Remaking King Kong has been a dream of Peter Jackson’s since he was nine years old. He attempted it in 1996 only to have the studio drop out on him. In 2005, he was finally able to bring his vision to the screen and now he brings out the deluxe edition. It was well worth the wait on all counts.
In 1933, Carl Denham (Jack Black) is a filmmaker whose funding is about to be pulled. He decides to hightail it out of town with his loyal assistant Preston (Colin Hanks) to an island to film something spectacular, but he has to get out of town before his producers catch up with him. He hires a ship run by Captain Englehorn (Thomas Kretschmann) and the boat has seen better days. He finds a leading lady in the form of the desperate Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) whose out of work during the depression. She gladly agrees to accompany Denham. Another party aboard ship is writer Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody). Driscoll doesn’t accompany Denham willingly because he’s shanghaied when Denham distracts him while the ship is pulling away from the docks.
The ship is a mixture of various crewmen including chef Lumpy (Andy Serkis), mate Hayes (Evan Parke), Choy (Lobo Chan), and the young Jimmy (Jamie Bell). They follow the mysterious map that Denham has in his possession and end up at the mysterious Skull Island. They find that the island is a land where time has stood still and is infested with dinosaurs and other hideous prehistoric creatures. The natives are bloodthirsty, inbreed cannibals and they kidnap Ann to sacrifice her to their god – a giant ape called Kong (Andy Serkis). Kong eventually takes a shine to Ann. Our heroes led by Denham (with dollar signs in his eyes) go after Ann. They end up saving Ann, but they also knock out Kong and Denham takes him back to New York to make his Broadway debut. Things don’t exactly end up as Carl plans.
King Kong has always been a dream project for Peter Jackson. In 1996 he was very close to making it for Universal studios, but when the Godzilla redo flopped and Disney brought out Mighty Joe Young (another big monkey movie) the studio pulled the plug. Needing to put his creative energies into something else he moved on to a little project called Lord of the Rings. We all know how that one turned out. It came as no surprise that Universal came calling again after Lord of the Rings and Jackson’s dream came to fruition. Lord of the Rings is an excellent film and will certainly be known as a classic (perhaps as the original King Kong became known to be). I did enjoy Jackson’s vision of King Kong, but don’t think that it quite rises to the original or Lord of the Rings. With that said, my opinion of the film has grown.
My first viewing of the film found me enjoying it but not loving it. When watching the multitudes of work that went into making the picture shown in the massive making of feature on this disc, I can now say that I love the film. I still don’t think that it surpassed Lord of the Rings, but just as much care and creativity that was put into Rings is put into Kong (perhaps even more work as some of the participants in the docs say). Though in some deranged way, if Jackson hadn’t go the kibosh on Kong in 1996 then Rings may not have come to be. The technical details honed on Rings also made Kong possible. I guess it all worked out in the end.
The King now returns in a three disc deluxe edition with 13 more minutes edited back into the film. The 13 minutes don’t really add too much to the film, but it is still nice to see them. The crew encounters dinosaurs sooner than they do in the theatrical cut, there’s another scene where the lads cross a swamp and meet some nasty fish beasties, and another scene finds Lumpy shooting a giant ostrich-like dinosaur (and the only puppet in the film – everything else was CGI). They’ve also divided the movie in half over the first two discs (80 minutes on disc one and 2 hours on disc two). The scenes menu also uses some symbols to show you the chapters where the new scenes and extended scenes are.
King Kong is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features are spread out over the three discs and Peter Jackson made sure that there was no duplication of special features from the other releases. In fact, Jackson tries not to talk about certain subjects on the commentary track since they’re covered in the documentaries.
Speaking of that, the film has a commentary by director Peter Jackson and writer/co-producer Philippa Boyens. Disc one also contains a collection of deleted scenes. You can play them with introductions by Peter Jackson (46 minutes total) or by themselves (37 minutes). The rest of disc one is a set of featurettes. “The Eighth Blunder of the World” is an 18 minute gag reel. “The Missing Production Diary” is 8 minutes and is a comedy bit about the cast being addicted to watching their performances on video playback. “A Night in Vaudeville” is 12 minutes and covers auditioning the performers, some original vintage vaudeville films, and more of the final acts that were featured in the movie. The final featurette is “King Kong Homage,” runs 9 minutes, and is about references in Jackson’s film to the original 1933 movie (several of the props from the 1933 film from Jackson’s collection are in the movie).
Disc two’s featurettes are as follows. There’s a collection of pre-visualization animatics (basically rough computer graphic sketches to visual scenes before they’re shot). “Arrival at Skull Island,” “Bronto Stampede,” and “T-Rex Fight” can be played with or without the music and “Empire State Building Fight” is just presented as is. “The Present” runs 9 minutes and is a short film that the cast made for Peter Jackson’s birthday. There’s also a 5 minute “Weta Collectibles” featurette that covers some of the items made to promote the film. If you’re looking for a Christmas present for me, the King Kong chess set or bookends would be acceptable. There are also 3 trailers and the 1996 and 2005 scripts on DVD-ROM.
As Carl Denham might say on the Broadway stage, “but wait there’s more!” Disc three is the real meat and potatoes of the set. It contains a two minute introduction by Peter Jackson where he assures you that there’s no duplication of special features from the other released and highlights the features on discs one and two. That was the appetizer and now onto the entrée. “Recreating the Eighth Wonder, The Making of King Kong” covers every aspect of making the film and is over 3 hours long (3 hours 6 minutes actually)!
It interviews writer/producer/director Peter Jackson, animation director Christian Rivers, pre-production CG supervisor Matt Aitken, digital destruction supervisor (what a title!) Gray Horsfield, creative designer/sculptor Daniel Falconer, special makeup/miniatures Richard Taylor, creative designer/sculptor Jamie Beswarick, senior creative designer/sculptor Ben Wootten, conceptual artist Alan Lee, producer/first assistant director Carolynne Cunningham, visual effects director of photography Alex Funke, conceptual designer Jeremy Bennett, writer/co-producer Philipa Boyens, supervising art director Dan Hennah, production designer Grant Major, Naomi Watts, Jack Black, special makeup effects supervisor/creature effects art director Gino Acevedo, conceptual designer Gus Hunter, senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri, model animation sequence lead Richard Frances-Moore, animation sequence lead David Clayton, motion capture manager/first assistant director Lisa Wildermoth, Colin Hanks, Thomas Kretschmann, Kyle Chandler, Andy Serkis, dialect coach Tanya Blumstein, Evan Parke, miniature model technician Shelley Stewart, miniature supervisor John Baster, film editor Jamie Selkirk, Lobo Chan, Jamie Bell, John Sumner, art director Simon Bright, visual effects supervisor Ben Snow, 3D CG supervisor Christopher Jon Horvath, special effects technician Darian Lumsden, Adrien Brody, art director Michael Pangrazio, Skull Island costume supervisor Gareth McGhie, extras casting director Miranda Rivers, Skull Islander’s on set coordinator Jamie Wilson, animation director Eric Leighton, creature designer/sculptor Christian Pearce, creatures supervisor Dana Peters, creature designer/sculptor Greg Broadmore, 2nd unit director William Randall Cook, co-producer/visual effects producer Eileen Moran, 3D CG supervisor R. Christopher White, digital effects supervisor Dan Lemmon, Rick Baker (who cameos), Frank Darabont (cameo), Rick Porras (cameo/producer of LOTR), Jim Dietz (cameo), digital effects supervisor Guy Williams, special projects supervisor Mark Sagar, sound designer Brent Burge, ADR editor Chris Ward, and animation sequence lead David Clayton.
There’s even a song written and performed by Jack Black over the DVD’s credits. Finally there’s 41 minutes of conceptual design video gallery with some quite beautiful artwork.
Peter Jackson continues his fine record of excellent DVD editions and piles on the special features for King Kong. Fans of both Jackson and Kong will definitely want to pick up this new edition.
King Kong (Deluxe Extended Edition) is now available at Amazon and AmazonUK . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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