I love this big-ass monkey

Today, I saw King Kong. Holy shit. If I had to sum up that movie in two words, that would be it: Holy shit.

I could see Peter Jackson following the same path as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, in that he'll keep making these completely amazing movies one right after the other until he reaches the point that hardcore movie geeks will scrutinize his every move. Jackson's past four films have been events more than they've been mere movies. He has succeeded where no one has before: He has made millions of people not only sit through a trilogy of three-hour-plus films, but made us anticipate the four-hour director's cuts a year later. After Lord of the Rings, he could've adapted Webster's Dictionary for the big screen and still made me want to pre-order tickets for the midnight first screening.

Now, he has brought us a three-hour remake of King Kong (the original clocked in at around 90 minutes). In this huge package, Jackson has managed to take action, drama, comedy, horror and fantasy, throw it in a blender and hit 'frappe'. And, much like with Lord of the Rings, he's taken his actors in directions I never thought they'd be capable of. When the first Rings flick came out, I would watch Sam and Frodo and say to myself, "Rudy? And the kid from Flipper?". Now, of course, I watch films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Sin City and think "NO, FRODO, NO!!!" This time around there's Jack Black...JACK BLACK?!? One of my favorite dramatic performances of the year is coming from Shallow Hal?!?

But one thing that Jackson, I feel, does so much better than every other director out there is character development. There was no way he could have done this in less than three hours. He made a 25-foot gorilla a very complex character. He's a mindless beast, he's a misunderstood soul, he's a protector, he's the golden goose, he's a menacing terror, he's a tragic hero. Where the hell was this kind of storytelling when Godzilla was remade years ago?

A lot of reviews of this flick say that it raises the bar for filmmaking, and while I agree with that, I hope and pray that it is respected as such. But nowadays, so many writers and driectors see that the bar has been raised, and they're perfectly content with playing limbo (cough, cough, Michael Bay, cough). Not to say that I want every movie to come out to have wall-to-wall special effects and a $200 million budget, but for crying out loud, try doing a few extra drafts on the script, will you? With the state of mainstream cinema today, I know that's asking a lot.

In the end, King Kong-in my opinion-can only expose every other movie for what they are: Two hours of mindless distraction with as much depth as a kiddie pool, performed by actors with as much range as a Daisy air rifle.