Are you serious?!

I love National Geographic. It's a great magazine, and my favorite, the pictures in there are top notch. Well the new King Kong movie is getting all the buzz. But get this, the existence of the oversized snakes, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs and Skull Island itself is being called into question in a new National Geographic's groundbreaking article, "King Kong Island Home Is Pure Fantasy, Ecology Experts Say." They say its not real. The nerve of these people.

Ok so the movie is a piece of fiction and I apologize for totally smashing your sense of reality. I know you were like me, thinking that this was a documentary. Whelp, I guess we stand corrected, so you won't be seeing a 25 foot gorilla go mano e mano versus a Tyrannosaurus Rex anytime soon. But, here is a thought and a theory, after the release of the last Lord of the Rings movie, acrchelogists discovered "hobbit-like" remains in Asia. Is it too far a stretch to say that a preserved 25 foot gorilla skeleton finding is on the horizon for say...Summer 2006? Jackson can work magic I tell you, so there is still hope that Skull Island is an actual place.

There is also an interesting debate regarding the racist undertones of the King Kong premise:

David Edelstein writes in "Gorilla My Dreams" in Slate:

"the implication that Kong stands for the black man brought in chains from a dark island (full of murderous primitive pagans) and with a penchant for skinny white blondes."

Here he responds to angry emails and criticism in "Donkey Kongs." I personally totally missed the what he sees as the "implicit" racist theme of King Kong. Supposedly it is acknowledged by Jackson in what Edelstein says is the reason behind, "an original and clunky subplot in which an African-American officer on the ship adopts and effectively tames a wild white boy."

I thought the intent of the movie was to kind of work off Darwin's theme of isolation, natural selection and evolution (hence the remote island and the oversized reptiles), but I guess I was totally mistaken (I can be so naive). Wait a second, if I AM correct though and the movie is about evolution, then it's anti-christian, which means it's anti-god. So either the movie is racist or hates jesus. Boy, it was so much simplier when we just had monster movies like Godzilla versus Mothra.

I think this is a bit alarmist. I can draw the parallels to what Edelstein is saying, but it seems like he is digging an aweful lot and making some very problmatic associations. I think if you looked at alot of movies originating in the 1930s you would find many racist and elitist themes and associations. I am no expert though.

I'll let you know more once I actually watch the movie.