Skull Island's Gospel: Dignity, Devotion, and the Woman Worth Fighting For

King Kong has been one of my favorite movies for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I would always get a kick out of seeing the giant ape fight prehistoric monsters and rampage through New York City, and as an adult, my love for the film hasn’t waned a single ounce. In fact, as I matured and grew in my appreciation for the art of storytelling, I found myself enjoying this movie even more.

See, King Kong is most famous for its (at the time) groundbreaking special effects, but that's not the only thing the film has going for it. It’s also a thematically rich tale of adventure, folly, and a love that compels both man and beast to risk their very lives. It has a lot more to say than your average giant monster flick, so let’s take a deep dive into this stone-cold classic and examine one of the many great lessons it can teach us.

The Basic Plot of King Kong
But before we do, I want to take a minute and briefly go over the plot of the movie. When King Kong begins, a filmmaker named Carl Denham is gathering a crew for his next picture. He’s chartered a ship to take them to a mysterious, exotic location, but there’s still one piece missing: the female lead. He takes to the streets of New York to find an actress for the role, and luckily for him, he’s quickly able to recruit a young woman named Ann Darrow.

Denham, Ann, and the rest of the crew soon set off for their destination, an unmapped island called Skull Island, and when they arrive, they find the natives to be inhospitable. However, the islanders take a liking to Ann, and during the night, they kidnap the woman and offer her to their mysterious god. That deity is the titular Kong, but instead of eating the poor woman, Kong takes her as a sort of companion and fiercely defends her from the other giant residents of the island.

When Denham realizes Ann is missing, he and a contingent of his men head off into the Skull Island wilderness to bring her back, and along the way they encounter multiple prehistoric beasts that threaten to derail the entire expedition. Nevertheless, they keep going, but unfortunately, only two of them survive. Denham returns to the ship to prepare for the trip home, and the first mate, a man named Jack Driscoll, heads deeper into the jungle to rescue Ann.

He eventually succeeds, and when Kong chases the pair back to the village, Denham and his crew manage to render the giant ape unconscious with gas bombs. They bring the creature back to New York with them, and as I’m sure you know, this ends up being a huge mistake. Denham tries to put Kong on display for people to see, but the monster quickly breaks his chains and goes on a rampage through the city. He finds Ann and climbs up the Empire State Building with her, and his story ends in tragedy when he’s shot down by fighter planes.

Beauty and the Beast
Now that we’ve got our bearings, let’s get to the good stuff. King Kong opens with what purports to be an “old Arabian proverb” (although in reality, it was simply made up by one of the film’s directors, Merian C. Cooper):

“And the prophet said, ‘And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead.’”

If you’re at all familiar with King Kong, those words might ring a bell. They echo the movie’s famous final line, uttered by Carl Denham after the planes take down the titular giant ape: “Oh no, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.”

Granted, Ann didn’t literally kill Kong, but on a deeper level, Denham’s words are spot on. The creature was a god on Skull Island, and before Denham’s crew pulled up to shore, he was just about invincible. Nothing on the island could challenge his supremacy, but that all changed when he laid eyes on Ann.

He was smitten with the woman, so like the fake proverb says, he didn’t kill her. Instead, he took her to be his companion, and when Jack rescued her from his clutches, Kong chased her all the way back to the village, where Denham and his men took him captive and made him their prisoner. He was eventually able to break free from his chains in New York, but he couldn’t escape his affection for Ann.

The beast just wanted to be with this beautiful woman, but Jack and Carl Denham couldn’t let that happen. To save Ann once again, they enlisted a fleet of fighter planes, and those planes finally took the monster down. So no, Ann didn’t literally kill Kong, but the ape’s instant infatuation with her led directly to his ultimate demise. Beauty really did kill the beast, and his fate was sealed from the moment he first saw her.

The Human Beast
That’s the King Kong story everyone knows, but if we pay close attention, we’ll find that the movie actually tells another story that closely parallels that of its titular ape. The first act contains a shocking (to modern audiences, anyway) amount of misogyny, and most of it comes from one character: Jack Driscoll.

The first time he meets Ann, he’s quite mean to the poor woman. He tells her that women are “a nuisance,” and after about only a minute of talking to her, he says she’s “been in the way already.” Then, when these characters bump into each other again, Jack doubles down on his sexist attitude. He claims that the ship is “no place for a girl,” and when she points out that she hasn’t caused any trouble, he tells her that “just being around is trouble.” He even has the gall to say that women “just can't help being a bother” because they're “made that way,” so if you didn’t know any better, you might even think this guy was the villain of the story.

But then something unexpected happens. After Ann leaves, Jack has a brief conversation with Denham, and he starts to soften up a bit. He expresses concern about their mysterious trip, and when Denham asks if he’s “gone soft,” Jack clarifies that he’s actually concerned for Ann, not himself.

In response, Denham quips that “beauty” will make this “tough guy” go soft, and then he launches into an explanation of his new film. Here’s how he explains it: “The beast was a tough guy too. He could lick the world, but when he saw beauty, she got him. He went soft. He forgot his wisdom, and the little fellows licked him.”

The first time you watch King Kong, those words don’t mean much to you, but if you know where the story is headed, they hit you like a ton of bricks. They inevitably call to mind Kong’s arc in the movie, but surprisingly, Denham is applying them to Jack. He thinks the plot of his film is playing out right in front of him with Jack and Ann, and as the story goes on, we find that he’s absolutely right.

Despite initially displaying a severe case of misogynistic machismo, Jack quickly changes his tune. He becomes very protective of Ann, and right before the woman is kidnapped by the Skull Island natives, he even confesses his love to her and kisses her. Then, when Kong kidnaps her, he risks his life twice, once on the island and once in New York, to save her.

The Dignity of Women
All that being said, there is a big difference between Kong and Jack: Kong’s affection for Ann eventually kills him, but Jack lives. That’s a pretty stark contrast, and on the surface, it almost seems to destroy the parallel between these two characters. However, I’d suggest that their fates aren’t quite as dissimilar as we might think at first.

Sure, Jack doesn’t die, but the beast within him does. Remember, when King Kong starts, he’s a hyper-macho, misogynistic monster, but by the end of it, he’s risking it all to rescue the woman he loves. He does a complete 180 and learns that women are just as valuable as men, and the way I see it, that’s the thematic heart and soul of this movie.

At its core, King Kong is all about the dignity of women, and it highlights that theme in two ways. On the most basic level, multiple characters–including Kong, Jack, and Denham–risk their lives to keep Ann safe both on Skull Island and in New York, so she’s a shining example of just how important women are.

On a deeper level, this film is an allegory for the evils of misogyny. The parallel between Jack and Kong shows that Jack’s initial attitude towards women is truly monstrous, so just like Kong has to die at the end of the story, so too must Jack put away his disdain for all things feminine. He has to learn that far from being “made” to cause trouble, women have the exact same dignity and value as men, and in a world where women are often seen as disposable objects to be used and abused, that message is just as relevant as it was when the movie first came out.