Special effects can do a lot. They can make spaceships, monsters, explosions, and epic battles. They can, when properly executed, make you forget about the distinction between reality and fiction.
They have a much tougher time with two things: Wonder and emotion. There’s a difference between being awed by the special effect and the thing it presents; while it’s easy to admire the technical art, it’s harder to distance the audience from the pixels and green screen enough to present something that can be a wonder in and of itself. When I think of Jurassic Park, the scene that stands out isn’t the T-rex attack or the velociraptors; instead, it’s when Sam Neil’s character beholds the first dinosaur, a massive Brachiosaur. Perhaps it’s my soft spot for palaeontology, but that scene perfectly conveys the sense of “Wow, I’m looking at a dinosaur.”
Emotion is a part of this – the audience needs to believe the actors believe the effect is real – but also something in and of itself. With filmmakers increasingly relying on characters composed entirely of CGI, that CGI needs to convey not only reality, but emotion. The camera needs to look its star in the eye and see its heart, whether the star lives in a Beverly Hills mansion or a hard drive.
George Lucas, to pick my favourite target, doesn’t seem to understand this. While the recent Star Wars films were technically accomplished, they were hollow and antiseptic. CGI Yoda lacked the emotion of Muppet Yoda, and all the starship explosions in the galaxy didn’t make me care about Hayden “Corrugated Cardboard” Christenson. Special effects without a soul make for a very nice video game, but I’d just as soon stay home and play Grand Theft Auto.
Peter Jackson gets it. Perhaps it comes from his low-budget, B-Movie, Ed Wood Wannabe days, where the “special” effects wouldn’t convince a developmentally challenged budgie, let alone the sophisticated and mature audiences Hollywood expects. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, for all its faults, relied as much on actors and script as WETA, his phenomenal FX house. Perhaps the most impressive accomplishment was literally giving Gollum a soul: Instead of just pixels and empty space, Jackson made Andy Serkis the real Gollum. Not only did Serkis map the movements of the creature, but he acted the part on set, giving the actors something real to work with.
With King Kong, he replicates the effect on a much, much larger scale. And the most amazing thing about the film may be this: In a film that’s the second remake of a 70 year-old movie, telling a story that everyone already knows, in an extravaganza full of dinosaurs and giant insects, Jackson has bet the entire effort on two things: Naomi Watts, and the eyes of a giant ape who doesn’t really exist.
Let’s not brush past the fact: King Kong is a visual feast and an amazing achievement from both a technical and artistic standpoint. From its opening recreation of 1920s New York to the ghastly landscape and inhabitants of Skull Island to the tragic ending, King Kong is frequently breathtaking to behold. The much anticipated Tyrannosaurus Rex vs. King Kong brawl is a brutal joy to behold, and Jackson revisits his gross-out roots for the cringe-inducing grotesquery of the insect pit. If it suffers from an occasional bit of excess, it’s forgivable because Jackson knows how to do excess right.
But ultimately, none of that matters. Yes, it’s necessary for Kong to be a convincing giant ape; if you could see the strings (figuratively speaking), the suspension of disbelief would be hard to maintain. But what elevates King Kong from a smash-em-up action flick into an artistic achievement is the ability of Naomi Watts to look her massive co-star in the eyes and see a soul. And what makes it truly magnificent is that the audience can see it too.
Jackson can do big as well as anyone, but he also understands the value of intimacy. He gives Watts the time and space to develop and show her affection for the great ape, from her Vaudevillian play for survival to her recognition that Kong is her best hope for survival to realizing he sees her as more than just a plaything. It’s the quiet moments that give the film its grace: Two shared sunsets will break your heart, and Kong’s discovery of an icy pond in Central Park provides a moment of peace before the film resumes its trek towards tragedy.
Watts deserves an Oscar for her stellar show of falling in love with a co-star who isn’t really there. Though she lives up to Jack Black’s description of her as “the saddest girl in the world,” she also shows wonder and love towards Kong that only the most cynical of audiences could question. And she deserves to be followed to the podium by Kong himself – the combination of Andy Serkis’ live-action modelling and WETA’s phenomenal work has created a beautiful, frightening, and sensitive beast. And for all the dinosaurs, insects and scenery, WETA’s greatest achievement comes in Kong’s eyes.
Watching King Kong like watching a very good production of Romeo and Juliet: You know how it’s going to end. You know the finale where the two lovers ride off into the distance exists only in your mind, and the reality of the fiction will always come crashing down upon you. But it’s all in the lead actors: Believe in them, and you can believe that maybe, just maybe, they can live happily after. The world, to say nothing of the plot, is against you, but there can always be one more scene, one more glance, one more moment shared, to show you that love can be real, and that there are still things to provoke wonder and awe in the world.
The inevitable happens, as inevitabilities are prone to do. The film reaches its tragic finale, the credits roll, and the audience goes home.
But for its all-too-short three hours King Kong can make you believe.