King Kong (2005)

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Cast:
Naomi Watts (Ann Darrow)
Jack Black (Carl Denhem)
Adrien Brody (Jack Driscoll)
Thomas Kretschmann (Captain Englehorn)
Kyle Chandler (Bruce Baxter)
Jamie Bell (Jimmy)
Andy Serkis (Kong, Lumpy)
Colin Hanks (Preston)

(2005) This is the thrid remake of King Kong, and this one can probably rival with the original King Kong. The one made in the 70's can blow me compared to this movie. The remakes and the original movie have the same story, but with different actors and a few tweeks in the script. In this version. Carl Denhem is a movie director and producer who isn't doing so well with his investors. They don't like any of his ideas. Then Denhem shoots them the idea of going to an unknown island to shoot the footage and the movie there. The investors thought that this was a bad idea also, but they didnt tell him that, they made him leave the room so they could discuss it privately. He listens in on the conversation, while his assistant and protege, Preston, oversees it. After Denhem hears what they said, they both leave hurriedly to go on with the plan anyways. The investors eventually put out a warrant for his arrest. So he goes to find an actress fit for the role. He finds Ann Darrow, a theater actress and he recruits her. He finds a small crew and ship for them to be transport to the island. The thing is that Carl told the captain, Captain Englehorn,that they were going to Singapore to shoot the movie, not the mysterious island he planned on going to. He also gets a screenwriter to acompany him so he can make the script, although he had prior engagements someplace else, he missed his chance to get off the ship, so he had no choice but to write the script. After a while, the captain gets a telegram from the police to bring back Carl Denhem for his immediate arrest. He confronts Carl about this and Carl starts bribing him like crazy, offering money and fame. The captain gives in and then Carl reveals where they are going: Skull Island, a place where every sailor is leery towards and hasn't been discovered yet. So they get to Skull Island and they hit turbulence when they lay anchor, but eventually get on the island. Throughout the time they are there, Car gives instructions to film certain parts of the island with their actors, even during the rescure mission to find Ann. Anyways, while on the island the first time, they find a lonely girl, whom they try to be friendly with, but when they tried that, an ambush of natives occur. Some people get killed over it, but then the crew from the ship comes and saves them. They go back to the ship and, unnoticed by the crew, a native comes onto the ship and kidnaps Ann. Jack sounds the alarm that she has been taken and they go to find her. They aproach the gate into the jungle and they hear a loud roar: Kong has taken Ann. Carl Denhem sees Kong take her and describes what he saw. A group of crew members, Jack, and Carl Denhem's crew go to find her. While they search for her, Ann is afraid of Kong at first, then he reveals his playful, childlike nature and all he wants was company. He defends her from a T-Rex attack and then thats when she trusts him. While this was happening, The search party has taken losses, and eventually Carl Denhem's camera gets broken and all film is tainted, so he has nothing to bring back to America. Carl then has an idea to take Kong back to the States, with a bunch of chloroform on the boat, it was perfect. Jack sets out on his own to find her and eventually does. Kong finds that she is escaping and chases them. On their way back through the gate, the crew is ready to capture Kong, with nets and harpoons and chloroform. Ann notices this and tries to stop them, but they do it anyways. They capture him and Carl proclaims that they are all rich. A couple months later, during Christmas, Kong is ready for tyhe public eye. For the show, they re-enact the ceremony that was performed on the night Ann was taken by Kong. However, two things change. Ann isnt in the show, but performing for another show, and Bruce Baxter took credit for the capture of Kong. Kong gets pissed off and he escapes to go find Ann. All hell breaks loose when he gets free to roam New York. He eventually finds Ann and it seems that everything is fine. Then a mortar blast breaks the silence and they find out that the military is chasing them. Kong escapes by climbing the Empire State Building with Ann in his hand. The military sends out airplanes to shoot him down. Kong puts Ann down for safety and fights off the airplanes, taking a few down in the process. They eventually overpower Kong and he is on his last legs, just barely holding onto the building. he gives Ann one last look and he falls down from the building edge and dies on impact. People are swarming the dead body, taking pictures, but the police eventually get them away from it. A man next to the body says to another guy the airplanes got him, and Carl Denhem appears and says "It wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast."


This film was a true re-enactment of the original King Kong made in 1933 because of the story. Everything that happened was supposed to happen, even the line at the end of the movie was said right. The one thing that did'nt happen in the original movie was the spider scene, but that is insignificant compared to the story.


What I really liked about this movie was how they made Kong seem like a person more than like an animal, because in reality, he was a main character in this movie, just like how he was in the original Peter Jackson talks about how they made Kong like a person instead of an animal. He says:


"Obviously as a filmmaker you’re going to manipulate the character as you need to to make the scenes work. I certainly don’t deny that. But we did set out to base him on a real gorilla as much as we could. We sat down at the beginning and asked, ‘What is Kong? What is he? Is he a monster, is he some sort of missing link or aberration?’ We thought just making him a gorilla, a silverback, as genuine as we possibly could, was a really good way to go. Everybody thinks of him as being a gorilla anyway, although the various versions of Kong have been a little different. So we studied silverback gorillas; Andy Serkis, who obviously did a lot of the performance of Kong for us, especially studied gorillas in the mountains and he went up and tracked a group of them in the Rwandan mountains for a couple of weeks. He spent a lot of time at the zoo studying their behaviour. Everything in the movie is based on some form or another what a silverback gorilla would do – but obviously with a little bit of manipulation and cheating on behalf of the filmmakers. It was interesting because we found that with silverback gorillas a lot of personality and character is expressed through simplicity. I think that probably studying gorillas so much, if it had any profound effect on us, was simplifying his characterization and making him less emotive. They don’t really give away a lot, gorillas. It’s all to do with eye contact, and when they’re looking at you and looking away and their body language. There’s not a lot of expression on their faces. So we tried to reign it in and tried to pull it back as much as we possibly could. It’s interesting. One of the interesting things about telling the story that I have found in the last few months as we’ve been doing the animation, kind of refining Kong, is the fact that I also didn’t want to fall into the trap of making him too cute, and making his behaviour too cute. The point in the story where we want the audience to empathize with Kong, I didn’t want to stop him being dangerous. I didn’t want to stop him being a wild creature who can kill characters that we got to know in the story. It was interesting; I wanted people to empathize with him but also keeping an edge to his character, keeping him wild and unpredictable."



Another thing i liked about this movie was the acting. We see both types of acting in this movie. We see stage acting during the period of stage plays being obsolete compared to moves being made during the time. Most people went to see movies. But when we watch these plays, who were written by the main character, Jack Driscoll. Also, we look at the characters playing the roles, you couldnt pick better actors than these. Jack Black has this ruggedness about him that plays very well with the Carl Denhem character. Also, Adrien Brody is great for Jack Driscoll because he doesnt look like the hero type, and thats what Peter Jackson wanted for the Jack character. Naomi Watts was nothing short of amazing in this movie, especially the scenes with Kong.
Another thing i liked very much about this film was how detailed the scenery was. Peter Jackson directed this movie in New Zealand, of course. And the way he made the movie look made it seem you were there walking through the jungle. And Kong, he was so intricately detailed, with battle scars, wringles, the knuckles looked like he was beating something to a pulp, and the emotions we expressed were very prominent when he is either with Ann or in the heat of danger. One scene i really liked not only for the camera work but for the detail into making it was the climax on top of the Empire State Building. It was simply awesome because of Peter Jackson's trade mark was so obvious. The many angles used for the editing process made the scene look masterful.