This December will be 20 years since Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong was released. Premiering on the heels of his iconic, Oscar-winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy, few films have probably ever been more anticipated. But when it arrived in theaters (lol, remember going to those?) in Dec. of 2005 it was a bit of a letdown compared to his galvanizing Rings films. Rewatching it recently, I can safely say it hasn’t gotten any better. The film is not terrible. It has some stunning visuals and the relationship between Kong and Naomi Watts’ Ann is just as affecting as ever. Yet it also has major problems that highlight how sometimes an artist’s greatest enemy is ironically their own success.

Probably what drags Kong down the most is how long and completely overstuffed it is. The film’s human characters don’t even get to Skull Island until an hour into the proceedings. Kong himself doesn’t appear until about 20 minutes later. And after that? There is still a stunning (or perhaps stupefying) hour and 40 minutes to go. There is nothing necessarily wrong with a long movie, of course. But in this case, too much of Kong‘s runtime is filler that doesn’t justify its inclusion.

The boat ride to Skull Island is a perfect example of what I mean. The intention here was obviously to give the film space to breath and allow the audience time to connect with its supporting characters. But all this setup never gets any payoff. Once the boat makes landfall in Kong’s domain, the supporting characters are swiftly slaughtered by CGI monsters. It makes you wonder what all that time with characters like Andy Serkis’s insanely named “Lumpy the Cook” if Jackson only intended to use them as cannon fodder.

Such missteps are a direct result of where Jackson was in his career at the time. The director has always had this penchant for bloat. But on previous films, it had been held in check because there were people involved in his productions that had equal or greater power than him. New Line Cinema executive Bob Shaye certainly used his power during the production of Fellowship of the Ring when Jackson was still an untested blockbuster filmmaker. The initial cut Jackson submitted to the studio clocked in at a leisurely four hours, which basically gave Shaye a coronary. He forced Jackson to remove an hour from the runtime, which ended up giving us the movie we all know and love today.

By the time Kong came around, however, nobody could tell Jackson what to do. Return of the King had just won 11 Oscars, and his trilogy as a whole had collectively made nearly $3 billion. Studios were falling over themselves to work with Jackson and give him anything he wanted. The studio he wound up going with was Universal. They ponied up a $200 million budget as well as final cut guarantee. Jackson was able to make exactly the film he wanted to make. It was a distillation of some the best parts of his filmmaking. And as we’ve been discussing, it was also an unmitigated showcase for some of the worst.

What happened with Peter Jackson’s King Kong is not a one-off case but a long-running trend. In the wretched industry known as Hollywood, directors who make a hit film often accrue an incredible amount of financial and artistic power as a result. But as in Jackson’s case, this frequently results in flawed films as it seems to remove the countervailing forces that previously held their weaker instincts in check.

A prime example of this in action is Georgey Boy Lucas. Years after he became rich and powerful via the original Star Wars, he embarked on his prequel series. Although they’ve been somewhat rehabilitated in recent years, the prequels were initially deemed to be an “Ouch time” to watch because of their reliance on special effects over story. While Lucas had always been an effects guy, this proclivity had been tempered on earlier films because he faced real limitations in terms of time, money and power. Once those barriers were removed, Lucas no longer had to exercise self-discipline. The gritty, real-world sets; beautiful model work; and relatable human drama that marked films like A New Hope and Empire were swallowed up by omnipresent blue screens and garish albeit iconic CGI creations like Jar Jar Binks. Together, these shifts made more than one viewer stand up in theaters back then and yell out “Messa going home!”

The career of Chris Nolan also embodies this trend. Following his wildly successful Dark Knight trilogy from 2005-2012 and Inception from 2010, Nolan was pretty much in the same position Jackson was after Lord of the Rings. He could do anything he wanted. Command whatever budget he needed. And not run his decisions through anybody. He would go on to parlay this professional capital into some real artistic highs, such as his surprisingly emotional 2014 feature Interstellar. But the removal of any constraints on his directorial vision resulted in some artistic lows as well.

You see, since the very beginning of his career, Nolan has arguably been a chilly director more interested in his films’ narrative mechanics than their human drama. Becoming the most commercially and critically successful filmmakers of the modern era, however, sent this tendency into overdrive. He began to churn out films that were still accomplished but prioritized conceits over characters to an even greater degree than before. Both 2017’s Dunkirk and 2020’s Tenet devote considerable time to non-linear editing techniques and time inversion mumbo jumbo. But as for their actual characters? Dunkirk‘s are so devoid of personality they might as well have been miniature army men. And Tenet‘s? Well, its main character is so anonymous he’s literally named “Protagonist.” So, you tell me.

Lastly, no conversation on this topic would be complete without also mentioning the OG himself for this type of thing. Michael Cimino. After exploding on the filmmaking scene with his landmark, Oscar-winning Vietnam War drama, The Deer Hunter, Cimino became Hollywood’s late-70s golden boy. The powers that be rolled out the red carpet for Cimino to make his dream project, Heaven’s Gate, in 1981, which proved to be a disaster. The film was hailed as a bloated, self-indulgent and narratively incoherent mess. It was quickly pulled from theaters after being savaged by critics and ultimately became so financially ruinous that it put an entire studio out of business.

Perhaps more than any other example, the failure of Heaven’s Gate can be traced to the success of Cimino’s preceding effort and how it impacted him. Before The Deer Hunter proved to be a massive hit, Cimino’s obsessive attention to detail had already made itself known. During The Deer Hunter‘s production had shot scenes endlessly throughout its production, allegedly doing so many takes during the film’s famed wedding sequence, for example, that the cast literally dropped from exhaustion. Despite this perfectionism, he still had to be collaborative and (somewhat) judicious during the production. He accepted some editorial oversight, worked with other writers on the script and so on. During Heaven’s Gate, on the other hand, all safeguards were removed and thus all bets were off.

Cimino’s penchant for perseverating over every element of the shoot, no matter how granular or inconsequential, was completely exacerbated once he achieved greater professional power. And his behavior on set became the stuff of legend. He rebuilt sets at will. Delayed shooting because a random cloud moved in the background. And allegedly got worked up over extras wearing period-accurate underwear, despite never intending to have them drop trou or anything like that on-screen. Meanwhile, major, structural things like story and character suffered, becoming plodding and muddled because Cimino’s focus lay elsewhere. It is a shoot that sounds like the embodiment of someone losing the plot or not being able to see the forest for the trees.

If there is a central takeaway from Jackson’s story with Kong in addition to the experiences of these other filmmakers, it’s not that directors shouldn’t be empowered to pursue their visions. I would be the last one to say something like that. I came to love movies, in part, by watching those that emerged during the director-centric, “New Hollywood” period from 1969 to 1981.

What’s more, there are plenty of examples where an empowered director proved to be advantageous for their film’s ultimate fate. Ridley Scott’s long career pretty much encapsulates this idea. The director cut versions of both his groundbreaking sci-fi film Blade Runner and his beautiful Crusades epic Kingdom of Heaven are far, FAR superior to the versions that were released in theaters after heavy studio editing.

Yet what this essay hopefully elucidated, my dears, is that there is at least such a thing as having too much power and control over one’s artistic endeavors, especially in the context of the movies. At the end of the day, filmmaking is a collaborative medium, and directors are only human. They have flaws and foibles like any of us, and sometimes having viable counterweights to one’s vision can refine rather than ruin it. 20 years on, Peter Jackson’s King Kong illustrates this better than most. It is cautionary tale of how success can remove those weights and how a big career win can quickly become a loss.