Any movie that features white people sailing off to the Third World to capture a giant ape and carry it back to the West for exploitation is going to be seen as a metaphor for colonialism and racism.
It remains a parable of exploitation, cultural self-importance, the arrogance of the West, all issues that were obvious in the original but unexamined; they remain unexamined here, if more vivid.
How bout the natives of mythical Skull Island, where Kong is discovered. Director Jackson took people of Melanesian stock — the dark-skinned peoples who are indigenous to much of the South Pacific, including Jackson’s own country, New Zealand — and made them up to look and act like monsters, more zombie-ish than human. Indeed, one is moved to compare these human devils to the ogre-ish Orcs from Jackson’s mega-Oscar “Lord of the Rings” films. The bad guys are dark, hideous and undifferentiatedly evil.
