(The King Kong movies made by Toho, the Japanese studio behind Godzilla, are a slightly different story, but even still many of the same tropes are present.)Įven the short-lived Broadway stage adaptation of King Kong followed the same rough story, although it attempted to modernize itself in slightly clumsy ways. Peter Jackson's Kong largely just expanded upon the original movie with some updates. 1976's King Kong changed the reason why the men were going to the island (for oil rather than to shoot a movie), didn't feature any dinosaurs, and had Kong climb the World Trade Center rather than the Empire State Building.
The three previous King Kong movies essentially followed this basic template. Airplanes shoot the gorilla and he falls to his death, but, really, it was beauty who killed the beast. The gorilla escapes his chains, grabs the woman, and climbs to the top of the tallest building in the city. Here, they think they can make some money off of it. The men rescue the woman, but, perhaps more importantly, they capture the gorilla and bring it back to NYC. However, the gorilla kind of hits it off with the woman, protecting her from dinosaurs and other monsters that live on the island. There are natives there who worship a gigantic gorilla, and they capture the beautiful woman to sacrifice her to the gorilla.
The basic King Kong story goes like this: White men (and one beautiful woman) go to a mysterious island.
Skull Island isn't King Kong as we know him, but it's a fitting update to the Eighth Wonder of the World. And yet, it's by far the most modern take on the classic King Kong story because it does away with many aspects of the story that seem like they're essential. Instead of being set in the 1930s, like Peter Jackson's 2005 King Kong, which aped the setting of the original 1933 movie, Skull Island is set in the shadow of the Vietnam War in 1973. Despite coming out in 2017 - 5 years ago today - it is not set in what was then the present day, like two of the three King Kongs that came before it.