The movie Peter Jackson calls “the piece of filmmaking of which I’m the proudest”
Early into his career as a movie director, Peter Jackson explored the horror and comedy genres, beginning with 1987’s Bad Taste and 1989’s black comedy puppet movie Meet the Feebles. Another horror comedy arrived in the shape of Braindead before Jackson eventually turned his attention to more serious works of cinema.
Critical acclaim arrived after the release of Heavenly Creatures in 1994, and it wasn’t long before Jackson had accrued enough acclaim to handle some of the most significant fantasy movies ever made. Between 2001 and 2003, Jackson released his The Lord of the Rings trilogy, based on the legendary fantasy novels by J.R.R. Tolkien, which have gone down in cinematic history.
It’s sometimes hard to remove the artist from the art and Jackson is certainly a figure who will forever be tied to The Lord of the Rings. Interestingly, though, it’s another movie of his that holds the place closest to his heart and not his excellent fantasy trilogy. Rather, 2005’s King Kong, the second remake of the 1933 classic romance monster movie, is the film that Jackson feels the most proud of.
When speaking with the DGA, Jackson once admitted that when he was approached to remake King Kong, he simply couldn’t say no. The director explained: “It was a childhood dream on one level, and I also felt that I had something to offer to the legend of Kong. A lot of young people out there were never, ever going to watch the black and white version.”
Starring Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrien Brody, King Kong takes place in 1933 and tells of a filmmaker who takes his cast and crew to the dangerous Skull Island, where they come across prehistoric creatures and, of course, a giant gorilla whom they duly take prisoner and transport to New York City.
Jackson admitted that he wanted to be the person “for a generation” of King Kong reviews and cement his version as the modern version that must be seen and not the original directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. “It’s such a great adventure story and so emotional,” he simply stated.
At the time of the interview, Jackson had recently watched some of his King Kong movies and reflected on the scenes that take place back in New York City in the last half an hour of the film, proceeding to call them “probably the piece of filmmaking of which I’m the proudest”.
The filmmaker added: “I recall we were very rushed in postproduction, and we really needed to get 15 or 20 minutes out of the first two-thirds of the film. We needed to tighten it a bit, but we could never figure out a way to do it in the time we had. So it’s a wee bit long, but I’m still very proud of it.”
Jackson had already been asked to director King Kong before he made The Lord of the Rings, but production was halted when he agreed to handle the Tolkien movies and also by the fact that there were a number of monster-based films coming out in the late 1990s. After the success of The Lord of the Rings, though, Jackson took on the project again and set about making one of the most expensive movies of all time and one that he would always be proud of.
