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| 209 5 | King Kong’s Melancholy A Reading of Peter Jackson’s King Kong I n 1996, Peter Jackson was in early stages of production of a remake of King Kong for Universal Pictures when he experienced a series of setbacks: his “thrillomedy,” The Frighteners (1996), failed at the box office; two competing studios announced impending release of their own Kong-related features, Godzilla (Roland Emmerich, 1998) and Mighty Joe Young (Ron Underwood , 1998), causing Universal to fear a glut on the market; and Universal found fault with the original script for King Kong, written by Jackson and his partner Frances Walsh. After letting Jackson develop the King Kong project for a few months, Universal canceled it—an event Jackson would later refer to as “literally the blackest day in my entire career.”1 Jackson’s next project, the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–3), became a legendary success, earning nearly three billion dollars in worldwide box office receipts and seventeen Academy Awards—not to mention huge profits from DVDs, video games, and other products. Able to choose any project he wanted, Jackson elected to return to King Kong (2005). When I wrote the first edition of this book some years ago, it seemed to me a synthesis of methods drawn from media reception studies and the new film history could be used to forge a framework for understanding the cultural life of the King Kong figure. In a larger sense, I wanted to show how cinematic phenomena come to operate in non-cinematic cultural spheres. ThesesamemethodscouldcertainlybeappliedtoJackson’swork.Forexample, the media reception scholar might examine how Jackson’s status as a New Zealand filmmaker making Hollywood films in his hometown of Wellington poses certain challenges to traditional national frameworks for thinking about the production and reception of Hollywood films.2 (Until recently, Jackson 210 | c h a p t e r 5 has shot his films entirely in New Zealand; however, part of The Lovely Bones was filmed in Pennsylvania.) Second, a reception critic might consider how Jackson’s prowess with special effects and new digital technologies has played into his artistic reputation, as well as the decisions for marketing his films. For example, few directors take as much interest in supervising the production and marketing of DVD editions of their films as Jackson. Third, the reception critic might study the ways Jackson has made specific promotional appeals to fans. His early low-budget films, Bad Taste (1988), Meet the Feebles (1990), and Braindead (alternate title Dead Alive, 1992), became cult hits. The success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy brought Jackson a huge fan base that he tried—not always successfully—to retain for the Kong remake. Jackson’s efforts to connect directly with fans played an important role in the remake’s massive promotional campaign. For example, he tried to break new ground with what he called the production diaries—weekly video-blog entries from the set created by his DVD production team and posted on the independent fan website for Kong, kongisking.net.3 Any of these approaches—the new global blockbuster, new media in production and promotion, and new types of fan appeals—could be developed into a reception-oriented analysis of Jackson’s work.4 I decided to depart from reception methods used earlier in this book, however, because it seemed to me the remake’s revisionism was not being adequately addressed by critics or fans. The remake features roughly the same characters, settings, and plotline as the original King Kong, but its script and visual style constitute a substantial reworking of the original film’s style and themes. When the remake was released, reviews were mixed, but whether critics championed the film or denounced it, they usually failed to take note of how and why Jackson had revised the original King Kong. When I first saw Jackson’s remake of KingKong, I was surprised by the way the sexual and racial tensions that drive the original film seemed muted (or displaced, as we shall see). The new film pivots instead around the concept of melancholy—apparent in Kong’s status as a grieving, melancholy hero, and an overall atmosphere that plays upon a confusion of the terms “Depression” and “depression.” The translation of mood and theme is exemplified in the contrast between the two versions of the screen-test scene, in which Carl Denham films Ann Darrow on the deck of the Venture. In the original version...

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