of this that are really good', so implying but not saying that there are bits that decidedly aren't. He even seems to question the Bronto stampede, before Philippa comes to it's defence saying she loves it.

Am I reading stuff in? Possibly, but Peter Jackson is at a very interesting stage of his career right now. He's risen to the very top of the game. Where does he go now? Become a super-producer? Go back to smaller films? Carry on making sfx adventure blockbusters? There's evidence for all of them at the moment, so you can't help but look for clues. Is this defensiveness and need for a 'everything's great' narrative suggestive of a man who, given the keys to the kingdom and surrounded by 'yes' men, has lost his way into self-indulgent and childish sfx bloat? Or is this a man quietly admitting to himself that there are problems with his dream project? That maybe he knows he's had his fun with the CGI and now he needs to step back a bit? I hope it is the latter, as that bodes well for the future films from one of my favourite directors. It would also say a great deal about him if he could admit those mis-steps. You try being objective about something you've created. Now try it with a project you've dreamed about since you were twelve. I wish Peter Jackson the best of luck, if only for the selfish reason of not wanting to sit through too many more three hour bum-numbers.

My advice is to ignore this DVD for now. You'll find it reduced in price within six months, remember that bit when Kong starts laughing at Anna Darrow's falling over routine and decide to buy it then. It's a well made, thorough set of disks that will take a week to get through, and you'll probably be in a more forgiving mood over the film's weaknesses. Just remember to keep your finger on the 'chapter skip' button.