Dreading Kong

[randy_byers]

The first Peter Jackson film I saw was The Fellowship of the Rings, and I really liked it. It wasn't my favorite movie of the year (I liked both Moulin Rouge and Amelie better), but I saw it more times in the theater than any other movie just for the eye candy. I thought Jackson had done a wonderful job of capturing the look of Middle Earth. However, I pretty much hated the next two LOTR movies. They just seemed like big dumb (really dumb) loud war movies with lots of swoopy camera and silly slo-mo and painfully broad strokes and Elijah Wood looking constipated. I can't think of a worse scene in modern cinema than the one in The Return of the King where Denethor sends Faramir off to die in slo-mo while Denethor pulps cherry tomatos in his nasty teeth and Pippin sings a Celtic New Age song. WTF? Fortunately, there was Pirates of the Carribean and Johnny Depp in mascara to keep me entertained in the theater that year.

So you could say that I wasn't amongst those salivating when Jackson announced that he was remaking King Kong, but I figured that it might be fun to see a state of the art CGI Skull Island and inhabitants. If I kept my expectations low, I could probably enjoy it as a big dumb spectacle. But as I've read through a series of reviews of the movie, most of them more or less glowing and/or ecstatic, I find myself losing all interest. It sounds too much like the last two LOTR movies, except with even more monsters and noise and big, grand, sweeping, meaningful gestures, plus gorillas in the sunset. It seems as though watching it will be like drowning in big loud treacly pudding. It seems as though there is a huge machine trying to suck me into the theater to endure it so that I can Be With It. It fills me with Lovecraftian dread and loathing.

So now I'm not sure I'm even going to bother. I'd like to see a bigscreen winter spectacle, but none of the CGI fantasies -- Potter, Narnia, Kong -- are appealing to me. (I'll likely see Narnia anyway, if Denys is interested.) So I hope the spectacle of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal having anal sex on the range ends up being entertaining, but I'm not sure I can cope with a tragic love story at the moment. So what else is there to look forward to?

Comments

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Loads of critics think that PJ's King Kong is one of the best films of the year, and it may well be true. My allergies are my own.

I haven't been able to work up much enthusiasm for Syriana, because all the reviews seem to talk about its politics rather than its cinematic or story-telling virtues. I also have problems with George Clooney as an actor, although I have a lot of respect for him as a producer.

Guess I should just stay home and watch old black and white movies. Lord knows I have a stack of them sitting here waiting to be viewed.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Oh, right. Your Clooney twitch is one I keep forgetting because I can't fathom it. I think he's marvelous, especially when paired with the Coen Bros. -- it's pretty clear to me that he doesn't take himself all that seriously, relative to the material, and that's a quality I always appreciate in an actor.

On the subject of reviewing Syriana, Roger Ebert makes an interesting meta-observation:

"Syriana" is exciting, fascinating, absorbing, diabolical and really quite brilliant, but I'm afraid it inspires reviews that are not helpful. The more you describe it, the more you miss the point. It is not a linear progression from problem to solution. It is all problem. The audience enjoys the process, not the progress. We're like athletes who get so wrapped up in the game we forget about the score.

In fact, his whole subsquent discussion of "hyperlink movies" is pretty interesting and may tell you a bit more about the story-telling style, so by all means go read the whole thing. We saw it last night and I may yet see it again, once I've had a chance to digest a bit. Now I'll know what scene to be out of the room for.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Fun review, thanks! Syriana still sounds too serious and worthy for my current wintery mood, but I like the concept of hyperlink movies. Without having seen it, sounds like Slacker fits the bill as well.