And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead.
(Fictional) Arabian Proverb
"The Eighth Wonder Of The World!"
With those words, RKO Pictures introduced one of the most well-known and enduring
movie monsters of all time. "Kong" is a giant gorilla living on a
hidden island in the South Pacific. When a charter ship travels to this island, the oversized primate becomes enraptured by the crew's sole blonde woman, whom the island natives offer up to it in sacrifice. The crew rescue the girl and even manage to capture Kong, bringing the creature back to Manhattan for a spectacle. However, Kong escapes and causes mayhem in the streets of New York before being shot off the top of a skyscraper.
There have been three major film adaptations of the original story (along with numerous spin-offs, sequels and cross-overs):
1933 Filmmaker Carl Denham brings out-of-work actress Ann Darrow (Faye Wray) on a hurried expedition to find an uncharted island, where he hopes to work on his next film. Ann will provide the "love interest" angle, while an unknown entity called "Kong" will provide the excitement. The ship's crew finds the island inhabited, its natives in the midst of an elaborate ritual where a girl is being ceremoniously decorated. The natives note fair-haired Ann and wish to decorate her instead, and when the crew refuse the natives resort to sneaking aboard the ship and kidnapping her. Tying her to an altar, they resume their ritual, chanting "Kong! Kong! Kong!" until an enormous
something comes crashing through the trees...
First mate Jack Driscoll, who has developed feelings for Ann, leads the ship's crew on an expedition through the island's interior, where Kong has taken her. Along the way, nearly the entire crew is killed by the prehistoric creatures and other dangers. Meanwhile, Kong defends Ann from attack from a T Rex and shakes the remainder of the crew off a log into a deep crevase. Jack evades death and continues after Kong, finally reaching the beast's lair in the island's mountain peak. There, while Kong battles a huge pteranodon, Jack and Ann escape and return to the native village. Kong pursues them, intent on retrieving Ann. He crashes through the hundred-foot gate that protects the village, but Denham subdues the monster with gas bombs.
Bringing Kong back to America instead of a movie, Denham puts the amazing creature on display in Manhattan. However, misinterpreting the intentions of newsmen trying to photograph Ann, Kong breaks loose from his bonds and begins a rampage through the city seeking the "woman of gold". Finally retrieving her from a hotel, Kong proceeds to
climb to the highest point in Manhattan—the Empire State Building. There he attempts to fight off a squad of biplanes, but modern war machines finally get the better of the monster, and he plummets to his death.
Followed later that year by
Son Of Kong.
1976 The story remains pretty much the same, but the characters and situations are changed: instead of a filmmaker seeking an exciting movie locale, an
amoral oil executive is seeking an uncharted island (hidden by a perpetual fog bank) where he hopes to find an enormous untapped deposit of crude. The requisite blonde, Dwan (Jessica Lange), is encountered at sea, adrift in a lifeboat, the sole survivor of a yacht explosion; and
The Hero is a stowaway anthropologist. The rest of the film plays out more or less as the previous version, albeit with a somewhat more realistic depiction of the natives and with fewer island hazards (the only oversized animals featured are Kong and a snake). The oil exec, upset to learn that the island's crude is unfit for refining, decides to "bring home the big one" in a very literal sense; when the hero brings Dwan back from Kong's clutches, Kong is again captured and brought to New York in a gaudy publicity stunt. Again, Kong misinterprets the intentions of pushy photographers, and the story goes on from there.
This film differs from the 1933 version in another, very important aspect: the relationship between Kong and "his" girl. Faye Wray's Ann was treated as nothing more than a
kidnapping victim, a prize for Kong. Dwan, on the other hand, is given several extended scenes—on the island, on the ship back to America, and in New York—actually forming a bizarre sort of bond with the big guy. And when Kong climbs to the top of the (then newly constructed) World Trade Center towers and is attacked by the military, Dwan is right there, trying to be a human shield for him. But to no avail...
A sequel,
King Kong Lives, followed... ten years later.
2005 Peter Jackson's take on
King Kong returns to the story as propounded in 1933: Depression-era filmmaker Carl Denham, dodging debt collectors, hires an out-of-work Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) and quickly leaves on an expedition to find a certain uncharted island...
Jackson's film diverges from the original by providing more of Denham's and Ann's respective back stories. Further, "Jack Driscoll" is changed from the ship's first mate to a playwright, and a narcissistic Hollywood actor is added for comic relief. The natives are
much more brutal than past portrayals. And, as with the 1976 film, a good deal of attention is paid to the unusual "romance" between the girl and the primate, which is strong enough that Ann would rather stay on the island with him than see him captured; and later she refuses to participate in his exhibition in America. She does, though, show up in time to halt his rampage through the city, and from there... well,
you know how this one ends.
Interestingly, the 2005 version of the film makes a show of Denham filming scenes and dialog lifted from the original 1933 movie.
The various permutations of
King Kong provide examples of the following tropes:
- Abandoned By The Cavalry: (2005) Snooty actor Bruce Baxter, faced with the perils of Skull Island, gives up on rescuing Ann, only to return later Just In Time for a Big Damn Heroes moment.
- Adaptation Decay: The Japanese version of Kong inexplicably gains remarkable superpowers, notably electricity absorption.
- Attack Of The 50 Foot Whatever: In the 70s he was 40ft, in 2005 he was 25ft, in the original he was 21ft in New York and 18ft on Skull Island. In Japan, he was 45m (147ft) when he battled Godzilla, and 20m (65ft) in King Kong Escapes.
- Beast And Beauty
- Bittersweet Ending: The people of the city are safe, but Kong (who, essentially, didn't know what he was doing) dies.
- Black Dude Dies First: Subverted in the '76 film, wherein black crew member Boan is the only member of the search party besides Prescott to survive. Meanwhile in the '05 film, sole black character Hayes is flung into a wall by Kong (in the same scene Boan survived in the previous film I might add).
- Cataclysm Climax: Notably, the destruction of Skull Island in both the 1933 and 2005 versions does not happen in the main films themselves (in 1933, it happened in the sequel; in 2005, it is described only on the website and the special features on the DVD.
- Chained By Fashion
- Climbing Climax
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: (1976) Charles Grodin's "Fred Wilson".
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: The Japanese version is the dream for every kid who grew in that geneation: King Kong vs. Godzilla! Also, Kong's rampage through the city (especially in the 05 version).
- A CMOA for the art of filmmaking in the 1933 version: the "shaking the log" scene. Take a good look at all the different elements of that scene, then remind yourself that only a decade before that scene was made, they hadn't even invented sound. And that's just one example where that occurred. The "Lair" scene before Kong battles the Plesiosaur has, using 3 different methods of compositing, one shot with mat paintings, 2 animated figures with miniature sets and live-acted figures (5 separately shot and projected, 2 actors, 2 set pieces, 1 stylistic element) all at different variable levels. Modern effects artists are in awe of that shot to this day.
- Keep in mind, it took up to 15 hours to get a minute of film for simple sequence (The T-Rex fight in the original took 7 weeks to film). Worse, every shot had to be done as though they only had one take on it. The fact that they got this 18 inch puppet to trulyact is a miracle unto itself! Everyone who knew the head animator, Willis O'Brian, can see elements of him in Kong's performance.
- Distressed Damsel: Played straight in the original; subverted/deconstructed a bit in the later films with the girl's Stockholm-esque/Kpko-and-Kitten bonding with Kong.
- East Indies
- Expo Speak: (1933) The opening lines are rather painful.
- Ethnic Scrappy: (1933) Charlie the cook, who appears to be a drunken NYC dock worker slapped into a mandarin costume and told to 'act Chinese'.
- Everybodys Dead Dave: ...particularly during the "shaken log" sequence, which each version has.
- Everythings Better With Monkeys: Especially 50-foot gorillas. Which aren't really monkeys.
- Foot Focus: Both the '33 and '05 versions had Ann barefoot for most of the time on the island, but only the latter had repeated closeups of her muddy feet.
- Foregone Conclusion: There aren't too many people who don't know how this story turns out.
- Hulk's Cooldown Hug Corollary
- Human Sacrifice
- Improbable Aiming Skills: In the 2005 version, the men are attacked by massive oversized insects. As one man is covered in leeches, another fires a Thompson submachine gun full-auto at him from only a few feet away and manages to hit nothing but leeches.
- Intercontinuity Cross Over: King Kong fought Godzilla in a film once.
- Kaiju: Though misses out on being the first monster to rampage across a city, he's the one people think of as the First proto-kaiju.
- The Oldest Kaiju in cinema? A Brontosaurus from Willis O'Brien's The Lost World (1929).
- Last Of His Kind: Kong in the 2005 version.
- Lost World: An uncharted island in the original story; hidden by a perpetual fog bank in the 70s version.
- Mars Needs Women: More accurately, Kong needs a blonde wife. (Well, the Islanders think he does...)
- Mister Sandman Sequence: Opens the 2005 version.
- Monumental Battle: Always the tallest skyscraper in New York (Empire State Building, World Trade Center)
- My Nayme Is: (1976) ...Dwan.
- Mythology Gag: (2005)
- A reference to an actress, "Faye", who is working on a film over at "RKO".
- Large chunks of the original dialogue are lifted verbatim from the 1933 film, sometimes as near-parody (the original's banter between Jack and Ann is used as Denham films his two actors)
- Kong's stage show in New York includes an elaborate (and inaccurate) depiction of the native sacrifice ritual, which is remarkably similar to the depiction of the actual ritual seen in the 1933 film. And the music for the entire sequence is a new performance of the original's score.
- Narm: Parts of the remakes. Your Mileage May Vary.
- Nightmare Fuel: A scene from the 1933 film, of crewmen being eaten by giant spiders, was considered too scary (the producers insist the scene was cut for pacing and production concerns); the 2005 version reinstated the idea, and director Jackson also produced a scene for the 1933 film's DVD release, depicting how the scene might have looked had it been made as written.
- The deaths of the crew members in the 2005 version.
- Pacing Problems: A common criticism of the 2005 movie, which clocks in at 188 min (201 in the extended version). It takes over an hour before we see the titular ape.
- To be fair, that was probably done on purpose, as Peter Jackson stated that King Kong was the film that made him want to go into filmmaking, and wanted as faithful an adaptation as possible. In the 1933 film, which was about 90 minutes long, Kong wasn't first shown until 45 minutes in, about halfway through the movie. The '05 movie is three hours long. This troper, knowing that bit of trivia, and being a fan of the '33 film, went to see the '05 film with his dad, and told him to check his watch when Kong first arrived. When we started to see the trees rustle, my dad checked his watch and told me, smirking, "Hour and a half." This troper loved the rest of the movie unconditionally.
- The problem is more how Jackson fills that time - endless exposition and Character Development for people who die ten minutes later.
- People In Rubber Suits: The 1976 film and King Kong vs Godzilla and the other Toho Kong film. Actually, they were a hairy suit.
- Pretty In Mink: In the original film, Ann wears a chinchilla cape. In the 1976 film, Dwan wears a chinchilla jacket.
- The Remake: Most people agree the '76 film was a Remake Decay; the jury is still out on the '05 version.
- Seinfeld Is Unfunny: (1933) See the entry for Special Effect Failure.
- Sequelitis: King Kong Lives
has not been viewed kindly. And for good reason.
- Serkis Folk: (2005) Quite literal: Andy Serkis provides both vocalizations and Motion Capture for Kong. He also plays the ship's cook.
- Somewhere A Palaeontologist Is Crying: Flesh-Eating Apatosaur (aka brontosaur) in the original. Most likely due to Rule Of Cool.
- The 1976 version averts this because there is only a giant snake. The 2005 version makes its own dinosaurs.
- See also Tyrannosaurus Rex.
- Special Effect Failure: The Stop Motion used for Kong and the dinosaurs in the original version to modern viewers who do not begin to comprehend the effort or complexity of what was done focusing on ther layman assesment of "It looks like clay". For the time, they were the best special effects around, some shots still astound modern special effects artists with their seemlessness and complexity. But it's doubly impressive considering that the alternative would have been lizards in makeup. The King Kong Suit and half-second of stop motion in King Kong vs. Godzilla however, are universally seen as poor. Doesn't stop people from enjoying it, though.
- Space Whale Tear Jerker
- Tagline: Mostly for the 1933 release, though Jackson's remake uses it in dialogue.
- Unfortunate Implications: The primitive natives. And the relationship between Kong and his girl—especially with regard to her somewhat forceful adoption by him—has been compared to a relationship between a black man and a Nordic woman. And it's not a favorable comparison. Of course, the connection is purely apocryphal, as it was believed at the time that gorillas would actually rape women◊, so it's probably not meant as a metaphor.
- The 2005 version goes for less of a sexual relationship and more of a Koko and kittens one.
