KING KONG – BEAUTY AND THE BEAST OF THE CAPITALIST ERA

Marco Aurélio Lucchetti & RF Lucchetti
Edited by: Marco Aurélio Lucchetti

The blockbuster King Kong, The film, which premiered worldwide in December 2005, cost approximately two hundred million dollars and was filmed at Weta Studios, on the outskirts of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.
Directed by New Zealander Peter Jackson – the same director of the trilogy The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, 2001-2003) and the little-discussed, but engaging, Soulmates (Heavenly Creatures, 1994) –, King Kong It is a remake of the classic film released in 1933 and produced and directed by Merian C. Cooper (Merian Caldwell Cooper, 1893-1973) & Ernest B. Schoedsack (Ernest Beaumont Schoedsack, 1893-1979).
Just like the original, this remake, set in the 1930s, shows a group of Americans, led by an obsessed filmmaker, Carl Denham (played by Jack Black), who go to make a film on a lost island in the South Pacific.
Called Skull Island, this island is habitat of a gigantic gorilla, Kong, who, like the ancient Kong, possesses the capacity for affection, despite his extreme violence and aggression.
In fact, there's an explanation for Kong being so violent: he's the last of his kind and has to fight every day – using all his brute strength – for his survival, facing the ferocious dinosaurs that infest Skull Island.
And Kong's affection is directed towards Ann Darrow, a young unemployed actress. Ann was played by Naomi Watts [she had already demonstrated her talent as an actress in...] City of Dreams (Mulholland Drive, 2001), in which she played Betty Elms, a character full of sensuality], who readily accepted Peter Jackson's invitation to participate in the film, even knowing that she would often have the difficult task of acting opposite nothing, since the figure of Kong, created digitally, would be added to the scene later.

Naomi Watts, in a scene from King Kong. 

King Kong It is, above all, a modern version of a fairy tale. Beauty and the Beast (Beauty and the Beast, 1756).
(Open a parenthesis.).

Josette Day and Jean Marais, in the film Beauty and the Beast.

Written by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (born Marie-Barbe Leprince, 1711–1780), better known as Madame Leprince de Beaumont, Beauty and the Beast It has been adapted for film many times. And the best and most beautiful of these adaptations is, without a doubt, the one that the French poet, novelist and filmmaker Jean Cocteau (Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau, 1889-1963) made in 1946, starring Jean Marais (1913-1998) and Josette Day (1914-1978) in the main roles.
Close the parenthesis.

Naomi Watts, playing Ann Darrow, in Kong's hand, in a scene from King Kong. 

However, unlike the fairy tale, Peter Jackson's film does not have a happy ending. Ann Darrow, Belle, cannot save Kong, the Beast. And this happens for a very simple reason: Kong was taken from his natural environment and brought to a place far more savage and cruel than the jungle itself. And what place is that? It's New York City, the ultimate symbol of capitalist society, where difference is not accepted, where a privileged few dictate the norms for a vast majority of disadvantaged people, and where anything that represents a threat to the status quo is condemned. establishment It must be destroyed.
In his own way, Kong lived happily on Skull Island. However, upon being taken from there, he had no other choice but to die. And, watching the scene where he plummets from the top of the Empire State Building, the viewer who is still capable of emotion should feel like crying. Some, the most emotional, might even shed a tear, possibly furtively. But a tear is always a tear. And that tear, shed by Kong, the solitary – and, in a way, defenseless – gorilla, is also directed at Mother Nature, who is, little by little, being murdered to serve the interests of a few. “"men"” ambitious, unscrupulous, and devoid of any trace of humanity.

King Kong (King Kong, New Zealand/United States, 2005, 187')
DirectionPeter Jackson
Road map: Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens, based on the film King Kong (1933)
Photography: Andrew Lesnien
MAssembly: Jamie Selkirn
Elenco: Naomi Watts (Ann Darrow), Jack Black (Carl Denham), Adrien Brody (Jack Driscoll), Kyle Chandler (Bruce Baxter), Thomas Kretschmann (Captain Englehorn), Colin Hanks (Preston), Jamie Bell (Jimmy), Evan Parke (Hayes), Lobo Chan (Choy), John Sumner (Herb), Craig Hall (Mike)

Marco Aurélio Lucchetti is a university professor and researcher of Cinema, Comics and popular books.
RF Lucchetti (Rubens Francisco Lucchetti, 1930-2024) was a fiction writer and screenwriter for Cinema & Comics.