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 I originally heard of Peter Jackson’s upcoming adaptation of King Kong shortly after the release of The Frighteners. Jackson’s plans to bring back the beast to the big screen were well known amongst the pasty, annoying Fangoria-subscribing types (of which I was a member) and, if the rumors were correct, in full, stop motion-animated glory.
For those keeping track, this was in 1996.
It took awhile.
Nearly an entire decade passed before Kong made it onscreen. In that time, Jackson’s career did a 180 – splatter flicks, though well loved and even obsessed over, were replaced by honest to God epics. The Lord of the Rings trilogy established Peter Jackson as pure gold and allowed him to finally realize his dream of bringing his version of King Kong to the big screen.
…Where it took an absolute nosedive at the box office
What the hell happened?
Using the original 1933 film as a springboard, Peter Jackson’s King Kong faithfully adheres to the original’s concept while expanding the story to a gargantuan three-hour running time – quite possibly the easiest explanation for the film’s theatrical abortion.
Starting off with what could easily be described as Act 1, we’re introduced to New York, 1933, better known as the Great Depression. Vaudeville is on its last legs, prohibition is guaranteeing that nobody is having a good time, there are homeless people in the street eating out of garbage cans – but despite the obvious problem with the  economy, film director and outright charlatan Carl Denham is still trying to get his movie off the ground despite the studio’s refusal to fund the project, a star who has left the project, a primadonna main actor and a crew that has reservations about filming on a location called Skull Island.
With all the moxie he can muster, Denham manages to find a main actress in the beautiful Vaudevillian actress Ann Darrow, who immediately signs on when she finds out her favorite playwright Jack Driscoll is penning the script. Ann and Jack hit it off with a romance that is surprisingly  hurried considering the running time. For God's sake, they give more relationship development to the young scrappy do-gooder ship boy and his hulking black companion! What up with that? Through thick and thin, the crew manage to drift into Act 2, Skull Island.
Now, a lot has been said about this portion of the film, specifically the suggestion that the portrayal of the island natives is a particularly racist caricature of uncultured African-American islanders. I have to admit, I’m on the fence with this suggestion. Now you may not know this  and it might come as a shock to you, but I think racism is bad. However, I do think it’s great that the cast of RIZE is getting more work outside of the documentary field.
The movie crew is greeted with an enthusiasm that’s comparable to gang rape, despite Denham’s attempt to bribe the locals with chocolate bars. This results in the death of a few crewmembers, excessive use of strobe-motion camera shots and the kidnapping of Ann Darrow – which, if you were rating on a cinematic disaster scale, would place slightly higher than John Landis, but slightly lower than Oliver and Company.
 In an orgiastic display of tribal tomfoolery, poor Ann is offered as a sacrifice to their deity Kong, a 25-foot gorilla who, instead of turning Ann into delicious girl-paste, actually takes a liking to the woman. Ann manages to sense a kinship with the beast and strikes up a friendship with the smitten Kong via the use of broad slapstick and CGI juggling – which is already triple the amount of relationship development she gets in comparison to Jack Driscoll, who is already on a rescue mission with the rest of the crew.
Set Piece after Set Piece happens as the film cuts back and forth from Kong’s attempt to protect Ann from harm, and the rescue team making their way through the jungle, encountering dinosaurs, giant bugs and surprisingly unconvincing blue/green screen shots. Since this is King Kong, the humans save the day, and Kong is brought back in time for Act 3, or: Kong goes Bananas for Manhattan!.
 My guess is that King Kong will play to a bigger audience on DVD. The ability to pause the movie (thus allowing you to use the bathroom or get a sandwich, possibly both at the same time) alone will probably make people feel a little more comfortable. However, a pause button isn’t going to help a few of the big problems with the movie, mainly the lack of real character development (which will probably be fixed with whatever upcoming mega-extended edition is coming out), and the weird-ass casting for the movie. While Adrien Brody is an odd person no matter the context, I’m specifically talking about Jack Black.
 I like Jack Black. His shtick has yet to grow old with me (check back with me after Nacho Libre is released, though), but he’s not going to stop being Jack Black. His performance isn’t even particularly bad, but… It’s Jack Black.
I’m being a bit hard on the film – overall, Kong managed to grab hold of me and kept my full attention with its effective melodrama (Kong remains sympathetic whether he’s a wad of fur or a computer graphic), wild action scenes (show me a dinosaur tearing things apart and I instantly revert back into a 10-year-old boy) and Jackson’s slick visual style. I can’t wait for the five-hour long extended edition!
Presentation
What a pretty little movie. Kong has a sharp image, and, while the beginning scenes of the film are appropriately drab for the New York Depression scenes, gives way over time to a rich color palette,  from the dark blue nights, to the greens and yellows on the decrepit boat, to the ash gray and forest green of Skull Island.
On the audio side of things, Universal supplies a single dolby digital 5.1 audio track. The track starts off on a subtle note, mainly pumping out the score through the back speakers for the first hour, but once the film gets to Skull Island, it’s nothing but bombast from there. The center channel seems a tad low, but with a movie like this, you’ve probably got the volume up too high to notice. Everything is going to sound chaotic, which results in something called “fun.”
Extras
Seeing as how Universal managed to throw together an extras-only release a day before the film was even released in theaters in the form of the King Kong Production Diaries (which, thanks to the release of the film, has been priced down to about $15 and some change) and the constant rumors of an expanded cut coming out eventually, I didn’t expect much in this two-disc set. However, outside of a few  lame commercials on the first disc, disc two holds the massive post-production diaries - a collection of three-to-five minute snippets that were posted on the Internet week after week have now been compiled to a full two-and-a-half-hour documentary
Covering the last 33 weeks up until the actual release of the film, the post-production diaries are all over the map, showing off every facet that goes into the finishing of a film. The motion capturing is covered, the CGI is covered, the props, models, even the Foley artists get a spotlight. Do we need all of this? Absolutely not – but if you delight in the making of a film you’re going to have a blast. Hell, marathon all of this with the King Kong Production Diaries DVD set and then kill yourself. At least, that’s my plan.
What’s Danny DeVito doing in this documentary?
 You might already be hitting yourself in the head for taking on the post-production diaries, but there are a few more tidbits, an introduction by Peter Jackson, Skull Island: A Natural History is a mocumentary on the “real” Skull Island (fans of Jackson’s Forgotten Silver should get a kick out of this), and a wholly depressing view on New York during the depression, Kong’s New York, 1933 covers the Great Depression, prohibition, shantytowns, skyscraper development, regurgitation as a novelty act, all that awesome stuff.
Overall
The action sequences run frighteningly long, more emotion is put into Kong than its human counterpoints (should I be complaining about lack of human character development in a movie called KING KONG?), the marketing was an absolute mess, the public shunned it, and the film made its way to DVD in a little over three months. And yet King Kong still managed to be one of the best movies of 2005.
Go figure.
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