I love my boss--asked for the day off to go see King Kong, and he said, "sure!" He's a hell of a guy! The movie was great. No, actually it was better than great. There is just nobody alive making movies anywhere near as good as Peter Jackson's. (You can take your quirky, small movies with Bill Murray not being funny and shove 'em right up yer chimney, pal!) I mean, I see a movie like this and see how movies can be big and wonderful and magical (not just big and loud! no no!), and everything else just looks really piddling in comparison.
(Aside--saw a preview for the new Spike Lee movie, which looks like it might actually be watchable. No, really! Some kind of hostages in a bank, all is not what it seems kinda thing. Denzel! Jodie!)
Ah, there was just so much to love about this movie--the action! the romance! the in-jokes for people who have seen the original! And a cameo by the Sumatran Rat Monkey!
We really get to know and like several members of the crew who end up killed by Kong, which makes their deaths more meaningful, which makes Kong less pathetic. When you actually like the guys he kills, it's harder to keep thinking of him as a tragic hero.
Ultimately, this wasn't as sad as I thought it would be. This is partly because of the grisly deaths Kong inflicts, but also, I think, because in the original, Kong's tragedy is that he (spoiler alert!) dies for the love of a woman who can never love him back. In this one, Ann clearly does love him, and certainly seems to prefer him to Jack. Somehow this cut into the pathos a little bit for me.
Or maybe it was just how it hit me personally. The whole "hottie has a sensitive if funny-looking writer pining after her but prefers the big ape she can't even have a conversation with" scenario somehow reminded me uncomfortably of middle school. And most of high school. And the first year and a half of college.
