Review of King Kong (1933) by Shane L — 01 Jun 2009

Yes, I get it. King Kong is a classic of cinema, a landmark cinematic achievement. True. And it's also not fair to judge a film made 75 years ago, based on the technological and filmic capabilities of today. That said, just so I can say that it is for none of those reasons that I think King Kong is only so-so.

The truth is, I'm even less a fan of Peter Jackson's King Kong after having seen this one. The original is okay, but it missed the point - the fact that Jackson also missed the point seems unforgivable. Merian C. Cooper's Kong is really a bunch of chest-beating ('scuse the pun) that attempts to show the perils of American Imperialism. However, the fact that Kong falls for the beauty (the admittedly smokin' hot Fay Wray), seems to take the teeth out of the tale. In the end, we're really only left with a dead monkey - and it sure is too bad about that. I mean...that's it! He's dead, he was killed by beauty. Oops. My bad.

What was ultimately missing was any level of sorrow or even a sense that there had been some wrong doing, when so clearly there had been. Denham simply delivers his iconic final line (much better than Jack Black did, mind you) and then - fade to black. What I'm trying to say is that the film lacks introspection. Yes, Kong is a violent beast who must fight to survive - he kills a bunch of people, then a t-rex, then a lizard-thing, then a pterodactyl, then a bunch of natives, then a poor innocent bystander man-guy, then a woman, then presumably a whole bunch of people all at once when he lands at the base of the Empire State Building. Yes, he steals a woman, etc. But that's not his fault - he was taken out of his environment where he belonged. While the (human) deaths he inflicted were no doubt tragic, the overall tone of the film seems to suggest that this is just the cost of expansion, rather than the cost of greed. It's something to be expected, and adapted to, rather than something that should be learned from and hence avoided altogether.

I dunno - maybe I'm reading too much into this, but Kong just doesn't do it for me. I respect its place in history, but it's not a film that I'll be returning to any time soon.