What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know about abundant violence, not only monster-on-monster fights (inevitably ending in death for one of the combatants), and also that many innocent bystanders are brutally killed, both in the jungle and in New York City. The natives (who are black) are portrayed as face-painted, bone-wearing tribesmen.
- Families can talk about how later generations of admirers read a lot of messages into this movie about civilization vs. the primal jungle, about the poignancy of the tropical ape-giant brought captive to modern Manhattan.
- The old-fashioned point-of-view here doesn't seem to make any obviousobjections to the brash white-hunter heroes and theirnot-very-scientific mission. You can ask kids if they think Kong is asympathetic character who should have been left alone or a ragingmonster who had to be destroyed, and compare Kong to thegenetically-engineered dinosaurs of the "Jurassic Park" series.