Visual effects have obviously come a long way since the 1930s, but King Kong has played a pivotal role in the larger conversation on movie magic. Digital wizardry can give every microfiber on screen it’s own unique characteristic, but there’s something irrefutably dazzling about the frame by frame craftsmanship of stop motion photography. It wasn’t just Kong that captured our imaginations but the various prehistoric inhabitants on Skull Island that comprise some of the picture's best sequences; it makes sense that filmmakers are returning to it. While the Empire State Building finale is thrilling to say the least, King Kong is at its best on Skull Island. Time will no doubt take its toll on a movie from the 30s, but the Tyrannosaur fight is expertly crafted; it’s loud, violent and still packs a punch, especially when Kong breaks that T-rex’s jaw in half with a satisfying crack.

O’Brien and directors Merian C. Cooper, and Ernest B. Schoedsack pull out all of the stops here with a grab bag of dinosaurs, serpents, and the big ape himself wailing on them all. This classic also marks the innovations of forced perspective, miniature work, rear projection, and matte paintings. King Kong offers a myriad of rollicking set pieces and iconic moments, plus with it being made just before the Motion Picture Production Code it can be easy to forget just how violent King Kong is. People are getting tossed off of cliffs, eaten, crushed and stepped on. King Kong has been defined in our minds as one of the cinemas famous monsters, racking up a body-count that far exceeds the Universal Monsters.