Tuesday Cap - Vol. 20

Title: King Kong (2005)

Notes: Peter Jackson's epic, and I don't use that loosely. At over three hours, it could be argued that King Kong is bloated, far too long for its own good, and too reliant on CGI. All perfectly fine criticisms and completely understandable, but I disagree with them all. Yes, Jackson may be stretching the limits of audience running time tolerance [but at least it was twenty minutes under his other epic, if one is to look at the bright side], but I daresay he makes the endurance worth it, crafting one hell of an emotional and engaging production. Using all the lessons he learned from making The Trilogy, he forms a fully realistic digital creation that has emotion, that has thought, that has personality, and moves fluently and without falsehood. King Kong is long, but I argue that the running time is necessary in order to tell this story, in order to sell the emotion and create round characters that live and breathe. The story works, the references and homages to the original work, the music by the brilliant James Newton Howard is nothing short of beautiful, the CGI is stunning and quite the accomplishment, and the movie overall simply rocks. And yes, I even own the Extended Edition (great commentary, BT to the W).

Discuss: General thoughts on Kong: running time, Naomi Watts, Adrian Brody's nose (not like I noticed), the digital effects, original vs. remake...