After all, the most successful Kong movies drowned in this bang out of romantic clash of cultures.

By gazing backward, only then does Kongs reign resonate in the here and now.

Cooper was in many ways a futurist in ideals but a traditionalist in his passions.

Their eventual Hollywood narratives at RKO were obvious melodramas based on the sportsman ideal they both aspired to.

Prior toKing Kong, they produced the still thrillingly pulpyThe Most Dangerous Gamein 1932.

She even came aboard the giant ape film late in production to punch up the dialogue and plotting.

All three lived remarkably exciting lives, butKing Kongobviously came from more than anecdotal experiences.

He and Schoedsack even adapted KiplingsThe Four Feathersto the screen in 1929.

He coined the term Komodo Dragon and brought two live specimens back to London where they withered and died.

However, a likely influence that Cooper did not mention is the silent filmThe Lost World.

On that plateau is a world of dinosaurs, ancient prehistoric mammals… and ape-men.

What, my friends, is the conquest of one nation by another?

Each produces the same result.

By this strange turn of fate, we have seen and helped to decide even such a contest.

Now upon this plateau, the future must ever be for man.

Wells 1896 novel,The Island of Doctor Moreau.

Never mind how these ubiquitous social anxieties fueled real-world prejudices and pseudo-scientific excuses for discrimination throughout the West.

So novels likeThe Lost Worldfeaturing ape-men in a land that time forgot are not that surprising.

The subject seems comic, but it isnt.

Its about the man who wrote it.

A particular way of looking at the world.

Also curiously, while president, Obamapurchased a copy ofHeart of Darknessfor his daughters in 2014.

In CoopersKing Kong, Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) is a fantasy avatar for the director-producer.

He goes to Skull Island, eager to find sights that no white man has ever glimpsed.

Hell, Cooper and Schoedsack even gave themselves cameos as the airplane pilot and gunner that brought Kong down.

Since 1933, there have been several major Hollywood remakes or reimaginings of Coopers amalgamation of passions.

In an attempt at modernity, De Laurentiis ended up with a movie that had nothing to say.

Peter Jackson fared far better with 2005sKing Kong.

He also is the one to most literally pinpoint the aforementioned subtext and influences of the original film.

The originalKing Kongmovie was influenced by the exploration and triumphs of the late 19th centurys fabled Age of Wonders.

By 1933, that too was a time that had come to pass after the Great War.

Nature is to be loved, not only feared.

Well, theyre actually broad enough to probably just be texts.