Battleangel | Personal

Wired seems to think the movie was way long. I thought it was OK. Plus of course they deplore the meddling with a classic movie. Well, I never saw the original and I’m not a romantic fan of originals. Not when they are that old at least. I just can’t stand bad special effects and as such it is only in the last 10-15 years or so that movies have become enjoyable. To hell with the classic movie archetypes. I can’t stomach them.
Is it too long then? Perhaps. At least if you sat there hating it. But I’m one of those who think that 3h8min is getting your money’s worth. And King Kong does such a good job at recreating not just fantasy creatures but 1933 New York as well.

But the main theme in King Kong is still its take on colonialism and cultural imperialism.

Newsday - Is “King Kong” racist? - Lots of people say it is. And, if it is, why does the film keep getting remade? What does it say about us if the new “Kong” is a huge hit?

Any movie that features white people sailing off to the Third World to capture a giant ape and carry it back to the West for exploitation is going to be seen as a metaphor for colonialism and racism.

Movie reviewer David Edelstein, writing in Slate.com, notes the “implicit racism of ‘King Kong’ - the implication that Kong stands for the black man brought in chains from a dark island (full of murderous primitive pagans) and with a penchant for skinny white blondes.”

Comparing the new film with the original, The Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter observed, “It remains a parable of exploitation, cultural self-importance, the arrogance of the West, all issues that were obvious in the original but unexamined; they remain unexamined here, if more vivid.”

Yes indeed, they remain unexamined because that it not within the scope of the movie. But they are presented in such an overt way that only an idiot could miss them. The claim of racism is a quite fuzzy one. Isn’t one of the reasons to remake it to show the abuses of cultures and the exploitation. Or is that just the benefit of a well-rounded education speaking since it enables me to pick up that theme so easily and that it for becomes the very theme that the movies revolves around? I mean, what else could it be about?