King Kong @ Amazon

Having just brought to life the greatest film trilogy of all time (not debatable!), Peter Jackson must have been worried that whatever came next would be a letdown. But instead of scale his ambition back, he dove straight into another project whose creation had been a lifelong dream: King Kong.

The film was a smash at the box office, and garnered relatively good reviews, which might make its inclusion in Criticker’s Heroes of Contentiousness feature surprising. But in retrospect, its FCQ of 50.45 (Film Contentiousness Quotient, details here) is understandable. I know plenty of people who were left cold by the sheer over-abundance of both CGI and running time.

The first time I saw King Kong was in a theater, and I loved it — the great ape was probably the best CGI creation to date, and the action was terrifying & exhilarating. But by the second viewing, on DVD, doubts began to form. The 3 hour 8 minute running time is at least one hour too long. Get to the island already! Had every scene featuring Jack Black been cut, the film would have been immensely improved. And a lot of the CGI — particularly the dinosaur-valley scene — was utterly unconvincing.

So which will it be: GREAT or TERRIBLE? You must choose. I’ll come down on the side of “great”, although I don’t think I’ll be watching it a third time.

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Here are a couple opinions from Criticker users.

JoshStew06: “While the opening is overly long, it is also it’s only true flaw, after that it’s an amazing adventure that succeeds in bringing to life the giant gorilla. Peter Jackson is a brilliant and wise director, and the way he skillfully balances the thrilling action (some of the best staged in recent memory) with the heart-tugging drama is amazing. The ending is terrifically moving.”

Patabongo: “About as dull as a megabudget film of a gigantic rampaging ape can possibly be.”

There was a problem with last week’s poll, on Marie Antoinette, so we’ve changed polling software and will post it again. Please vote! Results will be revealed next week.

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And just to prove that we don’t always have to disagree, here are two more films that are the opposite of contentious:
Unanimously Crap (FCQ 0.27): Gigli. Bennifer already seems so long ago…
Unanimously Sweet (FCQ 3.06): Raiders of the Lost Ark. Before he was Shia LeBouf’s sidekick, Indy was the baddest.