I'm pretty tired and this is at best a half-formed thought so ape with me but there is something uniquely respectable about King Kong. Monster movies are a low form and thank God for that (listen up David Gordon Green) but somehow King Kong has a kind of operatic grandeur that makes it feel culturally significant in an almost highbrow way, the only movie about a giant killer gorilla or giant killer anything that you can imagine dressing up to go see. There's a reason Kong has become an instantly identifiable visual icon of classic Hollywood in the same way that Greta Garbo or Humphrey Bogart or Marilyn Monroe have, and it's because the film makes you believe in him just like their films make you believe in them.