King Kong? King my ass!

Hey peeps, To skip a long story short, I borrowed the King Kong game for the 360 as it boasts some easy achievements, and while playing it I thought it's probs best if I watch the film as well. Some torrenting later and I was in possession of the film and decided to watch it last night.

First things first, it is beautifully shot, featuring some amazing locations which Jackson has become quite famous for, but I have a few criticisms, some of them genuine, some slightly less serious but no less apparent.

One thing I became very aware of was how the film ultimately decided how the audience should be feeling towards characters in the film. When finally King Kong made his appearance and he ran off with the female lead back to "his den" or whatever it was, we had Ann doing tricks, and actually had Kong play games with her, and what is probably the closest thing to laughing. It was incredibly obvious that the direction was to make the audience relate with the ape and think that he may not be quite the monster that we all first thought. Rather than let the audience make their own conclusions on who the "bad guy" is, the audience were given one option, and that was to be sympathetic towards Kong. I can concede that the film is an obvious blockbuster for the masses, and thus can't really contain any controversial moments or leave things open to interpretation - A Movie for dumb film-goers. Maybe in this instance Jackson is a genius and has shot it perfectly, but I'd still prefer to not have my feelings chosen for me and actually be challenged during a film.

Anyways, back on track, and possibly from an anthropology point of view, I wasn't aware that Gorillas - the silverback Gorilla is the obvious grounding for Kong, he even possessed the silverback on screen - were known to play games in adulthood, and able to understand humour. It is well known that chimpanzees display these traits, but Kong is not a monkey - although I was quick to refer to Kong as "the monkey" during my viewing. Maybe I am being short-sighted, and it's probably obvious that the necessary research into gorilla sense of humours was done, and that I am making empty claims, or that this stretch of the truth was used as an obvious tool to sympathise with the monkey as mentioned earlier.

Along the same lines, when Kong makes it to New York and tracks down Ann (although she finds Kong, which is another thing I'm annoyed at) he goes Ice-skating - WTF!? Fair enough that a gorilla would/could be surprised by their lack of balance on ice, but to spin round on their ass, and do that kind of mon key-laugh-noise is ridiculous - again reminding us that maybe Kong isn't a bad guy.

Moving slightly into the realm of biology and animal behaviour, I have reservations on one of the main storytelling dynamics that they decided to deploy. That being, Ann seemingly "falling in love" or being the only one to understand Kong. During the fight scene between Kong and the Dinos (WTF?!? rant about that later lol), which was drawn out too much imho, Kong was the obvious protector of Ann, and it's fair enough to align yourself with Kong top stay alive on an undiscovered island full of savage natives and oversized creatures - I think every girl can agree with that. My disagreement comes from her getting incredibly emotional when they were attempting to subdue Kong, read: not kill, but simply knock out - despite the monkey being on a rampage to get to her, killing several men in the process. Do/will animal acitivists get incredibly emotional at a hunter giving something like a lion a tranquiliser to stop it eating them, when it's running straight at them - I'm not sure, but I'd like to think not.

Something that happened twice in the film is Ann seeing an amazing sunset/dawn/whatever and going "beautiful", and then almost trying to teach Kong to understand the beauty of the view. It seemed just silly, and looking back, cringeworthy. I was half hoping Kong to fully understand and reply, perhaps in a Bob Hoskins voice, "Boo-ti-full". That would have been the icing on the cake.

Other things that just straight up pissed me off were some storytelling elements that were just used for effort mostly without a lot of thorough thought. The first is the natives, fair enough, they have to be in the film to have the immortal scene of Kong grabbing the tied up woman of virtue true from a pole etc. These natives, obvious athletics fans, were able to effectively pole vault off the island to their marooned vessel to steal Ann, but once their purpose of offering her up as a sacrifice, they politely exited the film, and were never seen again - how convenient.

Next is the inclusion of Dinosaurs WTF?!? I thought this film was supposed to be about a giant monkey /sigh. Primitives and a big fuck-off ape were obviously not enough as backdrops to Skull Island that they decided "fuck it! It's an undiscovered world, that warrants dinosaurs to still be knocking around there" A few weeks back, there was an announcement that Jackson and Spielberg were teaming up to make a Tintin film. I couldn't help feel that perhaps the inclusion of dinosaurs was a tip of his hat, an homage to Spielberg's adaptations of Michael Crichton's Dino-themed books.
Anyways back to the dinosaurs in THIS film, and the sauropod stampede seemed a pointless excitement builder, and the big pile-up at the end was actually comic, rather than thrilling. It's a shame that despite the advancement in special effects, the group running in the herd (how did they not get crushed?!?!) still looked slightly out, the lighting obviously not recreated in either the blue screen stuff or CGI stuff, it just looked a little dodgy, although not a criticism of the film, just the limitation of the technology.
Anyways moving back to the dinosaurs, and the emergence of a T-Rex, called a V-Rex in the game, comes after it grabs the iguana-type lizard that was chasing Ann. Now, like today's predators, it is wise to predict that they would only eat once every 3 days, so it seemed weird, that after eating this lizard, which was about as big as the dino's head, that it would decide to go after size 4 Ann, which is effectively a drop in the ocean for satisfying the T-Rex's hunger, but boy did he try. I know it doesn't make for a thrilling film if it recognises that she is there, but continues eating the lizard (which would take a long time actually), but it just goes against the simplest of animal behaviour.
Continue that contradiction, and we have not one, not two, but three T-Rexs after Ann, who is now in the possession of Kong. Now instead of just trying to kill Kong, which would provide a much more filling meal, all 3 seem bent on chasing the morsel that is Ann - stupid I know. Also, going back to animal behaviour, top predators today like lions are not pack hunters, but in fact solitiary predators - so why are three T-Rexes working together for a reward that doesn't even split well one way, let alone three ways. I know if it was taken out it wouldn't make it a very good film, but maybe just one T-Rex would have been ok, three is just OTT.

I will close by saying simply this: I am pleased that I can say that I've seen the film but am not richer from the experience. If asked if I would recommend the film, I would say that it's got to be seen to be believed, and there are times when it's so bad it's good, but the mentality towards films is overrated and frankly done to death, one of the biggest cliches. I give King Kong the Brown Ribbon (a la consolevania).