![]() ![]() The wildlife of the island not only looks great and is utilized effectively to convey a sense of wonder and horror, but the actual location looks like nothing audiences had seen to that point (except maybe in the Lord of the Rings trilogy). Sure, some of the computer-generated dinosaurs haven’t aged particularly well, but the scene when the ship’s crew falls into an insect pit - a concept Merian Cooper abandoned because it scared test audiences back in the ’30s - is utterly terrifying, especially when Lumpy (played by a human Andy Serkis, who also provided the motion capture performance for Kong himself) is devoured by an army of leeches. The moment the film arrives at Skull Island, Jackson shifts gears and fully brings King Kong into horror movie territory. Jackson also takes a more old-fashioned approach to the pacing of his film, playing with audiences’ expectations and making them wait nearly an hour before finally, slowly and patiently, revealing the titular Kong.Įven if Peter Jackson honored the original and stuck to some old-school techniques, there’s no doubt King Kong takes full advantage of every advancement in filmmaking, especially visual effects. There are plenty of references to the original film, including a mention of original actress Fay Wray, and Jack Black’s character Carl Denham is also clearly meant to represent a more frustrated and unsuccessful version of Orson Welles. Jackson grants added importance to the setting, not just in the cultural background, but also in the filmmaking landscape of the time. Not only are people desperate for money - like protagonist Ann Darrow ( Naomi Watts), who accepts a job to shoot a film overseas with only the promise of maybe getting paid - but they are desperate to have some magic come back to the world. ![]() The opening scene of his film introduces the grandeur of New York’s wealth and the birth of its skyline, while giving equal gravitas to the city’s squalor people are being served eviction notices, and soup lines extend as far as the eye can see. While director Merian Cooper’s original 1933 film mostly avoided portraying the Great Depression because audiences didn’t need a reminder of what was happening around them, Jackson dove into how that environment helped birth the Kong myth. To celebrate its 15th anniversary, we head to Skull Island explore how Peter Jackson successfully reintroduced a cinematic legend to a new generation by putting his own stamp on it.Īfter the 1976 King Kong brought its central character to a contemporary setting, Jackson took the story back to its roots as a period piece set in the 1930s. This tale of hubris is not only a fantastic movie in its own right, but it also set a standard for blockbuster remakes that play with audiences’ familiarity with the source material and provide new perspectives on classic tales. Jackson’s version is a gargantuan journey to a lost world using cutting-edge visual and special effects, with a story that imparts more weight to classic characters. Before it became trendy to refashion every beloved film as a tentpole blockbuster, Peter Jackson followed on the huge success of his Lord of the Rings trilogy with his own take on a childhood favorite, King Kong. The best ones manage to recapture the sense of discovery we felt with the original films while offering fresh new experiences most remakes fail to accomplish one of those two goals, and the very worst ones miss the mark on both. ![]() (Photo by (c)Universal courtesy Everett Collection) ![]()
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