Sunday 29 July 2007

Why I really like King Kong


My son has two posters around his bed of his heroes, and they are Russell Crowe as Gladiator and the poster of the remake of King Kong. I don't know why he has them by his bed. For inspiration maybe. Maybe he wants them to seep into his unconsciousness while he sleeps so that he becomes more like them (like you are supposed to leave a tape recorder of exam revision material running by your bed while you are asleep to seep into your unconsciousness) or may be he wants just to dream about being them.

We went to see the Peter Jackson remake of King Kong when it was on. Superb graphics, maybe too good as the whole thing got too scary. I put a coat over Eleanor so that she couldn't see (asking permission first, of course) but when I had to put a coat over Jack too and people starting looking the whole thing got too ridiculous and we had to leave before the end. We didn't want a repeat of the Doctor Who incident when they were both spooked by a weird kid in a gas mask and both came running down the stairs yelling simultaneously an hour after they had been put to bed.

The King Kong I really like is the one in the orginal 1933 version. He is cute. He has a cute, babyish cartoonish gorilla face. He is not that scary. Often he looks quite bemused. He is funny. I like it when he is looking for Fay Wray and he gets the wrong woman and you see a giant paw slipping into the apartment of the sky scraper and slipping out again with the woman in it. He is gentle. I like it when he tickles Fay Wray in the palm of his hand. He is gallant. He saves her from a dinosaur.

He does bring mayhem to New York, but that is just nature versus civilisation, the id versus the ego, and anyway they shouldn't have taken him there anyway, they were only trying to make money out of him, so that is just nature being exploited by capitalism.

I hate the ending. He nearly defeats the dark capitalist forces, after all he is on the top of the Empire State Building, and they unfairly try to get him with their technology, dive bombing his furry, dare I say cuddly, body with their harsh metal planes, and his poor body banging against the building on its descent. It is one of the saddest things I have seen.

I can't talk much about the remake as I have't seen all of that yet.

2 comments:

lebanesa said...

King Kong was a very tender film in some ways - a sort of Beauty and the Beast thing, don't you think?

Irene said...

I missed the second half of it and I am sorry that I did. I did see the original one and, yes indeed, Kong was kind of sweet in that one. I think the modern one is more ominous and scary. I'll have to watch the second half and let you know what I think about it.