'King Kong (1933)' is strongly indebted to "The Lost World," particularly Harry O. Hoyt's 1925 adaptation, in which a dinosaur is brought back to civilisation (and for which Willis O'Brien also did the stop-motion effects). Significant in both stories is the clash between primitive man (represented by natives and ape-like creatures) and modern man. 'King Kong' uses the science-fiction trope of the conflict between Man's primal emotions (particularly lust, embodied here by Kong) and his intellect, exemplified by the metropolis of New York City. Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis (1927)' concludes with the realisation that these two human qualities must cooperate to ensure the future of civilisation. 'King Kong' takes a different stance: Kong, the epitome of primal emotion, despite his mammoth size throughout the film, is decidedly dwarfed as he scales the Empire State Building, at the time the pinnacle of human achievement. Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) later muses that it was "beauty killed the beast," implying that Kong's animalistic instincts – namely, his lust for Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) – had proved his downfall in a modernistic world.
