"King Kong,” says special effects genius Greg Nicotero in Kong: Long Live the King, “is a sadly and horribly misunderstood lovesick gorilla.” Throughout this short, lightweight documentary, that’s a running theme: love and sympathy for history’s greatest movie monster.
For better and worse, Long Live the King is aimed directly at Kong superfans, paying tribute to everything from the 1933 original to the burned-down ride at Universal Studios. The doc is filled with a lot of affable dudes (and they are, almost entirely, dudes) fawning over Kong and Fay Wray in equal measure: There’s Gremlins director Joe Dante, effects masters Tom Woodruff Jr. and Chris Walas, comedian Dana Gould, and actor Doug Jones, who’s played enough monsters to have a pretty great perspective on why Kong’s so special. (Also onboard: Author Mark F. Berry, whose straight-faced credit as a “Kong historian” is the greatest job title in the world.)
