Some belated thoughts on Kong

So, I've recently re-watched the Peter Jackson King Kong, about which I had mixed feelings when it first came out and I must confess, my feelings are still largely mixed.
Now all of this must be said in light of the fact that I'm a huge fan of the original movie (obviously, as is Jackson) and I've seen the original well over a hundred times.
I think that there's no question but that there are things in the remake that work well. Naomi Watts makes a wonderful Ann Darrow. The relationship between her and Kong is wonderful. Kong himself as conceived and executed is marvelous. There are certainly sequences that work very well the fight with the T-rexes, or whatever they are, in the chasm with the vines is cool. A lot of the New York stuff works well.
But clearly, somebody needed to tell him, in so many sequences, that bigger is not always better, longer is not always better, more is not always better.If the brontosaurus stampede had been half as long, with half as many brontosauruses, without the addition of those raptor things, without twenty shots of all of these people running in between the legs of the trampling bronto's, it would have been enormously more effective. As it is, you can only pile unlikeliness on top of unlikeliness on top of unlikeliness until the whole thing just collapses into a heap of absurdity. After that whole business we hear that "four of us" didn't make it.

Well, one of them bites the dust afterward at the teeth of one those raptors, and one of them falls off the cliff. So we're supposed to believe that, with all of those men literally running in the midst* of a full scale dinosaur stampede and with a shot killing one in the lead such that the entire bunch of them piling up into a literal mountain of broken dinosaur flesh *with men scrambling around in the middle of all that only two guys get killed.
It's ridiculous it's a cartoon, and it reduces the proceedings to the level of a cartoon.
Ditto, and with interest, to the spider pit sequence, where you've got guys covered with bugs, in the dark, and other guys shooting the bugs off of them with barely aimed machine gun fire and hitting the bugs and not killing the guys with the bugs on them over and over and over again.
Then you have the actor comes swinging down on a line an actor, who presumably has never fired a real machine gun and never actually had to hit a thing he ever had to fire at in his life shooting away, hitting what he was aiming at.
Ridiculous. Absurd.
But there are still deeper problems and I find myself inevitably drawn back to the original movie and what it did right and the fundamental contrast with what this movie the real heart of what this movie, unfortunately, did wrong.
Carl Denham.
It's not that Jack Black, per se, couldn't have worked as an updated version of Carl Denham. He could have. It was, rather, the way in which that character was reconceived.
In the original movie you had three really four, principal characters.
Ann Darrow, Carl Denham, Jack Driscoll and, of course, Kong.

And within the context of that movie, they all represent something.

Kong, dramatically, is a very interesting movie because, while it has an antagonist that is clearly Kong, it has no real villain. And clearly the makers of the movie undestood this. Kong is not evil he is not malevolent. He simply acts according to his nature.

The original Kong, at least as I see it, is about the collision between the civilized world and the untamed the savage world.
[nq:1]From the perspective of the film's makers, it is Carl Denham whorepresents, for lack of a better term, the "masculine" side of the civilized world he is the soldier/explorer/journalist/filmmaker. The man who comes with the gun and the camera and the trap.[/nq]
And that man faces off against Kong who embodies the savage world, the untamed world.
And he can't win. Kong is stronger the untamed world is stronger than the gun and the camera and the trap.
Rather, it is Ann Darrow, who represents the feminine side of civilization beauty and love and gentleness and sacrifice that is what ultimately overcomes the power of the savage world.

So if Carl Denham is the masculine aspect of civilization and Ann Darrow the feminine what is Jack Driscoll in the scheme of things?

Jack Driscoll, in the context of the story, is a rehearsal for Kong. He is also presented, early on, as a "tough hard-boiled egg" he's a woman hater, a hard guy but then he gets a look at a pretty face and bang he cracks up and goes sappy. But of course, that's not what really happens. What really happens is he falls in love. He discovers that he's able to fall in love. And he's civilized by her. Last we see of him, he's become "John Driscoll" he's wearing a tuxedo.
But, of course, Kong can fall in love with her, but he can't be civilized. It's not in his nature. All he can do, ultimately, is love and then die.
And that is really what elevates the story, what makes it a tragedy instead of simply a monster movie.
But what about the new version of Kong and the new version of Carl Denham?
What does he represent in the Peter Jackson King Kong?

I couldn't even begin to tell you. The original Carl Denham was a risk taker, but he wasn't stupid. He led men into danger, but he was right there at the front of the line. His priorities, fundamentally, were decent. When Ann was kidnapped, he wasn't interested in making his movie any more. He was up front leading the rescue party.

And the fact is, when that Carl Denham says, "We're millionaires boys, I'll share it with all of you," I believe him.

When Jack Black's Carl Denham says it, or when he says earlier that he's going to give the proceeds to the wife and kids of earlier victims I don't believe him for a second.
He's not simply obsessed he's selfish and he's a liar and worse than that, he comes across as somebody who lies to himself.

He's not strong enough to be a hero or to stand as a protagonist in this story as the original Carl Denham stood. And yet neither is he really bad enough or obstructive enough to be a villain.

I don't know what he is.
As for Englehorn and the Actor character (Baxter?) that was spun off from the original Jack Driscoll I don't know what to make of them either. They just seem to blow whichever way the story requires. Englehorn is constantly saying, "We're leaving. We're not going to go rescue them. To hell with them. And then, for no reason we ever see at least not on screen he keeps showing up and rescuing them. Why, other than that the plot requires it? And why in the world does Baxter leave and then opt to bring Englehorn back? Where did we see anything in his character to suggest that he would do such a thing or that Englehorn would?
It's not that you couldn't make that beat work but you have to do the work to make it work. And that work wasn't done - or at any rate, it didn't end up on screen.
And as for the reconstructed Jack Driscoll sure it's fun to have a screenwriter character but you have to ask yourself how does that character and the romance between them and that whole beat about him not speaking up and saying what he feels what does that really have to do with anything? Especially considering that it's never even paid off. It's not like he gets to the top of the Empire State Building and tells her how he feels. And even if he did so what? What does that have to do with anything?
How does that love story the Ann/Driscoll love story relate to the Ann/Kong love story as the Ann/Driscoll Ann/Kong love stories relate to one another so elegantly in the original?

Beats me.
And the final line coming from Carl Denham in original who is himself the bearer of the torch of civilization it makes sense no, it wasn't the airplanes it wasn't the guns, the cameras, the stuff that I embody that will conquer the savage world it's beauty it's the power embody in the woman that will ultimate tame the savage world that makes sense.
Coming from Carl Denham in the remake it means nothing.

NMS