Andy

The 1933 King Kong is many things. Like any piece of cultural history the film can be framed in various conversations privileging or critiquing its qualities. It’s a cinematic tour-de-force in special effects. It’s a myth-making vehicle that achieved a kind of cultural iconography equaled in cinema only by movie stars, Westerns, Star Wars, Samurai movies, the early 1930s run of Universal monster movies, etc.

James Cameron’s 1989 sci-fi thriller The Abyss took audiences to the steely blue depths of the Caribbean where the film’s plucky, devil-may-care bunch of oil riggers (in these movies aren’t they all?) square off sub-a-sub with a rogue SEAL team. Cameron’s film represents one of the final contemporaneous Cold War allegories in mainstream U.S. cinema. Though multiple edits and a ballooning budget kept the film from financial success it’s stark verisimilitude coupled with groundbreaking special effects endeared it to many critics.

Let me set the scene for you. A hirsute man-child strolls into his local multiplex to check out the latest installment in a franchise about werewolves and vampires. Sounds pretty great, huh? What’s that you ask? Yes, that’s right. He’s never seen any other Underworld movie other than what’s been on FX in the background. Won’t this diminish his enjoyment of the impending whirlwind of leather, fur, blood spurts, and runny egg style Shakespeare? Absolutely not.