The same month some were celebrating the birth of one Savior, the movie industry eagerly anticipated the arrival of its own: King Kong. For various reasons (higher ticket prices, lower quality films, video games, iPods and DVDs) few films did extremely well. King Kong promised to buck the box office trend.
Yes, the movie has made about $215 million in the States thus far, but the $207 million production cost and the millions Universal Studios spent to market the film appear less justified given its lackluster box office performance. Kong appeared to be a guaranteed hit: Director Peter Jackson made a gorgeous film, it featured an Oscar-caliber cast and it opened to great reviews.
So what went wrong?
1) King Kong is not Lord of the Rings. Though obvious, this seemed to escape the notice of the executives who green-lighted such an expensive movie without a built-in fan base. LOTR had fans waiting decades for their literary classic to make its screen debut; the public never clamored for a King Kong remake.
2) The Universal execs wanted another Titanic. That 1997 phenomenon did well for several reasons, primarily Leonardo DiCaprio. It's perfectly fine to cast Oscar-caliber actors, but the filmmakers better make darn well sure the cast is suited for movie. Quite simply, Kong's male leads hurt the film. Adrien Brody is a likeable character actor, but he is not and never will be handsome enough to attract a large crowd. As for Jack Black, his successful turn in School of Rock made it difficult to take him seriously. Both played their parts admirably but neither performance invites repeat business like Titanic did.
3) Jackson fumbled the racial dynamics in this film -- not horribly, but enough to make the audience feel uncomfortable. Let me get this straight: a big, black ape on an unknown island falls in love with beautiful, white woman. A team of mostly white men rescue her from what they perceive to be a dangerous animal. The ape is drugged and taken back to civilization to earn money for its white captors. After Kong's infamous fight on the Empire State Building, he falls to his death. Jackson ends the film reflecting on how beauty killed the beast as if it were just that simple. This doesn't give justice to the significance of the movie's implications, and, more than likely, these racial undertones affected some minorities' interest in the film.
4) The timing for this movie just wasn't right. We had a year that saw the amazing success of the penetrating drama Crash, the doomed romance of Brokeback Mountain and the inspirational adventure of four children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The public was willing to pay for movies that were more serious and reflective.
5) This was supposed to be an action film. Marketing executives desperately needed men to watch this movie if they hoped to make a decent profit. Incredibly, they failed to promote the iconic scene of King Kong and a T-Rex fighting to the death. Most people were instead convinced the love story was the crux of the movie. Last time I checked, inter-species romance doesn't interest American -- or international -- audiences.
Perhaps I am overanalyzing the film's underperformance. Perhaps King Kong's greatest flaw is its 187-minute run time. After driving to the theater, standing in line and sitting through the previews, most folks probably found the experience a bit too time-consuming to watch beauty kill the beast.
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