“Oh, no, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.”
A few human characters drive the plot of King Kong forward: the beautiful actress Ann Darrow, the lavish showman Carl Denham, and the gallant hero John Driscoll. However, the human drama acts only as a sideshow for the main attraction. The title speaks the truth, because Kong is the king of his own movie; he is a tragic hero in the form of a 25-foot gorilla. The visual effects used to animate Kong are not impressive because they look realistic, but because they add enough life to his movements and reactions to make him a sympathetic creature. After fixating on his pet human female, Kong rescues her from danger three times, by conquering his jungle foes from land (the tyrannosaurus rex, royalty among dinosaurs), from water (a massive snake-like reptile), and through the air (a giant pterodactyl). The context of these scenes conditions the audience to revel in each of his chest-pounding triumph, so that his ultimate battle against man becomes a heartbreaking one. Kong earns his crown, but not his queen.
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