KING KONG: The Modern Blockbuster Template

 

How this 1933 classic set the stage for the modern cinematic blockbuster.

By: Josh McCormack

The following piece was written as my final essay in one of my last film courses during my time at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. In honor of King Kong's 88th birthday and the upcoming release of Godzilla vs Kong, I have decided to share it with all of you. Enjoy!

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A group of explorers journey to the far reaches of the ocean and discover a long lost island. This site has dangerous human inhabitants and creatures thought to be extinct long ago or to have only existed in people’s imaginations Throughout this journey romance blossoms, friends are lost, and the group must escape with their lives.

This is the plot for 1933’s King Kong and if you were to replace the group of explorers with a group of scientists it’s the plot of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. But you could even find parallels in James Cameron’s Avatar or in elements of the original Star Wars trilogy. I believe King Kong is one of the most influential classic films to the crop of filmmakers who have made the most influential blockbusters of the past four decades. On top of this, it is my belief that King Kong normalized using a simple story structure as a way of complimenting films with groundbreaking special effects for better and for worse.

To say that King Kong impacted many future generations of filmmakers would be an understatement. For many, Kong was the driving force behind their entire careers in filmmaking. For example, Peter Jackson--director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy--famously remade the film in 2005 with state of the art computer-generated effects. For the renowned filmmaker, this wasn’t just another directorial gig, it had been a dream project since he was a child. In an interview with film journalist John Miller, Jackson recollects on the impact the film had on him.

“When I saw King Kong, when I was nine years old, it did make me want to be a filmmaker,” says Jackson. “I have no idea if I would still be making films if I hadn’t seen King Kong. Right after I saw it, I started making little stop motion films with a Super 8 camera that my parents had used for home movies.” 

This desire to not only want to make movies but to dabble with special effects as well is one of the elements I find so fascinating about King Kong. There are human characters in the film--including a romance blossoming between the lovely starlet Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and the dashing shipmate, Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot)--it’s the special effects that stuck with future generations who saw the film.

It is for this reason that King Kong affects not only filmmakers but special effects artists themselves. Phil Tippett--stop motion animator for such films as Star Wars, Robocop, and Starship Troopers--similarly recalls watching the film for the first time.

“I was five in 1956 when King Kong aired on television,” says Tippett. “I recall hiding behind an overstuffed chair, horrified yet enthralled. That’s when my love for special effects started.”

What I believe makes this film so beloved by technical filmmakers like Jackson or special effects artists like Tippett is that it’s one of the few classic Hollywood films where the stars of the movie are the craftsmen behind the scenes. In a time when stars were more commodity than ever, films many times relied on star power like that of Clark Gable or Bette Davis to become hits, but with Kong, the enthrallment came from seeing the state of the art special effects that brought the giant ape and the other creatures on his island to life.

Directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack and stop motion artist, Willis O’Brien are the three masterminds behind the film. Cooper and Schoedsack had both worked on quasi-documentaries set in real jungle locations and real people mixed with actors in an attempt to make very realistic adventure films. In many ways, they were both avatars of one of Kong’s lead characters, Carl Denham played by Robert Armstrong. Both they and the character were obsessive filmmakers who loved a sense of adventure and hoped to bring their worldly travels to dangerous lands to cinema screens. They were showmen in every sense of the word and while Schoedsack had independently made some more dramatic, less gritty filmmaking, neither of them were the creators of what one might call high art in the cinema world. But with King Kong, they intended to make a classic. The script of King Kong had all the ingredients; romance, action, and at the center of it a giant gorilla named Kong.

In all honesty, the romance and the characterization throughout the film isn’t the strongest. With declarations of love like “Hey. I think I love you”, the dialogue for these rather stock characters isn’t exactly what caught the imaginations of filmgoers around the world. This doesn’t mean the story is bad. Quite the opposite, it’s well structured and completely works in telling a concise three act story that major blockbusters should still be taking note of. However, like most blockbusters it’s the effects that captured people’s imaginations. Willis O’ Brien’s contributions that turned the film from what could have been a flavor of the month adventure film released in the midst of the great depression and turned it into one of the most iconic films of all time. His contributions are what seared the image of a giant ape climbing to the top of the Empire State Building into the minds of generation after generation.

Where many films of the early talkie era are known for their iconic lines of dialogue or their plots full of melodrama, King Kong is cinema at its rawest form. Visually stunning, fast paced, and told in such a way that the story has no extra subplots it doesn’t need (something the many remakes of the film fail to understand), it’s understandable how many of the filmmakers who were influenced by the film saw it at a young age. While the film can resonate with older viewers, I don’t think there’s much here in the form of subtext and I think that’s why many of the artists it inspired seem very disinterested in subtext.

Over the decades, however, the film has garnered a lot of controversy, by those who believe there is harmful rhetoric imbued throughout the film subtextually. In a 1985 essay for ‘Criterion’, writer Ronald Haver writes about these differing takes.

“Serious discussion was given to various theories,” Haver writes. “That the film was unconsciously racist; that it was an out-sized sexual fantasy with elaborate analogies explaining Kong’s climbing the Empire State Building as a blatant form of phallic symbolism.”

He goes on to write that Merian C. Cooper laughed off most of these theories. Some of which even disgusted him.

According to the essay Cooper responded by saying,“Kong was never intended to be anything but the best damned adventure film ever made, which it is; and that’s all it is.”

And to most young viewers, that’s exactly what it is. It’s a cool movie with cool monsters. Hell, that’s still how I feel about it. However, as an older filmgoer, some of the more questionable racial politics are hard to ignore. This is especially apparent in relation to the depiction of Island Natives, all played by English speaking African American actors and portrayed as almost inhuman.

But again, the chances of Cooper doing this intentionally are small. Yet, this goes to show how disinterested in any deeper meaning Cooper was and how that influenced directors in years to come. The story is a simple one. Subtext is only what film theorists add to the film in later discussion and that’s not to say films of this type can’t have a on the surface message, but it’s rarely lending itself to deep philosophical conversations, and thus it’s the perfect simple story that makes for a great showcase of effects technology.

Some of these are more successful than others. Jurassic Park--itself an obvious love letter to films like King Kong (including Jeff Goldblum referencing the character by name at one point)--modernize the tale and give it likable characters, even though the true stars of the film are the special effects. Same goes for all the Star Wars films. Each of which have characters that have become household names, but are all different variations on the types of characters from classic myths and if it wasn’t for the jaw dropping effects work in the midst of these simple, yet universal stories, Star Wars itself would not be the cultural phenomenon it is.

The influence of a film like King Kong is both good and bad, in my opinion. Because for every film that mixes state of the art camera tricks, while also providing a simple but well told story, you get something like Michael Bay’s Transformers which is nothing but vapid spectacle and any semblance of a story is an afterthought.

While the summer blockbuster didn’t officially begin until over four decades after King Kong’s release with the work of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, I believe it’s apparent that this 1933 film was the spark that lit the fuse in so many of the modern day directors who wanted less of the gritty realism that late 60s and early 70s filmmakers were offering us and wanted to go back to what seemed like a simpler time in cinema. As the years pass though and more people imitate the films that are imitating Kong, I worry that some of the charm of those early films are lost as we focus specifically on the special effects of the film. King Kong may have not been the highest of art amongst those early classic films, but it still is a classic and I hope the charms do not continue to be lost as we approach the one hundredth anniversary of when a giant ape climbed the Empire State building and helped teach generations of artists to dream.

Works Cited: *Haver, Ronald. “King Kong.” Criterion.com, 7 Jan. 1985, *Millar, John. “Moulding a Monster - Peter Jackson Talks about King Kong.” Three Monkeys Online Magazine, 1 Apr. 2005, 

*“King Kong: A Milestone in Special Effects.” Warner Bros, 2005.

*”King Kong’s Legacy.” Warner Bros, 2005.