King Kong/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Non Sequitur Scene: Don Simpson's 1993 comic, adapted from the Delos W. Lovelace novelization, originally had a scene it where Kong destroys the Hindenburg. It got cut after Simpson decided it was in poor taste and too bizarre.
  • It Was His Sled: There aren't too many people who don't know how this story turns out.
    • One of those people was Tycho from Penny Arcade. When about to argue that it's a spoiler to discuss Kong getting shot down, Gabe retorts that it's a 75-year-old movie and everyone knows Kong climbs the Empire State Building and should be able to guess what comes next. Tycho sadly stammers out that he assumed that maybe Kong climbs back down.
  • The Problem with Licensed Games: Averted with Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie, generally thought to be one of the better licensed games out there.
  • Sequelitis: King Kong Lives has not been viewed kindly. And for good reason.
  • Special Effect Failure: The King Kong Suit and half-second of stop motion in King Kong vs. Godzilla are universally seen as poor. Doesn't stop people from enjoying it, though.
    • Even the version of the Kong arm which was used in the (now retired) Universal theme park attraction was notoriously fake-looking.
  • 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.
    • Merian Cooper, the director of the 1933 version, strenuously argued against a sexual interpretation of Kong's fascination with Ann Darrow; he saw it as Kong simply playing with a toy.
    • The 2005 version goes for less of a sexual relationship and more of a Koko and kittens one.
    • The infamous "Beauty killed the Beast" line at the end of both films. Apparently only a white, Western woman is beautiful enough to have an effect on Kong even though he spent his life surrounded by dark-skinned people native to his island and, if anything, should have adopted their standards of beauty.