" i double-kong dare you " or " yes, spoilers ahead "

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sometimes people forget about the entertainment factor. it's about the ride, the gasps of terror, the funny, the drama, the tears of joy, and about the experience of it all. king kong is a brilliant ride of all of these isms.

you have to take a guarded stance against the bullshit blockbuster movies that hollywood and hollywood-type studio systems are trying to sell to you. sure they may be gimungous and visually spectacular, but you end up watching a 15 dollar-a-pop-plus-popcorn-set piece of flashy poo. it's hollow. it's vacuous. it's wasted your time, and made some ass-muppet in tinseltown that much richer.

to get back to it, director peter jackson has created a cinematic feast to consume, not only with the eyes, but with the entire being. you can tell how much he loves this character, with the vast everythingness of the piece.

it's about powerful storytelling. you have to want to lend yourself to a film, to fully engross yourself and everything in the moment, in order to fully appreciate a majesty of this sort. and it does live up to the hype. oh yes. believe it this time; king kong will do it for you, in which ever way it needs to be done.

and okay, let's take a moment to discuss a few tics people have about such tales:

a) CGI creatures: people, you're all going to have to get over the fact that it's CGI. seriously. i mean, i didn't hear you complain when you went to see jurassic park for the first time. all i heard were gasps of delight and wonder. yes, i was there.

using the CGI technology has become old hat, so when you see one or many of these creatures, it's only human of us to automatically think to ourselves (and out loud. yeah i know who you annoying people are.), "gee, these CGI creatures look soooo CGI. i am actively and consciously going to not believe it/them."

and why? because you're better than the movie? because you're smarter than the filmmakers who only want to entertain you and tell you a story? what are they going to do but do their best to portray these monsters and ancient animals in the best way they know how?

i suppose the moral is, stop being such a smart-ass viewer. if you paid for the ticket to ride, you are going to have to exercise your imagination muscle. of course it's fake! that's the whole point!! it's called suspension of belief, and i say, look into it.

also, if it still looks fake to you, think of it as sort of a nod to the 1933 version of king kong, and the clay models they were working with then; how they moved and how they moved people with their at-the-time staggering realism. it's true, look into it.

b) film versus fanboy: no doubt this is a pet project of peter jackson's. it is plainly obvious that he loves the king that is kong. you can just imagine him in the screening room, going fucking insane at how it's all coming together.

he's writhing with excitement, the screen flickering to and fro, and he's rolling on the floor bawling out with tears of joy. okay maybe not, but you can see how hard he worked with his crew on this. it's no mere project, it's a fulfillment.

sometimes you meet these people who are called fanboy's(and they can be girls too, although i'm not sure that fangirl would mean the same stereotype as a fanboy), and they're passionate. i mean, they'll talk your ear off at length about the latest bit of cinema gossip, nerd fiction, comic book crossover spectacular, their theories on everything geek, and pretty much can either go one of two ways: cool, or really not cool at all.

you look at peter jackson, and you start to realize, this guy is a fanboy (the good kind) that made it! if any of you cannot believe how nerdy and successful this amazing at-one-time-pudgy and-hobbit-like man is, did you catch the sumatran rat monkey(dead alive reference) cage in the illegal live-animal capture hold in the brig of the boat? fantastic!!! that's what i'm talking about. and if you still are confused, ask a friend, because odds are you do actually know someone that is a fanboy, and you just don't know.

c) you know how it ends: c'mon people, pull it together. we all know that you know how it ends. it's the entire point of the movie. it's a reinterpretation. it's a fable, a fantasy, a tall tale, an adventure, and a story. it's beauty and the beast exemplified. it's magical. it's raw and vicious. it's period and somewhat campy and stylized and perfect.

of course king kong dies in the end. he has to die in the end. don't you ever get mad at me or make that face; i told you this in the title. and it's king kong, how can he survive in the city? it's just not going to happen. this is a tragedy. it's a fable of caution; of how we can let nature be wild in it's own environment.

and you see how truly along kong is in his jungle solitude; he fights for survival every day and overcomes it as the last of his kind. it'll touch you, or else you're not truly all-human in the way that king kong is not truly all-flesh-and-blood.

it's of how we ourselves become the monsters and destroy all of the beautiful things we try to uphold. this is a melancholy story about love and the nature of the world living in tandem with each other. it's all of this, and it's all told through the eyes of this 25-foot tall protagonist. i tell you, it's super-fresh!

d) it's 3 hours long in running time: can you handle that? can you even foresee how long this is going to be? i'm betting that your imagining the strain of a droning-on feature slumping languishly in places making the whole thing drag and strain under the weight of a story drawn out and killed.

in fact, this piece is 3 hours and 8 minutes long, and it only seems like an hour and a half or so. this is what we like to call, the magic of editing (also known as the power of pacing and storyboarding, but at a different point in time as per to the [post]production). i never lags or feels dialogue heavy. it's all about balance and choices; the choice here was obviously to make a kick-ass super fest, and it succeeds.

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so use the restroom beforehand, tuck your store-bought snackies safely into the pockets of your bag, sip your drinks slowly, and get ready to not just watch a movie, but to be moved with an experience.

just trust me when i say you're going to love it. and if you don't you can write to me and tell me why, we can discuss it openly and truthfully, weighing the pros and cons over tea, and maybe even have a dialogue of our own. i know it's not perfect, but it's perfect enough to look past all of the little details you might be inclined to list and exploit.

i'm sure you can come up with a whole slew of other nitpicky things (billy elliot get all frustrated and small when he could've been a greater character antagonist, the "natives" on skull island and how come they had to be scary and darkly-skinned and then where did they all go later on? the use of slow-motion but in a strange way that takes you out of the action, andy serkis as lumpy the cook and how his eye wasn't really shut all the way [and kudos for his death scene. this boy gets got in one of the nastiest most savage ways-of-nature that one can think of], the dinosaurs-are-falling sequence and how did the characters run so fast and so far without getting lost? on and on and on and on STOP IT!!!), but you'd only actively ruin a superbly made film for doing so.

but in all fairness to your intelligence if you happened to dislike the piece, in light of mass-consumerism, brand-namerism, pro-republicanism, gaudy jewelryisms, and teenagers ruling them all, this is a perfect example of what your "money's worth" should look like.

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