(10 of 10)
For years, the earnest little film magazines have been trying to explicate Kong's appeal. He has been persuasively portrayed as a political as well as a sexual symbol. If he is monumentally powerful, he is also totally innocent, a not entirely farfetched projection of nations and races that the capitalist countries have for years exploited. In the new Kong, the oil company executives want to exhibit him as a symbol of corporate might, just as the movie producer wanted to exploit him as a freak in the original. It is Kong's awakening to this outrage as much as his need to find the girl that sends him to his last stand atop—this time—the World Trade Center. That final destructive binge could be seen—and lines in the script lightly suggest it—as a projection of Western fears of, what might happen if the Third World should develop its potential power and strike back.
It is the innocence of Kong, whether seen politically or sexually, that overcomes resistance to his fantastical presence and involves the viewer in his strangely touching fate. De Laurentiis is not the sort of man who spends much time with film journals or in critical exegeses of his projects. But from the start he has had an instinctive understanding of Kong's strength. When he is in full cry on this subject, one feels a bit like cheering him on, as one does when Kong takes off on his final tear. Dino is, after all, the representative of a misunderstood, often unloved species: the movie producer.
But when he allows his highly emotional commitment to this project to show, one cannot help but hope the film's second half lives up to the promise of the first half, cannot help hoping no one shoots him from his perch atop the dream edifice he has constructed. "No one cry when Jaws die," Dino says, his voice rising in passion as he develops his theme. "But when the monkey die, people gonna cry. Intellectuals gonna love Kong; even film buffs who love the first Kong gonna love ours. Why? Because I no give them crap. I no spend two, three million to do quick business. I spend 24 million on my Kong. I give them quality. I got here a great love story, a great adventure. And she rated P.G. For everybody."