I had the opportunity to watch both King Kong and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe this past week—the two movies that have, incidentally, been duking it out at the box office.
Most blogs in this part of the blogosphere have showered the Narnia movie with a lot of praise, including Boy Scout Blogger, Smart Homeschool, and others. While King Kong has also experienced a lot of success at the box office, it has been largely ignored for the most part, perhaps overshadowed by the release of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (TLWW).
After seeing both movies, I have to confess that I don’t think the Narnia movie is all it has been made out to be by others. King Kong, while not as family-friendly as TLWW, is a much better film in this writer’s mind.
Don’t get me wrong. TLWW was a good film, but it felt like a watered-down spin-off (in some cases, rip-off) of The Lord of the Rings movies. The movie didn’t have much of an epic feel to it, and there were no truly gripping scenes or thrilling moments or awe-inspiring shots. I only clearly remember one or two scenes from the movie, and when I walked out of the theatre I realized that the film never really captured either my attention or my interest.
After watching King Kong, I have to wonder what TLWW would have been like if Peter Jackson had been directing it. King Kong is, simply put, a much more compelling movie than TLWW even though it’s a re-make of a re-make. King Kong has “Peter Jackson” written all over every aspect of it, and yet, the movie feels nothing at all like LotR. Having never seen the original or the remake, I walked into King Kong not knowing what to expect, but I left the theatre impressed and eager to see the movie again.
I won’t get into too much detail about King Kong since a review of the movie will be appearing in the next issue of Virtue Magazine, but suffice to say, in this writer’s opinion, the acting in King Kong is superb, the CGI is quite good, the story draws the viewer in, and over the top scenes like a huge gorilla perched at the top of the Empire State building with a beautiful young woman are made perfectly believable.
In TLWW, on the other hand, we didn’t see a believable transition in Peter and Edmund—one moment the two are children, the next moment they are armed with swords, leading their army into battle, and engaging in combat with the greatest of ease. King Kong had equally far-out ideas in it, but Jackson did a much better job of making everything believable.
In short, TLWW felt like a “kiddie” film and King Kong like an epic film. There isn’t anything wrong with kiddie films, but TLWW had the potential to be so much more. And it simply didn’t fulfill that potential.