After the Lord of the Rings trilogy it was an inspired choice for Peter Jackson to return to his "pet" project, a remake of his favourite film, King Kong. Coming in at twice the running time of the original, Jackson keeps the ’30s setting and spends a lot of time developing a back story for his main characters: maverick movie man Carl Denham (Jack Black) and Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts in the role made famous by Fay Wray), explaining how their paths cross and why they end up on a ship heading to the mysterious Skull Island.
There Denham and his crew find living dinosaurs, insects the size of bats, bats the size of cats and the biggest star of all, Kong the great ape himself – an extraordinary blend of computer generated animation and digital "performance capture" based on the movements and expressions of Gollum actor Andy Serkis, after he observed animal behaviour.
The big action set-pieces are truly outstanding – notably the dinosaur stampede that outdoes most of Jurassic Park in one sequence alone. The unlikely bond that grows between Ann and Kong, amid the terror of the island’s other inhabitants, is genuinely moving. Although everyone knows the ending, the Empire State Building climax can still leave you misty eyed (kudos also to James Newton Howard for his emotive score too). At its heart, Jackson’s King Kong is quite possibly the world’s first true animal-rights monster movie.
As with Lord of the Rings, Jackson remembers that the little details are just as important as huge spectacle. The end result is one of the most impressive "creature features" ever made and a worthy tribute to the 1933 original that should look mightily beautiful in HD.
Related story: other big action-packed HD movies on Sky over New Year include Transporter 2 and Doom.
From: Sony to double BRAVIA LCD TV production for growing European demand