King Kong/YMMV


 * Awesome Music: The "Jungle Dance" music from the original. Also used as the background music to the "Eighth Wonder of the World" show in the 2005 remake.
 * The 1933 soundtrack is still well regarded by both musicians and viewers.
 * Big Lipped Alligator Moment: The ice skating scene in New York.
 * Somehow doubles as Heartwarming Moments.
 * The sudden giant snake in the 70s version. If dinosaurs/other giant animals showed up earlier it wouldn't be so odd.
 * 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.
 * Ethnic Scrappy: (1933) Charlie the cook, whose actor was credtied as "Victor Wong" and may have actually been Chinese-American, but whose portrayal is still considered offensive. Still doesn't prevent him from being competent (noticing Ann's missing first and immediately raising the alarm) or brave.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: Remember Lumpy the cook and the little kleptomaniac kid from the 2005 remake? This wouldn't be the last time the two of them were together on a boat...
 * 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.
 * Gabe's reply: "Have you seen The Passion of the Christ yet? Here's a spoiler for you: "
 * Misaimed Fandom: For the 1933 Kong at least, to some extent. He does kill quite a few otherwise innocent people on both Skull Island and in New York when he breaks loose. He was meant to be sympathetic, but not to the extent that you should ignore his destructive qualities.
 * Narm: Parts of the remakes. Your Mileage May Vary.
 * Kind of the point though: consider the Narm Charm...
 * Parts of the original as well, including the most blasé declaration of love ever.
 * 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.
 * Seinfeld Is Unfunny: (1933) See the entry for Special Effect Failure.
 * Sequelitis: King Kong Lives has not been viewed kindly. And for good reason.
 * Son of Kong, while inferior to the first film by far, still manages to entertain. It helps that the cast has three major returns in it (Mr. Denham, the Skipper and Ethnic Scrappy Charlie the Cook) and Willis O'Brian returns for the special effects.
 * Toho too did a followup King Kong film after King Kong vs. Godzilla entitled King Kong Escapes which retreads a bit of the original film but throws in a Mad Scientist with a Robot Kong named Mechani-Kong who needs the real King Kong to Mine Radioactive Ore (as the Radiation was to much for his robot). Kong is captured but then the Title Drop happens and, of course, he has a huge fight against Mechani-Kong as they climb the Tokyo Tower.
 * Special Effect Failure: The Stop Motion used for Kong and the dinosaurs in the original version to modern viewers who do not begin to comprehend the effort or complexity of what was done focusing on ther layman assesment of "It looks like clay". For the time, they were the best special effects around, some shots still astound modern special effects artists with their seemlessness and complexity. But it's doubly impressive considering that the alternative would have been lizards in makeup. The King Kong Suit and half-second of stop motion in King Kong vs. Godzilla however, are universally seen as poor. Doesn't stop people from enjoying it, though.
 * The snake from the 1976 version could also qualify, looking very stiff, robotic, and lifeless compared to the fairly realistic animatronic face and hands built into the Kong suit.
 * Speaking of Kong '76, a very literal special effects failure by the highly publicized full-scale mechanical Kong armature (designed by Milo Carlo Rambaldi) led to makeup legend Rick Baker designing and donning the ape suit used for 95% of the Kong effects seen in the movie. The mechanical Kong was used in only one scene, his New York unveiling, and boy, you can tell.
 * Even the version of the Kong arm which was used in the (now retired) Universal theme park attraction was notoriously fake-looking.
 * They did build a to-scale animatronic of Kong's head and shoulders for the 1933 film. It has several quick appearances, the most notable being Kong's unveiling in new York and during his rampage in the native village (the close-ups where a villager is in his mouth). Though it was pretty motionless (only the eyes and mouth could move, and limited at that), it still worked fairly well.
 * Too Cool to Live: The Cook played by Andy Serkis in 2005 version. What's worse is the method he dies. He gets attacked by large worms that eat him limb by limb digesting him in a slow and painful manner.
 * The One-Scene Wonder sergeant in a deleted scene of the 2005 film.
 * 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, 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.
 * Visual Effects of Awesome: For 1933, anyway. The stop-motion effects were so impressive they got a kid named Ray Harryhausen interested in making that a career. There are still cinemaphiles and effects experts impressed with how Willis O'Brien made his effects.