ONE OF the characters in the original King Kong (1933) says that “it was beauty killed the beast.” This line is spoken after the magnificent ape is hounded to his death by buzzing planes that knock him off the side of the Empire State Building, so it’s not strictly true. Beauty is actually what he wanted to save; I guess we could say it was the military-industrial-special-effects complex that killed him.
It’s a nice turn of phrase, nonetheless, and it came to mind recently when two of the biggest-scale movies of the year were released a week apart. The enormous monkey homage Kong: Skull Island and Disney’s live-action remake of its own Beauty and the Beast don’t immediately invite comparison, but the stories they’re based on are actually about the same thing: finding vulnerability behind terrifying facades.
The tenderness of the original Kong’s approach to Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and Belle’s openness to the light that might be hiding behind the Beast ’s frightening demeanor are mirrors. But it’s inaccurate to think that the transformation—or the risk—in these stories travels only in one direction. Ann gets rescued and the Beast turns back into a man. But Kong also experiences love and Belle undergoes a rite of passage that leaves her more whole than before.
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