Peter Jackson remakes “King Kong” as an epic journey taken by shifty producer Carl Denham and a boat full of people, who Denham fully intends to leave in a lurch. Jackson has taken what is a monster movie standard and infused it with horror conventions, which are hallmarks of Japanese horror films. Jackson fleshes out the bare-bones plot of the 1933 original by adding the minute details of 1933 New York. Yet he isn’t doing this as a “love letter” to New York. Jackson is merely trying to ground his film in some sort of reality. He is seeking to give this film a sense of place. The 1933 original simply did not have a sense of any geographic location at all, so this is a real upgrade over the 1933 version. He also bulks the runtime of his “Kong” by fleshing out virtually every point of the 1933 version. [More]