King Kong (2005)

Every once in a while comes a movie that is so epic that it makes regular epics seem indies, a movie that is so perfectly done that we try to complain about something, and we can only think of complaining about it having too much of this or that, when in fact it's just enough, and less would've been better, but more too. And what a coincidence that a single filmmaker is able to create two of these in such a short period, as Peter Jackson follows up his Lord of the Rings trilogy with a remake of the movie that inspired him to be a filmmaker, King Kong. Jackson remakes and honors the Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack 1933 original, and he also betters it, adding everything the original could not put on screen not because of technology in the case of the visual effects, but because the times were simpler, and what makes this new version a perfect film are its developed characters and its refined story.

The overall story is the same, as filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black in a serious but still Jack Black role) finds a map to an inexistent island, and gets Captain Englehorn (played by Thomas Kretschmann), the captain of the S.S. Venture to take him there to film a movie. He also takes his film crew, which includes Colin Hanks as Carl's assistant Preston, hungry unemployed actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts with an award worthy performance), movie hero Bruce Baxter (played by Early Edition's Kyle Chandler) and famous writer Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody in a perfect not really hero performance). Also on board are Englehorn's crew of sailors including Evan Parke's Hayes and Jamie Bell's Jimmy, none of them aware of the real destination of the ship, Skull Island. There they will find a forgotten civilization, dinosaurs, huge insects and bats, and the titular ape, which happens to be big, very big.
Jackson uses his LotR collaborator Richard Taylor and his WETA team of visual effects once again to make magic with a million things to delight us with. There's the wonderful 30s New York they recreated, which serves as the beginning of the movie showing the depression era and the working class people our would be damsel in distress Ann Darrow comes from. And it also serves for the magnificent climax of the movie three hours later with the classic scene high up in the Empire State Building, as beauty and beast contemplate the sunset recreating their first encounter back at Skull Island. Both scenes are so remarkably beautiful, depicting their love story that goes beyond everything I could've expected.

And that is something Jackson and co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens (both of them also shared credits for the LotR screenplays) really better from the original story, the relationship between Kong and Ann. Kong was in love with Fay Wray back in the day but that love was not reciprocal. Here the ape falls in love with Naomi Watts, and she falls right back, even putting her life on the line just as Kong defended her from more than one T-Rex and several other dangers before. The way they work together is fantastic, and it works better because of the magical by Andy Serkis who moves as Kong as perfect as he did Gollum (Serkis also gets a regular role as Lumpy the Cook, and he makes the part more than it could ever be, showing us that he is truly a great actor). The chemistry is special, and it's no problem that they are human and ape, especially after we see them dance in Central Park in one of the most graceful scenes in the movie. We know Kong dies at the end of the movie just as in the previous versions, but the way it happens here resembles Jack and Rose's emotionally epic finale in Titanic and it works so amazingly well here you'll cry again, and it won't be the first time in this movie alone.

But there's more than that. There's also Carl Denham's story, a man so obsessed with making his film he could die rescuing his camera from whatever danger it faces. While kidnapped Ann spends time with Kong in the island, Denham and Driscoll lead a team of sailors to rescue her, but it's not that easy. Their journey puts them against many dinosaurs, Kong himself in the famous giant log scene, and finally, in a scene that could've perfectly given the movie an R rating, they battle giant bugs of all kinds known and unknown. And the scene is so horrific I had to close my eyes at times. Black is marvelous once again after they bring Kong back to Manhattan, and he gets to savor fame as he gives the world its 8th Wonder.

Six times Academy Award nominee James Newton Howard scores the film (after LotR's scorer Howard Shored departed from the project) and his once again perfectly Award worthy, giving us hints to the original Max Steiner score. Cinematographer Andrew Lesnie and conceptual designer Alan Lee help Jackson once again achieve a flawless look for the movie giving those sunset and aerial scenes an enchanted complexion. Remaking a classic is tough, but when the people behind it put so much dedication to create something so big, gorgeous and majestic as King Kong, the result is more than good. The result is the best movie of the year and also one of the best movies ever made.