Black and white and easy answers
According to last week's US box office numbers King Kong trails The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in total gross ticket sales by about 60 million dollars. Despite Narnia having been released a week earlier it still leads Kong in per-screen average and number of screens, which means it will likely beat the ape when they both leave theatres and are promptly pimped for several DVD editions.
I have a feeling that the Parents Television Council would love to explain this with a nod to America tiring of incessant violence and Naomi Watts' bare shoulder.
Maybe the pale-white skin, but not the violence. But I suspect that the biggest obstacle that Kong has not been able to overcome is its comparatively complicated moral arc. That damned dirty ape is just way too conflicting.
Fortunately Peter Jackson has given us a very simple route to comparison. After five weeks at the US box office, Kong has earned just over 200 million dollars. At five weeks Jackson's first installment in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, had earned a little over 240 million. 40 million dollars may not seem like a lot in box office terms, and it's probably not. But consider that while Fellowship was an over-hyped film based on a much-loved book, it was still a film directed by a relative unknown and featuring a relatively unknown group of actors. Five weeks into the run of The Return of the King, the third part of the LOTR cycle, a now idolized director and group of actors yanked 329 million dollars out of American moviegoer's pockets. That's a big difference, even to Hollywood.
Could it be that America really is tired of loud, overlong fantasy? Considering Narnia is just a slightly more Biblicalish LOTR, I'm still not buying it.
Consider a general analysis of the plot landscapes of both LOTR and Narnia. There is nothing cuddly about Orcs, nothing pleasant about the White Witch. Who could find anything remotely conflicted about Frodo? Even when his ring fetish caused him to act cruelly, we all knew it was all the ring's fault. And who could find anything conflicted about Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy (let alone Aslan)? Yes indeed, the lines are clearly drawn in both series.
Now consider that poor ape. Sure, he looks scary. Sure, he swats some planes around. But all he wants is to get the girl in the end - isn't that what the hero always wants and gets? I'm not insinuating that this should pass as quality depth of character. But compared to the chess board world of the other films, Kong is a tormented soul right out of Shakespearean tragedy.
Take a gander at other popular entertainment. Television crime shows never have a hard time demonizing whatever vicious monster our smart heroes are chasing. Reality shows inevitably create frighteningly honest competition among friends that have chosen their particular favorite contestant. Horror movies - well, they're just an hour and a half version of the beginning of those crime shows.
The parallels between our entertainment and our current foreign policy escapades should no longer be hidden from anyone. It's those parallels that further doom Kong to a relatively disappointing showing at the box office. With Rings, Narnia and CSI, we all know who's going to win in the end (horror movies don't always end badly for the villain, but the villain is always the only interesting character in those movies anyway, giving them the sheen of a hero). Unless they changed the ending - I've only seen the much shorter original - Kong's resolution is downright murky. Our moviegoing sensibilities are nowhere near prepared for late-Vietnam-era cynicism. This country is definitely not ready for the ape to die.
Posted by Joel at 1/19/2006 10:10:00 PM
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