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King Kong (2005 film)

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King Kong
File:Kongcomparison.jpg
Promotional poster for King Kong
Directed byPeter Jackson
Written byMerian C. Cooper (story)
Edgar Wallace (story)
Peter Jackson
Fran Walsh
Philippa Boyens
Produced byPeter Jackson
Fran Walsh
StarringAdrien Brody
Naomi Watts
Jack Black
Music byJames Newton Howard
Distributed byUniversal Studios
Release dates
December 14, 2005
Running time
187 minutes
LanguageEnglish
Budget$207,000,000

King Kong is a New Zealand-United States fantasy-adventure movie. It is a remake of the original 1933 movie about a giant ape named Kong, which was written by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film was directed by Peter Jackson, produced by Jackson and Fran Walsh, and written by Jackson, Walsh and Philippa Boyens. The cast includes Naomi Watts in the role of Ann Darrow and Jack Black as Carl Denham. Much of the crew had previously worked on Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, which the exception of the composer James Newton Howard, who replaced Jackson's long-time collaborator Howard Shore due to "differing creative aspirations for the score of King Kong."

Filming was completed in Miramar, New Zealand, and the film was released on December 14, 2005. It was rated at the last minute, in November, as PG-13 (in the US), and a 12A (in the U.K.) for frightening adventure violence and some disturbing images.

  • Tagline: The Eighth Wonder of the World

Story

Template:Spoiler

Actors Jack Black and Thomas Kretschmann in a scene from the film.

Carl Denham is a documentary filmmaker whose penchant for "safari films" does not go over well with his studio bosses who prefer to see him turn in a romance film for a change. When he discovers that they'd rather sell his films off as stock footage to other studios than fund his latest movie, Denham steals the film and quickly organises to leave for his next shoot immediately. Still in need of a leading lady, along the way he meets Ann Darrow, an unemployed vaudeville actress. He boards a tramp steamer with Ann; Jack Driscoll - a hapless playwright who has written part of the screenplay, is tricked by Carl into joining the journey, to write more. The ship leaves just in time for Carl to escape the police, and sets off on a journey to what Ann and Jack believe to be Singapore.

Along the way, Denham reveals they're actually heading for Skull Island, a place unknown to the outside world that Denham believes will make for some spectacular footage for his production. Although the captain of the steamer voices his concerns about their destination, he sets out to find the island anyway. Meanwhile Ann, a fan of Jack's plays, falls in love with the playwright.

Eventually the ship's captain discovers Denham has an arrest warrant out for him and decides to change course and head to Rangoon for the sake of his crew. However, a thick fog sets in and they find themselves at the island, almost crashing the boat on to massive rocks.

As the steamer's crew try to fix the ship, Denham, Ann, Jack and the film crew go ashore and are ambushed by a mob of angry natives. The natives kill some of the crew, and almost kill Denham if not for the timely arrival of the ship's captain. They get back to the boat and set about on leaving, but a native slips on board and kidnaps Ann. She is soon tied up and strapped to a wooden frame that juts across the other side of a massive wall which separates the natives from the rest of the island. The ship's crew arm themselves and attempt a rescue mission, but are too late as Carl watches Ann get taken away by a giant ape.

File:Kingkong20051.jpg
Actor Adrien Brody and actress Naomi Watts.

The crew discover that the ape, called "Kong" by the natives, lives in a massive jungle where prehistoric creatures have been protected and hidden for millions of years. As they trek through the jungle, the crew has a number of encounters with the local fauna, escaping from a dinosaur stampede and finding themselves trapped in a ravine with giant insects. A number of the crew are killed, and Jack ends up looking for Ann on his own while Denham decides to capture Kong and bring him back to New York City.

Meanwhile, Kong brings Ann to his home high up on a cliff. In an attempt to keep Kong from killing her, Ann dances and does tricks, which amuses Kong, but when Ann stops, Kong becomes angry, and after failing to intimidate her, he leaves. Ann takes the opportunity to escape, but is attacked by three huge Tyrannosaurus Rex-like dinosaurs. Kong shows up and defeats the creatures, protecting Ann from being eaten alive. Tired, Kong carries Ann back to his cliff and falls asleep with her in his hand.

Eventually, Jack finds Ann and they escape while Kong is defending himself from an attack by a colony of giant bats. Kong catches up to them, but Denham and the surviving crew members are waiting and attempt to capture Kong, but Kong breaks free of the trap. At the last minute, Denham successfully captures Kong by smashing a bottle of chloroform across his face.

Months later in New York City, Ann is an anonymous chorus line dancer, while the lovelorn Jack watches a play he wrote whose lead role was meant for her. Denham puts the shackled and captive Kong on display in front of a large audience on Broadway. Intimidated by the attention and frightened by the press flashbulbs, Kong breaks free from his chains, destroys the theatre, and runs amok through the city searching for Ann. Finding her, Kong calms down and takes her to Central Park where he slides around with her on the ice in a brief moment of happiness. Moments later, they are ambushed by the Army, who attack Kong with machine gun fire and mortar rounds. Reminiscent of his cliff-dwelling, Kong escapes to the Empire State Building, which he proceeds to climb, with one hand, holding Ann gently in the other.

File:Beau-ti-ful.jpg
Ann and Kong share a special moment atop the Empire State Building while the planes circle

Kong and Ann take in the sunrise at the top of the building but soon enough, six armed biplanes appear and and fire at Kong. Ann wants to stay with him but Kong puts her down, climbing to the top of the skyscraper as the planes attack. Ann tries to climb higher to save him, waving at the biplanes to stop. Above her, Kong manages to destroy three of the planes, but is badly wounded. Kong succumbs to his injuries and falls to his death.

Jack rushes up to the building to comfort Ann after Kong falls, while Carl Denham arrives at the scene where reporters, police, and bystanders crowd around Kong's body. Gazing upon Kong's corpse, he notes that it wasn't the planes that killed Kong, but rather "it was beauty killed the beast".

Adaptation

Template:Spoiler The 2005 version follows the overall pattern of the original film closely, but changes some details and adds considerably more background and depth to the characters:

  • The existence of Kong is unknown to Carl Denham before he reaches Skull Island; his reasons to look for the island is to film a land unknown to modern eyes. Along with his desire for fame, fortune and acceptance by his peers, his motivation to capture Kong later in the film is also linked to the deaths of his cameraman and sound recordist, and the destruction of the footage he had already shot.
  • Ann Darrow becomes a struggling vaudeville actor who charms Kong by entertaining him with her acrobatic skills.
  • Jack Driscoll is changed from the ship's first mate to a playwright and screenwriter.
  • The 2005 film emphasises the poverty of Depression-era New York more than the original.
  • The 2005 film includes a sequence in which the explorers are attacked by insects after Kong makes them fall into a chasm: this is based on a sequence that was cut from the original film (as it was felt to distract from the battle between Kong and the Tyrannosaurus) and has since been lost.
  • In the 1933 film, Ann Darrow was simply terrified of Kong. In the remake, she comes to sympathise with him and even feel affection, to the extent that she tries to save his life in New York.
  • The meaning of the final line of the film changes: in the original, "it was beauty killed the beast" refers only to Ann Darrow. In the remake, it refers not only to Anne's beauty, but also to Kong's love for beautiful sunrises and sunsets, which is presented as the answer to the question of why he climbs the Empire State Building.

Finance

Budget

The budget climbed from an initial $150,000,000 to a record breaking $207,000,000, making it, by a small margin, the most expensive film ever made in terms of number of actual dollars spent (adjusted for inflation it is the sixth most expensive film ever made, see List of most expensive films (inflation)). Universal Studios only agreed to such an outlay after seeing a screening of the unfinished film, to which executives responded enthusiastically.

Marketing Campaign

File:King kong peter jackson brisbane.PNG
A massive advertisement on Turbot St. in Brisbane in Australia

The marketing campaign for King Kong started in full swing on 28 June 2005, when the teaser trailer made its debut, first online at the official Volkswagen website at 8:45 pm EST, then 8:55 pm EST across media outlets owned by NBC-Universal, including NBC, Bravo!, CNBC and MSNBC. That trailer appeared in theatres attached to War of the Worlds, which opened on 29 June.

Jackson regularly published a series of 'Production Diaries', which chronicled the making of the film. The diaries started shortly after the DVD release of The Return of the King as a way to give Jackson's The Lord of the Rings fans a glimpse of his next project. These diaries are edited into broadband-friendly installments of three or four minutes each. They consist of features that swould normally be seen in a making-of documentary: a tour of the set, a roving camera introducing key players behind the scene, a peek inside the sound booth during last-minute dubbing, or Andy Serkis doing his ape movements in a motion capture studio.

The production diaries were released on DVD on December 13, one day before the U.S. release of the film.

In a unique co-promotion, New York State held a special King Kong lottery game in which tickets were sold for a one time drawing to be held on December 5, 2005 offered a grand prize of $50 million and several second prizes of $1 million.

Box Office

Sporting the 36th widest opening weekend release of all time, Kong had the 21st best Wednesday opening ever with 9.7 million USD and an opening weekend gross of 50.15 million USD. While the opening day gross was well below expectations with Universal previously setting an benchmark close to Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring 18 million USD opening, the film did outgross Fellowship's 47.2 million USD weekend take.

This start has been considered unremarkable by Hollywood blockbuster standards. However, Jackson and Universal believe that King Kong will be successful in the long run as a "slow burner", attracting moviegoers through word of mouth and staying in theatres and drawing audiences longer than a typical theatrically released film.

3D VERSION IN THE WORKS?

Bestiary

Template:Spoiler Apart from Kong, Skull Island is also inhabited by dinosaurs and other large fauna. However, though they may look similar, they are not the familiar species. Inspired by the works of Dougal Dixon, the designers have imagined what 65 million years of evolution would have done to the dinosaurs. The names are taken from those given to them on the official website.

Dinosaurs

Arachnids and insects

Centipedes of the jungle floor and canopy

Bats

Critical response

King Kong received a mostly positive critical response, garnering an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes [1], with the most common criticism being that it is too long. Popular film critic James Berardinelli gave it three and a half stars out of four, for example, because of what he viewed as excessive length, while otherwise praising the film [2]. Influential critic Roger Ebert gave it his full four stars, saying, "Yes, the movie is a tad too long, and we could do without a few of the monsters and overturned elevated trains. But it is so well done that we are complaining, really, only about too much of a good thing. This is one of the great modern epics" [3]. The New York Post hailed King Kong as "the year's best movie" [4], the New York Times admitted that the movie was "gargantuan, mightily entertaining" [5] , while the Rolling Stone styled it "the jaw-dropping, eye-popping, heart-stopping movie epic we've been waiting for all year" [6]. Similarly, King Kong is now ranked #139 on the IMDb top 250 list, and included in many critics' Top Ten of 2005 lists.


Unanswered questions and inconsistencies

The original King Kong featured several inconsistencies and unanswered questions. Perhaps deliberately, the 2005 remake makes no attempt at dealing with them.

  • As in the 1933 film, there is no explanation of how Denham transports King Kong from Skull Island to New York on a tramp steamer apparently not much larger than him; nor is it shown how he was put onto the stage in New York.
  • As in the 1933 film, there is no explanation of where Kong comes from. Unlike, the 1933 film, however, bones of huge gorillas are visiblew in his cave, implying that he is the last surviving member of his species, an explanation that Peter Jackson has offered in interviews.
  • One of the most famous absurdities of the 1933 film is that the natives of Skull Island, when building a solid wall to protect themselves from the island's giant monsters, included a giant wooden door large enough to let through any of the creatures. Why not build a human-sized door? How can an creature that can scale the Empire State Building with one hand, not be able to get over a 100 foot wall? The 2005 film provides no answers.

Trivia

  • For the character of Kong, Andy Serkis went to London Zoo to watch the gorillas, but was unsatisfied. He ended up going to Rwanda to observe mountain gorillas in the wild, with a company called Rainbow Tours.
  • Peter Jackson was a nine-year-old in the New Zealand town of Pukerua Bay when he first saw the 1933 version of King Kong. He was in tears in front of the TV when the big gorilla slipped off the Empire State Building.
  • Forbes Magazine asked real scientists who would win a battle between King Kong and a T-Rex. The consensus named Kong as the probable victor.
  • When Denham is considering who to play the part, before he meets Anne, he suggests "Fay", but his assistant replies "Fay...no, she's working for RKO". Denham mutters "Cooper" under his breath. In 1933, Fay Wray would have been filming the original King Kong at RKO with Merian C. Cooper directing.
  • An ad for Universal Pictures is visible while Kong is tearing up Times Square.
  • During the ship voyage, Denham films a conversation between his stars Ann Darrow and Bruce Baxter. The dialogue used is from the meeting between Ann Darrow and Jack Driscoll in the original 1933 film.
  • In the scene where Jack Driscoll is searching for a place to sleep in the animal storage hold, a box behind him reads 'Sumatran Rat Monkey'. This is a reference to the creature that causes all the mayhem in Peter Jackson's 1992 film Braindead
  • The original Max Steiner score can be heard peppered throughout the movie, with the most notable cue accompanying the "Kong on Stage" scene.
  • The performance and costumes of the dancers during Kong's New York stage appearance is nearly identical to the one done by the natives on the island in the 1933 version of the film.
  • Jack Black said on a recent interview broadcast on Sky Movies in the UK that the movie should be sent up in to space as part of a package for aliens to sample the best that humans had to offer. [citation needed]

Cast

Video game

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