The first stirrings of unease re Kong.

First, the good news: casting.

Naomi Watts will play the big ape's love object, Ann Darrow. Adrien Brody will play Darrow's boyfriend, former WWII pilot Jack Driscoll, and Jack Black will be blustery adventurer Carl Denham, who imports Kong to Manhattan.

Jack Black is perfect for Denham. Watts and Brody will be adequate, if dull. Now the bad news: Peter Jackson has lost his fucking mind.

"Everybody's image of 'King Kong' is that it's this amazing beauty-and-the-beast love story. And when you look at the original film, there is as sense that Kong is feeling an attraction toward Ann-probably the first empathy he's felt in his life toward another living creature. But Ann is not giving him a thing. She just looks at him as an object of horror the entire time. She screams at him, she's terrified. Her relationship with Kong doesn't go beyond that. We're having a lot of fun making it more psychologically real."

DUDE. You're making a movie about a giant goddamn monkey. What the hell does that even mean in this context, psychologically real? Are we going to be forced to sit through three hours of Watts and Brody crying like hobbits? Look, this is not Shakespeare. You've basically got a freakishly large monkey, a chick, and the Empire State building to work with. Do not fuck this up by drenching it in emotional excess.