King Kong (2005) - Extended Edition

REVIEW

How you react to the news that Peter Jackson has done to his remake of King Kong what he did to his Lord of the Rings films and reinstated previously unseen footage in a longer edition will largely depend on what you found good or bad the already lengthy original cut. If its more visual effects you're looking for, more state-of-the-art dinosaur action, then you'll be well pleased with what Jackson has done. If you felt that film was already overloaded with monsters, you'll be sorely disappointed.

Jackson has edited back in three entire scenes and several short extensions to scenes that amount to a total of 13 minutes of previously unseen footage and the whole package has been reissued in a three disc set with yet more behind the scenes footage.

The first significant addition to the film comes near the end of the first disc and features the expedition setting off to rescue Ann and being attacked by a Triceratops. There's more monster mayhem when the expedition comes under attack from a giant sea monster and one can easily see why this sequence was originally excised - the effects are well below-par and look only part-finished. A final major addition features another monster, a giant bird-like creature shot by Lumpy.

Fun though these sequences are, they do add to the feeling of dino-overkill that some of the remake's detractors felt ruined the film. Dotted around the existing cut's already over-the-top Brontosaurus stampede (sadly, Jackson could have done with cutting that sequence drastically but clearly felt he didn't need to) and the titanic bout between Kong and the three Tyrannosaurus Rex's, the new scenes do tend to make one sick of dinosaurs very quickly and smack of self-indulgence. They're fun, (mostly) technically impressive but in the end they're just too much of a good thing and add nothing to the film as a whole.

Elsewhere, there are a few smaller add-ins, most of them all but invisible to anyone but the most devoted of Kong fans. Helpfully though, the film's menu points the way to the new scenes.

The making of the 2005 King Kong is already the best documented production in cinema history, with the Video Diaries DVD complemented by some extras on the original release. Now comes even more background information courtesy of a commentary from Jackson and Philippa Boyens; 37 minutes of further deleted scenes, 16 in all, all watchable with optional introductions; 19 minutes of gaffs and bloopers; the "missing" production diary, a fun skit in which the male stars send up their supposed preoccupation with watching themselves on the video playback; a 10 minute look at the way the new Kong closely follows some key scenes from the 1933 original; pre-viz animatics; a short film about the crew killing each other in order to get a birthday present to Jackson; a brief featurette on the WETA Collectibles line of memorabilia; a handful of trailers; DVD-ROMs of the 1996 and 2005 shooting scripts; and disc three is a treasure trove of information with the 3 hour long Recreating the Eighth Wonder: The Making of King Kong, a truly exhausting look at the making of the film which contains no material from the earlier documentaries.

All in all, the Extended Cut of King Kong is a bit of a mixed bag. The new additions do little to make an already extremely good film any better, but the extras more than make this required viewing for Kong fans.
KEVIN LYONS

Last Updated: 15 October, 2008