On this café we are going to talk about another famous American movie, today we are going to talk about King Kong.
This café begins with the discussion of a well known American movie—King Kong. The original King Kong movie was made in 1933, it was a black and white film. The head however also has been some remakes, the word “remake” means to make again, the prefix “re” usually means it is done again more than once. A remake is a movie that has already been made, but then made in different version with different stars. King Kong has been made in 1976, and again more recently in 2005. the basic story of the movie is that there is a film crew (a group of people who are working to make a movie and a beautiful actress) and they go to a remote island, the island that is not close to anything else and when they are there, they find this huge, very large gorilla-like monster called Kong. Well, they are captured or caught by the native people who live on this remote island and they prepare to give the beautiful actress as an offering to Kong, an “offering” is something that is given to God or some super natural power to make it happy to protect the people. This idea is very very deeply moved that it’s very much connected with many religious traditions in the world, the notion is offering, the idea is giving an offering. Well, the film crew offer this beautiful actress and Kong comes and he takes her away, the film crew follows Kong and the actress into the jungle, the “jungle” is a forest with a lot of trees, a tropical forest we would call it. Eventually they rescue the actress and they trap Kong that is they put him in a cage like a prison, then they bring Kong back with them to New York city and he is showed to people, people come and see this strange, huge gorilla-like monster. But Kong is very strong and he breaks three of his shackles, “shackles” are the chains that are holding his arms and legs together, we usually use this term when we are talking about slaves, when the slaves were brought for example from Africa to the United States, they were often put in shackles, they would have these chains on their arms and legs so that they wouldn’t escape. Well, Kong is so strong that he breaks his shackles and he is able to go free. Well, I don’t want to tell you how the movie ends but eventually Kong is on top of at that time the tallest building in New York city, the empire state building. It’s the tallest building again after the attacks of September 11, 2001. the empire state building then is sort of a symbol of New York city, it has been around for many years and King Kong was on the top of the building. I won’t tell you how the movie ends and you have to see one of the versions yourself.
In 1933 the original film start the men by the name of Bruce Cabot as well as Robert Armstrong and the beautiful actress was played by a woman named Fay Wray, it was very well received and in fact it’s considered one of the hundred best movies in the last 100 years according to the American film industry. In 1976 they made the movie again, this time with Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin and the beautiful actress was Jessica Lange. The 1976 remake was not as popular as the original but is did receive one academy award. In 2005 they made the movie with Jack Black, Adrien Brody and the beautiful Naomi Watts as the actress. The film was very expensive to make but it was also financially successful, in fact it was one of the highest grossing films for the movie studio that make the universal pictures. When we say it was one of highest “grossing”, we mean it was one of the movies that got the most amount of money, people pay the most amount of money to see. When we talk about your gross we are talking about the money that comes in, of course that is not the only thing that is important in your business, you also need to look at your expenses and the difference between what you bring in and what you spend is of course the money that you can keep what we call your profit. The 2005 movie won 3 academy awards, I am not sure it’s famous for acting however.
King Kong is an important cultural figure you might say in American 20th century history. The scene of King Kong on top of the empire state building representing this danger to supervised society is something that you see other movies in other countries as well, the idea is the terrible monster who is perhaps just misunderstood. So if you haven’t seen at least one of the versions of King Kong you might want to watch and find out a little bit about what we are talking about one of the great movies of the 20th century in the United States.
