In 1997, I stood in line with hundreds of others outside of a theater in Oakland. We were waiting to see <span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Titanic</span>. On first viewing, the movie swept me away with its broad romantic gestures. The final 45 minutes were as big as the legend itself. On second viewing, the first 2 hours bored me something fierce. The final 45 minutes were still cool. At the end of the day, it was a movie for people who think Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet pining for each other equals entertainment. You know. Girls.
Tonight, I saw <span style=”font-weight: bold;”>King Kong</span>, a love story for boys. The male love interest is a gigantic ape. Boys dig that. The female love interest is Naomi Watts, who glows on screen, weilding her fragility and compassion like swords. Boys dig that, too. Even the gay ones.
And then there are monsters. Lots and lots of monsters. Brontos, Stegos, T-Rexes and velociraptors. Ember-eyed vampire bats and mosquitos you can fell only with bullets. Oh, and the unnerving giant wetas, scorpions, spiders, slugs, um, and other cool stuff.
Why is Kong a love story for boys? Imagine weilding the strength of a 5-ton gorilla, finding in yourself a calm that only the love of another, gentler person can cultivate. Or — because they’re messing with your honey — duking it out with lethal carnivores. Or violently demolishing everything in your path to protect the one you adore. Or how about using your bare hands to climb a skyscraper, claiming its peak as yours and yours alone, pimp-slapping airplanes out of the sky, and, before falling to your death, sighing the sigh of a creature transformed and devastated by devotion.
How can Leonardo and Kate possibly compete?
Peter Jackson’s done a rare thing, something I haven’t seen perhaps since <span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Raiders of the Lost Ark</span>: he commands our complete attention with expectation and spectacle while rewarding our insatiable fascination with love stories. His ape, who has no idea he’s an icon, is at once rude, self-inflated, terrible, charming, lonely, fearless, and noble. He’s a guy’s guy. Our 70-year-old familiarity with Kong’s horrible fate loads every sweet moment leading to his death with emotional Technicolor. Because it’s never intentionally weepy or obsessed with its built-in tragedy, <span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Kong</span> allows a boy to choke up, even cry, and feel damned good about it.
Boy stuff, girl stuff, is the movie any good? Yes. After three hours of <span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Kong</span>, I emerged from the theater feeling both vigorous and relaxed. With a lot of event movies — say, <span style=”font-weight: bold;”>The Chronicles of Narnia</span> or <span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire</span> — I walk out feeling perfectly entertained, but 10 minutes later, I’m hungry again. <span style=”font-weight: bold;”>Kong</span>, on the other hand, plays well in memory. I keep returning to the movie’s most wrenching scene. Not when Kong dies, as powerful as that is, but when he is captured. It’s an infuriating scene, infuriating because you don’t want to watch the king come down, but you can’t tear yourself from its dreadful inevitability.
Boys dig that.